Seo Basics

What to do with your WordPress Themes

Filed Under: Seo Basics, WordPress Themes

For the layout of a WordPress Blog, you use themes.

But where can you find these themes, are they free or do you need to pay for them?
Do they have the Sponsor Links in them, or are they Search Engine Optimized?

Are there Designers specialists in WordPress Designs and how do you find them?

How can you change the Layout of a Theme, or just Customize some parts of the Design?

Those are a lot of questions, so I have split it into several pages each giving you information about the topic of your interest at this moment…

Understanding the Joomla Content Structure

Filed Under: Joomla! General, Seo Basics

Some people have a hard time understanding the Structure that is used in Joomla to organize the Content.

But it is not that hard to understand if you look at it from a different angle.

Joomla is a Content Management System that in the core can be compared with a Study book.


	Joomla Sections The section part of Joomla can be look at as the main parts of a Book. Like for example an Atlas, the Section are the Continents.

Joomla Categories

The categories in Joomla can be classified as the Chapters of a Book

In the Atlas example, these are the country's in each of the continents.

Joomla Content Item

The Joomla Content items are the pages in a book, each containing information to make a Chapter.

In the Atlas example, these could be pages that describe the Geological ans Social economics of a Country.

Putting it all in Perspective

If you look at the structure of this site, you will see how its build…
First there are sections about Joomla, WordPress and Drupal.

The Joomla Section is split up into categories as:

Joomla General
Joomla Modules
Joomla Themes
Joomla Components
Mambots and Plugins
Joomla Search Engine Optimization

One example of a content Item is this page, which is in the category “Joomla General”

The Joomla Content Structure explained

Keep this structure in mind if you are going to build your website in Joomla.
Make Sure you have drawn the structure on paper before building it in Joomla, it will save you a lot of headache afterwards…

How to put Statcounter into Joomla

Filed Under: Free Online Services, Seo Basics

As you might well know, Statcounter is a Free service to track visitors on your website.

Simply Sign up at www.statcounter.com and start tracking your visitor numbers, referrals and much more.
This way you can also see if your Search Engine Optimization efforts ara paying off..

But there is one Tiny little problem in getting Statcounter running in your Joomla website.. the tracking code is in Java-script which breaks if you use the TinyMCE or even the JCE editor..

How to get the Statcounter Code into Joomla

It is not that hard as you might think, so here is how to do it.

Global and User administration
You can do this via the User Manager

Using the Joomla user option for no wysiwig editor

Now with the Editors out of the way, you can create an new module to hold the Statcounter Code.

Why and How to use a Module for Statcounter

The main reason for using a Module instead of editing core files, or Templates files is that a module is not Update or Template dependent.

That means if you change template, the Statcounter still works..
If you get an Joomla Update, the Statcounter also will keep working.

Create a new Module

In your administration panel choose Modules and go to site modules

Now create a new Module

Create a New Joomla Module

Fill in the parameters, and don't forget the Publish option.

Choose the Paramaters of the Modules

Make sure you get a copy of the Statcounter installation code now:

Got to your Statcounter account and follow the normal procedure to obtain the code.

Get the Statcounter Installation code

At the end of the procedure you should have a field with the code you can copy.

The statcounter code

This code you need to paste into the new module content section:

The Code in the new Joomla Module

Save the module and position it where you see fit, just another nice option of the Module functionality…

Here is my final result…

The final Joomla statcounter result

As you might see, the module has automatically taken over any module layout related settings to fit the template.

How to work with hidden counter

Some people like to have there counter hidden, oké that is also doable.

Make sure you got the code from Statcounter with the option hidden and paste that into the module, just as explained above.

But now, set the Module parameter "Show Title" to "No" , but keep it Published !!
Now if you look at your site, you will see No counter on the page, but it should be in the Source code.

Check if everything works and you get visitor counts on your Statcounter Reports.
Make sure you Block your own visits :-) by using a Blocking Cookie or IP address Blocking in your Settings..

Now forget all about this work and enjoy your Statcounter reports…

P.s. Don't forget to set the WYSIWYG editor to On again, but once turned on, do not !! edit the module, or it will break….

Setting Up a Blog with Joomla

Filed Under: Blogging with Joomla, Seo Basics

First thing you need to do if you want to start you Blog on Joomla is to create the "Infrastructure" for you Blog Posts.

This means that you have to create the structure in Joomla that will give you the right structure so you can easily work you post into your Blog.

1. Create a seperate Joomla Section that will hold the categories for your Blog, you will need this later on if you are going to look at comment components.
Do NOT call it "Blog", but rather something like "Topic Blog".

