Joomla anyone?

[Patrysha]

I've been hired to write articles/web copy for the Electrolysis Society of Alberta.

The president wants to maintain the current designer but try some of my ideas as far as building up the content and usefulness of the site. So I have to upload these files and it's in Joomla which I have never used before.

I've downloaded the user manual and it seems fairly easy to get around...however...

There are a few things I can't figure out how to do. Like change whatever needs to be changed so the browser title shows the page title and not the generic page (like Home).

I think I may have a few questions like that over the next couple of days.

I've promised not to touch the design itself, but the guy didn't even have the URL's set to search friendly when it's a simple click to set it in place. (And that got me to wondering is there ever a reason why you wouldn't do that??)

Anyway if there is anyone around who knows anything that can help me, I'd appreciate it!

[vangogh]

I haven't used Joomla myself. I've looked at it a couple of times, but didn't care much for it. I tend to be a WordPress guy.

As far as setting the URLs to be search friendly, I can't think of why you wouldn't do that when setting up the site. Now that the site is up and running and probably getting some search traffic you want to be careful about changing URLs since they're seen as completely new pages by search engines. That doesn't mean you can't change them. I's just that you want to make sure the old URLs are permanently redirected to the new URLs. Joomla's system may and probably does do that, but you'd want to make sure. If it doesn't then you'd want to set up the redirection on your own.

Odds are Joomla's system does rewrite the URLs using 301 (permanent) redirects.

I'm not sure how Joomla handles the page titles. I would think (or at least hope) you could easily set it as you're creating the page. I take it when you see a page title like Home it's because the page was named Home and given a heading of Home. That might need to be changed in the theme or it may be something handled by a Joomla plugin. I wish I could tell you more, but I'm not really familiar with the system.

[Patrysha]

Yeah, I am a WordPress girl myself. I've looked at Joomla briefly before but thought at the time it was too complicated to learn a new platform that didn't offer me more than what I could accomplish with what I knew with WordPress.

But...I really love my electrologist and she really wanted me on the job for the society :-) and recommended me to the president and board.

And yes, it should be just a simple thing with the name. Pretty sure it is the template, but can't seem to find where I would access the header to edit...it seem to be being pulled from a jDoc and I have no idea where I will have to dig to find that. So I am just going to leave it and let them know to contact the other guy and see if he can change it. Better than me breaking something I shouldn't be messing around with.

Just thought I'd see if anyone had expertise first, because I really don't think this guy considers SEO at all in his site development or writing.

[rezzy]

It interesting, because most system platforms do not set SEO links by default, Wordpress included.

The majority of people tend to think Wordpress is only a blogging platform, and when faced between using Wordpress and Joomla they use Joomla. However, I consider Wordpress to be just as strong as Joomla as a CMS option.

But, I do not recommend Joomla, because its admin seems to overwhelming and complicated for most users. I have started liking Drupal because it looks like a nice mesh of Wordpress simplicity and Joomla's CMS focus.

[Patrysha]

It interesting, because most system platforms do not set SEO links by default, Wordpress included.
Yes, but they are easy as pie to set once you've got them installed. That's why I am boggled as to why the designer didn't. Just seems like common sense to me.



But, I do not recommend Joomla, because its admin seems to overwhelming and complicated for most users. I have started liking Drupal because it looks like a nice mesh of Wordpress simplicity and Joomla's CMS focus.

I don't recommend or play with Joomla either, but it made better sense to me to stick with what they have and use their budget to hire me to write and publicize...since that is what I rock at...and since that is what will help her keep the relationship solid with the current designer.

[vangogh]

I am boggled as to why the designer didn't

Because most designers don't have the first clue about SEO. Sad, but true. More are learning, but we're not yet to the place where SEO considerations are default with web design.

It does make sense for you to stick with Joomla for now and maybe see it as an opportunity to learn a new system. That's never a bad thing.

