Web Design & Development Blog

13 March 2012 Community Builder Phoca Gallery Plugin

category:
Joomla Developers

Check out our Community Builder plugin for the Phoca Gallery extension.

30 December 2011 Google Checkout is now Google Wallet

category:
Web Design and Development

Google Checkout has ... 'checked out' and change its name to Google Wallet. Google Wallet is essentially Google Checkout, but rebranded and targeted to mobile use as much as for use on regular sites (viewed from a personal computer). We look forward to working with wallet on some upcoming e-commerce projects.

30 December 2011 Keep your site from getting taken hostage

category:
Website Owners

All too frequently we hear from customers who have handed over the login details for their domain registrar (GoDaddy, NameCheap etc) only to have their web designer transfer the domain to another registrar that is outside the customer's control. The end result is of course that the customer then becomes dependent on that web designer and must beg and plead (and sometimes even pay fees reaching into the hundreds of dollars) just to get control of their own domain again. In a similar vein, many web design companies that also offer (or insist) on hosting your site for you will not provide hosting control panel access. This is a red flag, because it makes it impossible to save a backup of your site, again making you dependent on that web designer / webmaster. Please, at all times make sure you maintain control of your domain name(s)!

If you must provide someone with access to your domain name management area, make sure you have a clear idea of what it is they intend to do with that access. If you're using GoDaddy, you can assign someone as an AccountExec, so that they cannot change the account password on you. However, even with AccountExec access they'd be able to transfer the domain to another registrar if you're not careful.

It's your site: make sure you retain full control over it, even if you don't want to manage it on a daily basis!

23 December 2011 Joomla World Conference, San Jose - November 16-18 2012

category:
Website Owners

The Joomla! Project is pleased to announce that the first Joomla World Conference will occur in November 2012.  We are very happy that eBay has graciously offered significant support for this event, inviting us to use their facilities in San Jose, California.

Here are the preliminary details for the Joomla! World Conference:

Date: 16th-18th November 2012

Location:
eBay Town Hall
2161 North First Street
San Jose, CA 95131
USA

Tickets: Price for a 3-day Ticket is $199 USD

More details will follow next year.

http://www.joomla.org/announcements/general-news/5398-joomla-world-conference-2012.html

20 December 2011 Free Web Design and SEO Consultation

category:
News

We're web designers based in Sterling, Virginia and we serve Fairfax, Washington, DC, Maryland, and more. We are proud members of the Loudoun County Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber of Commerce maintains a page featuring "hot deals" from members. We recently added our own deal:

• Complimentary web site audit and SEO (search engine optimization) consultation
• 15% off your first month of SEO management (mininum 6 months)
  
  For more information:
  phone:  (877) 515-NOVA
  email: contact@plethoradesign.com
  website: http://www.plethoradesign.com
• Check out our deal

16 December 2011 Drupal 8 Roadmap

category:
Drupal

Drupal 8 has been in the works for some time now, and looks pretty exciting. We're particularly excited about web services becoming part of Drupal core, rather than being something you can add on. We have built custom web services applications for Joomla & SouthWare e-commerce sites, but would love to be able to do that more easily in Drupal too. 

Check out the Drupal 8 initiatives currently underway. Drupal 8 is still under pretty heavy (but steady) development and may be released some time during 2012. You can read up on the various Drupal versions here.

Drupal 6 is the most widely used version and is very stable at this point, with many modules available. Drupal 7 has been out since January 5th 2011 and took three years to develop. There are still many modules that do not yet work in Drupal 7, but that is a given considering how young it is. As a casual user the main difference you'll notice between Drupal 7 and 6 is Drupal 7's very attractive interface, which is reminiscent of WordPress. That is mainly due to its use of lightbox / modal effects and well-designed UI. User interface was definitely an area in which Drupal 6 was lacking, and as a result it became a main focus for Drupal 7. With that under control, we're very pleased to see Drupal 8 focused on more business-oriented features such as web services.

15 December 2011 Get ready for Joomla 2.5!

category:
Web Design and Development

Joomla 2.5 (formerly codenamed 1.8) is coming out any day now, short on the heels of winning 2011's Packt CMS award. 

This is the next major release in the series, which started with 1.0 in the Mambo days, progressed to the now very stable 1.5, and on to 1.6/1.7, which were intended as a stepping stone to 2.5. We have seen conflicting reports of an early January or late December release date. Either way, there will be a period of months in which Joomla users plan their migration to 2.5. If you are not using too many extensions you could probably migrate fairly painlessly (a migration tool is reportedly in the works). If you are using a number of extensions, make sure to check for Joomla 2.5 versions of those, or plan to use some alternative. Many extension developers do not update their extensions for new versions of Joomla until weeks or months after the official release, since that is when new bugs typically come to light and are ironed out. Since Joomla is open-source just like Drupal, WordPress and so many other packages, it is always a work in progress. That's not to say it isn't a great tool for building a robust site!

15 December 2011 Search Engine Optimization Successes

category:
Web Design and Development

We have been focusing on our search engine optimization efforts lately, and updated our SEO page to include some more success stories and examples.

Many of our customers' sites are doing quite well in search results, with some in first place (not just page one) of Google. Our own site is on page one for "award winning web design", and beats out the Web Association Awards site. We won a Web Award in September for our work on the Vineyard Arts Project site, done using the Joomla CMS (content management system).

Have a look at our SEO page and let us know if you could use some help on your site. We offer no-obligation free initial SEO consultations.

05 December 2011 Drupal 7.10 Released

category:
Drupal

Drupal 7.10, a maintenance release with numerous bug fixes (no security fixes) is now available for download. Several major bugs, including one causing errors with the 5.x branch of Drush, have been fixed this release. See the Drupal 7.10 release notes for a full listing.

Read more: http://drupal.org/drupal-7.10

24 November 2011 Joomla Wins 2011 Packt Award for top CMS

category:
News

Joomla has won the Packt Publishing award for the top open source CMS.

Now in its sixth year, many consider the Packt Open Source Award as a top honor for an open source project. Joomla won the award based on a combination of public voting and input by a panel of judges consisting of open source luminaries.

http://www.joomla.org/announcements/general-news/5394-joomla-wins-the-packt-open-source-cms-award.html