What are your choices when looking for a Joomla Template Maker? Are you a subscriber to Joomla template clubs, but are looking for a way to produce Joomla templates yourself? Are you getting requests to build templates from a designer's Photoshop file? Well there is good news. You have options.
Artisteer has created very cool tool to build Joomla templates. (as well as Wordpress, Drupal, DotNetNuke, and Blogger). Plus you do not need to use Photoshop or Dreamweaver (but it helps). This tool can be used by anyone. You don't need a lick of programming or template development knowledge. The templates are yours, you own the design. The only caveat is that you can not sell the templates if you include Artisteer photo objects within your header (Header -> Foreground Photo), as those photos are licensed from a third party for your own use or in your consulting work. You must use your own images if you decide to sell templates produced with Artisteer.
Artisteer offers "suggested" designs so you can easily just slide through different layouts, backgrounds, headers, color schemes, widths, fonts, etc. Any novice could easily produce a template using the built in design assets (images, layouts, etc) and export it as a Joomla 1.5 template zip file. It installs exactly like a commercial template with the Joomla installer.
Want to have direct conversations with core Joomla developers? Get busy with your Twitter account. If you would like inside knowledge on the future of Joomla in real time, or announcements of new extensions, templates or promotions, make sure you follow as many Joomla people as possible. If you would like to discuss development issues with other Joomla development services providers, or even get advice or support of questions, you can do this on Twitter. Plus, you can promote your own Joomla heroics. There are also many tweeters of Joomla project job boards.
Add a comment
The hot trend that we see right now is Website SEO Analysis. Look at this Google Insight graph since 2004. It is not good enough for most businesses to have a nice website as a brochure, as a online store or blog. Businesses want more targeted traffic and to improve their search engine results page (SERPs) position. Most experts agree that it is important to show up on page one of Google or other search engine pages for given search terms.
But many businesses struggle and are not satisfied with their search engine optimization or their SERPs. They may have even hired "SEO Experts" to help tweak their site to improve search results. But they are still not getting the results they desire. Why is this? There are a number of potential reasons. The only way to get to the bottom of this is with good website SEO analysis. A great deal of research and review must be performed before "action".
Many companies decide to use Joomla as a website platform (after market research) and then start the process of looking for a Joomla Development Services provider. They discover that Joomla is a leading content management system that delivers dynamic content, database functionality, multiple levels of user content access and control and WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) content creation and editing. But this is just the beginning, here are our top 10 reasons to use Joomla as a platform for your business website.
Many web design people claim to specialize in Joomla Development Services. Just do a Google search for Joomla Development Services. You will see a wide array of results with many companies/people positioning themselves as Joomla professionals and promise great results. But what should you look for? What should you be cautious of?
Joomla is a Great Choice
First, if you are considering an open source content management system like Joomla to use for a website development project, congratulations. You have chosen an excellent platform to build a dynamic, extensible, powerful, fast and easy to manage website. There are many reasons to choose Joomla:
But this is not a "Why Joomla" article. This is all about Joomla Development Services.
Read more: Joomla Development Services - Choosing a Developer
What can Woopra Real Time Analytics do for me, you might ask? If you are a blogger or major content provider, or even tracking a promotion on an ecommerce website, it can help you make real time adjustments or help build an ongoing strategy. I say this because there are plenty of good analytics solutions available. We utilize Google Analytics on every website and blog that we build for our clients. But Woopra is REAL TIME and can assist you in understanding traffic metrics for blog posts, content or promotions the same day that the content goes up! It also allows you produce custom reports and take a deep look at analytics as well. And Woopra, which is in beta, is free!
Wordpress is a amazing application for building blog websites, but what about a Joomla Blog? Is Joomla 1.5 a good system for building a blogging website? There are many debates rolling around the Internet about Wordpress vs. Joomla for blogging and Joomla vs. Wordpress for content management system websites (CMS). One great blog post is to read is 5 Reasons You Should Use Joomla Instead if Wordpress. While the article is not aimed at blogging per se, it does raise some good points about expansion, customization and extensibility.
We build both Wordpress & Joomla blog websites. We use the correct tool for the job. If a client wants a straight blog without many future enhancements or is interested in a Third Party Blog, we will always choose Wordpress. If the client needs a corporate or marketing website with functionality (like ecommerce, multiple templates, social networking, forms, forums etc) AND a blog, we will always choose Joomla. This very blog post you are reading is just that, a blog on a Joomla business website for our company, s-go Consulting.
Add a comment
When s-go Consulting we builds any Joomla website for a client, we use a standard set of Joomla plug-ins and add-ons. Most have been used on 150+ client websites (including our own) and are tied and true. Whether we are building a standard business content management website, e-commerce website using a Joomla component like Virtuemart or a Joomla based blog, we install our favorites.
JCE Editor Component
This Joomla editor just keeps getting better and better. It is especially handy for our clients who do some of their own content management. It is a huge improvement in terms of features and functions over the core TinyMCE editor built into Joomla. While the editor is free, everyone should subscribe for $30 ($20 for renewals) and get access to additional powerful plug-ins. Subscription plug-ins include Image Manager Extended, File Manager and Media Manager. We use this on every site.
Xmap
An absolute 100% install on every site. This component provides on an on-page site map as well as sitemap XML for submission to Google, Bing and Yahoo. Vesion 1.2.2 now comes with 21 pre-installed extensions to help map other components.
Youth sports play a big role in the community where I live as well as when I was growing up. Things are different now though. The private youth association, staffed by volunteers, funds, promotes, coaches and manages youth sports up to high school. The school no longer funds or manages these sports. These youth associations work hard to sponsor safe, healthy sports activities for the youth. They strive to promote physical, emotional, and social development in the youth of their communities.
The Spencer – Van Etten Youth Association (SVEYA) approached s-go Consulting about building a new website to better support local families and the youth who participate. The website that they had been managing was straight HTML and becoming hard for them to manage and update. It was old school. We proposed a new Joomla website with fast loading pages, a simple clean interface and easy navigation. SVEYA manages baseball, basketball, cheerleading, football, soccer, softball and wrestling. We also looked at youth association websites from other communities for ideas.
Joomla Template
We decided to design our own clean template using Artisteer. We have developed a very Web 2.0, simple base template and we make modifications in Artisteer specific to the client, before we install the template. We then did further modification of the template in CSS once content was created and all functional components was configured.
Page 3 of 4