Reason for not naming the section and category it "Blog" is simply the fact that some SEF components use the "Blog" name in the URL for a Blog based menu link…

Create a Joomla Blog section

2. Create the categories that will hold your blog topics, here is the same restriction not to name it "Blog".

Keyword Suggestiong Tool

Filed Under: Search Engine Optimization, Seo Basics

Here is nice tool of Digitalpoints to get some Keyword suggestions:

Manage your websites in one place in Domain Log Book

Filed Under: Free Online Services, Seo Basics

In January of 2007 I wrote on my Blog a post about "Keepings Tabs on Your domain and Others"

The site I wrote about is www.domainlogbook.com and is Free for you to use, just register and start adding your websites, or those of your clients… and main competitors maybe… oh, that's'an Evil thought…

The Domain Log Book Information

But what do you get if you use this service, that is the important part!

Domainlogbook keeps track of your websites and give you the following information after you added your domain:

Expiration date of your domain
Google Rank
Alexa Rank
Compete rank

Besides that you can also see the latest update date, and if you want to get the Whois data with one click.

You can sort the different tables to quickly see which sites have the highest page rank, or the best Alexa score.

And if you want to sort the domain differently, or filter the results, put some tags on the domains, like customer site, or Blogs… you get the picture once you start using it.

It is really a great free online tool to Manage your Domains for Free..
So get going and register for free at www.domainlogbook.com

How to Simply Capture a Screen Shot

Filed Under: Freeware, Seo Basics

You could use the standard windows functionality using the Shift+PrtSc keys to capture your screen.and than start pasting and cutting away in you Graphics Program..

Choose and Capture your own Screenshot selection

But what if there was an easy way to just take that part of the screen you want?

Choose and Capture your own selections

There is a much easier way to just select the part of the screen you want, save it in a .jpg or other file format and save it with the name you provide.

A program that just needs you to hit the "PrtSc" key to show a different mouse cursor and lets you select the part of the screen you need to capture.

It then shows you what you selected part of the scree and asks you where to save the image and how you want to name the file.

And you want if for Free….

Here it is….

Gadwin Printscreen download it via the page and install the program.

Then Run it and set you preferences accordingly ot your needs.

Gadwin Printscreen Preferences

My favorites settings are slightly different form the one in the screen.

Configuration for Optimal use

Preferences
You might want to have the program running in the background so you can use it right away, so you have to set the option "Run at Windows startup".

Disable the Splah, you don't need a reminder that its running…

Source
In the Source settings select the "Rectangler Area" option
As an option you might want to have the Mouse Cursor show in the screen to point to a special section, but if you don't want that, disable it here.

I always leave it on, and move the mouse out of the capture section of the scree.

Destination
This is where you set the standard location for you Screenshot images.
And where you can set some options on where the capture should be send, like to the Clipboard, to a Printer, to E-mail and/or to File…

If you need to take a lot of screenshots after another, you might use the automatic nummer assingment option.

Image
The only option you should use is the File type.. please change this from BMP to JPG, otherwise you have very large files, and you don't want that..

Why take screenshots?

Most of the time you can use screenshots to write show the images in articles you write, for a report or even a website

But you can now easily take a snapshot of that erro you get and send it to you helpdesk.

You can really save a lot of time with this tool if you are writing a manual for a webtsite maintenance handbook, or a software program.

Well, I guess you have some idea's of you own on how you want to use it.

So go ahead and Download Gadwin Printscreen Utility

JCE Editor for Joomla

Filed Under: Joomla Components, Seo Basics

This is the Editor that gets the Editors Pick at Joomla.org

Last time I installed this Editor was version 1.0.3 now we are at version 1.1.0
So let's see how this performs.
Installation is more work then the JoomlFCK and involves a component, a mambot en depending on what you want to do several plugins.

The standard screen to edit is pretty good, overall impressions are also nice.

Inserting images?

In the previous version you needed to install a plugin to manage your images, this is now built into the editor itself.

There is even an option to upload an image and you can write the “Alt” and “Title” for the image.

So next test, code insertion:
Always a good test to see if the editor keeps its hands of the coding that is typed manually.

As you can see, the Adsense code, which is JavaScript, is left alone. Nice work.

Then why am I back at JoomlaFCK, well because the Source Code from FCK is cleaner than the one JCE produces?

And for Search Engine Optimized sites you always look at those tiny little things that give you the edge over your competition.

TME Edit

Filed Under: Joomla Modules, Seo Basics

This Plugin is a stripped down version of the XHTML Suite

So lets see how this performs.

Image handling is really good, showing previous and offers the possibility to upload directly.

Now lets see what happens if you insert some adsense code, most of the editors don't like that…

And this one is no different, insert to code, switch back and reload and the coding is lost..

Joomla CK Editor Plugin

Filed Under: Seo Basics

Joomla CK Editor is a plugin that will replace Standard TinyMCE editor of Joomla.

It's installed as a Plugin.

If you got to Site Mambots section, you can set extra parameters like what to show and what not.

One of the best options it the upload and insertion of an image into your content. And ist very easy to switch to HTML code and edit it.

It will not clean your HTML code like the basic Joomla Editors do. so you keep the code!

The beste option you can set after installation is to set the standard editor to JoomlaCkEditor in your Global Settings.

Download from Joomla CK Editor

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