Joomla! - the quickest, easiest way to build a website
Building Your Website, Hosting, Technical Stuff March 22nd, 2009
If you’ve heard of Open Source software, you’ve heard of Joomla. Well, okay, you may not have heard of Joomla but you have probably heard the concept of Joomla because Joomla is open source. Open source is free and openly available software applications for your personal or commercial use. Yes, you heard it right. Free. Open source consists of software applications that are free and many of them are good. One in particular is Joomla!
Joomla! is a content management system often commonly referred to as CMS. CMS is your best friend when it comes to managing any website with content. Joomla! in particular is easy to install. Customizing how your content will be displayed will likely be the most time consuming thing but it will be the most time consuming thing regardless of the application you use to setup your website.
Joomla! can be installed typically two ways: through your hosting provider or uploading the Joomla! files and running the install on the hosted server. Of course, the latter is easiest because it’s literally point-and-click. My site, WebMom Domains, offers Joomla! and other open source applications with every hosting package. Of course, other hosting providers also offer Joomla! and other open source apps as well. You’ll want to check the hosting provider before purchasing a hosting package to ensure they have these apps if that’s your interest. You should also ensure that your hosting provider has Linux running PHP 4 or 5 (5 is recommended) and Apache 1 or 2 (2 is preferred). You can use Windows hosting but personally I think Linux will give you less headaches. Check out Joomla!’s technical requirements.
Just to give you an example of the simplicity of Joomla!, take a look at www.byebyediapers.com. I created this website in TWO hours. Of course, it’s not stellar nor is it complete but what you see took me less time I would have imagined. I installed it through my WebMom Domains hosting account by clicking the Install button.
Just to give you an example of the point-and-click ease of using my WebMom Domain’s hosting, take a look a these screen shots:
When I logged into my hosting account, I selected “Your Applications”
And then I clicked on Content Management on the left and then Joomla!
And then I clicked the red Install button.
For my website ByeByeDiapers.com, during the installation I chose to install Sample Data (which is essentially the Joomla! Demo Website you see on Joomla!). Ideally, you would not chose install Sample Data but I wanted to see what it looked like out-of-the-box.
I made a few changes such as changing the template under Template Manager and what took me the longest was how to figure out the Category, Article and Section Manager. Because I had installed the sample data, I had to disable or rename most of the information (that’s why I wouldn’t recommend installing Sample Data unless you want to play around with it and learn it).
With Joomla! you can get free Joomla! templates or you can pay to purchase premium templates. Just search “joomla template” on Google or your favorite search engine. Also, you can pay a PHP developer who is familiar with Joomla! to customize your Joomla! website. If you’re familiar with elance.com, you can hire a freelance Joomla! expert for a reasonable price.
Also with Joomla!, you can find an endless amount of extensions which really allow for the greatest customization of your website straight out-of-the-box. For example, you can add a Google AdSense Module or extension to display Google AdSense on your site. Or you can add Photo Galleries, Calculators, Maps, Rating systems…the list goes on and on.
You don’t need to know any programming nor do you need to know any HTML to install Joomla! Of course, the more you know, the faster you can get things done. :)
What is a Domain Name?
Domains, Technical Stuff February 12th, 2009
A domain name is the part of a website address or URL that follows the “http://www.” Take Apple for example: their domain name is apple.com, but their URL is http://www.apple.com. URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator. Remember that because it might help you win a trivia contest! J And speaking of trivia and Apple, did you know that apple.com is one of the oldest still-in-existence domain names that got its start way back in 1987? Okay, enough Web Mom Geek talk!
A domain name is the unique name for your website whether you use it for business or for fun. All domain names have a “dot” extension (for example, WebMomDomains has a “dot” com extension which looks like WebMomDomains.com). And there are many extensions out there, not just “dot” com. If you go to a government website, you will see a “dot” gov (.gov), a military site will have a “dot” mil (.mil), an educational institution will have “dot” edu (.edu), a business can have a .biz, an informational website can have .info, etc. These extensions are all TLD’s or Top Level Domains. New ones are being introduced every couple of years or so. For example, “dot” me (.me) is a new domain that was recently made available to the general public. And yes, that is “dot” me as in about “me” (actually the original intent of the “dot” me was for the country Montenegro but it has become extremely popular for personal use) . So if you’re looking to really personalize your website and your name is Joe Schmo, you can get a domain name JoeSchmo.me.
What is Domain Forwarding?
Domains, Technical Stuff February 8th, 2009
Domain forwarding is a redirection of your domain name or URL to another URL. For example, you might use domain forwarding if you have a blog on Blogspot.com called bluetrees.blogspot.com and you want to have a simple domain name that your friends and family can remember such as bluetrees.com - so you would purchase a domain name bluetrees.com and forward your blog domain bluetrees.blogspot.com to your new and improved domain name bluetrees.com.
What is Web 2.0?
Technical Stuff February 8th, 2009
Web 2.0 is essentially a new era of how we work, play and communicate on the internet. It’s social networking, it’s blogging, it’s the wikis (wikipedia-type sites), it’s YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, etc – it’s sort of like a born-again World Wide Web or an upgrade if you will, hence the 2.0 part. Web 2.0 is more participatory than the “old” web. There is more user interaction now than say before the dot com bust. That was the old era and now Web 2.0 is the new.
Is there or will there be a Web 3.0 you ask? It’s up in the there and really depends on who you ask. It’s suggested that artificial intelligence will play a major role in Web 3.0. Wow, we might be closer to seeing The Matrix or Terminator come to fruition. I say that half-jokingly but the scary part is that in a 2001 article from Information Week, the famous Stephen Hawkins warns us about the potentially menacing problem with artificial intelligence. But I digress…
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