[Patrysha]

Because most designers don't have the first clue about SEO. Sad, but true. More are learning, but we're not yet to the place where SEO considerations are default with web design.

You know, I know that in my head...in fact I've used it as a selling point for my services - I may not make a pretty site and I do not have a great deal of SEO knowledge compared to some of the whiz kids out there (even interviewing Aaron Wall didn't completely break through my thick skull) but I am better than anyone else in the county and the next one over.

I'm lucky, I can usually get familiar with the basics of a program fairly quickly and can look up specifics that I need answers to, but I don't want to waste too much time learning things that are really outside the scope of the project.

[billbenson]

Why don't you just install Joomla and the plugin's you think they are using on a site? You probably don't need to get that familiar with it. Write your articles in your copy so you know the way it will look online.

I bet Joomla isn't that bad as long as you stick to basic stuff?

Just a thought.

[Patrysha]

Oh adding the pages is no problem...got that all figured out.

It was just the browser title thing that was bugging me. I like 'em matchy...I've found instructions for changing it, but I don't have ftp access so phooey on that and on to the next task.

[lav]

quixplorer (http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/core-enhancements/file-management/102) is a plugin (component) that allows you to access and edit files without ftp

[Dan Furman]

I've been hired to write articles/web copy for the Electrolysis Society of Alberta.

In my business (in which I do tons of web articles, web copy, and blog posts), I am absolutely firm: I write in MSWord, and the client is responsible for putting it on the site.

Just my .02, but you'll probably spend as much time futzing with the formatting, etc as you will writing it. I used to do blog posts for clients right in their blog, but I got frustrated in inserting a pic with enough space around it, getting one space between bullet points (almost all CMS's do this badly), etc etc.

Finally I said "I'm a writer - I write, and that's it". Nobody has ever had a problem with it.

[billbenson]

Although, Dan, In Patrysha's case, she's a marketer. I don't know if this is true in this particular case or not, but the overall package matters, so formatting matters.

In your case and possibly Patrysha's, if you are booked up, why do more than writing. Kind of like a dentists web site. If the dentist is always booked (mines always booked a month in advanced), a mediocre website with directions is fine.

If you were just starting out, would you make the same statement though? Having the presentation of your copy would be more important.

[Patrysha]

I provide full service :-) I am not just a writer. That would bore me to tears.

It's not that I am not good at it, I just don't get a thrill out of the article writing (press releases and promotional copy are more my thing).

Right now money is tight and I am doing the work myself. In time I'll have somebody else doing this futzy work. But for now, I know how to do it, I am fairly quick at getting it done and in the case of clients like this...it's got to be just right for it to do it's job for me so I can't just pass it off to them to take care of.

See the Society has 38 members. I currently have one of them as a client. Everything I do for her can be tweaked and customized to fit the businesses of the other 37...not all of them will take me up on it...but some of them will. That way all the research and things I am digging up now can be respun into different angles for the other sites.

So between the site of the society site and the member site...they'll pretty much constitute my portfolio when I go to speak with them at their AGM in September.

[Dan Furman]

Although, Dan, In Patrysha's case, she's a marketer. I don't know if this is true in this particular case or not, but the overall package matters, so formatting matters.

In your case and possibly Patrysha's, if you are booked up, why do more than writing. Kind of like a dentists web site. If the dentist is always booked (mines always booked a month in advanced), a mediocre website with directions is fine.

If you were just starting out, would you make the same statement though? Having the presentation of your copy would be more important.

You're misunderstanding - formatting matters to me - a LOT. Things like color, subheadings, breaks, text boxes etc etc. That stuff is vital to what I do. I usually make my MS Word pages look like a website, in fact.

But I don't do the actual web stuff. I do web work for myself, but I'm not going to wrestle with a client's website or CMS to get the breaks or bullet points to look right. It's just not my area of expertise, and when I have tried this in the past, it was WAY more trouble than it was worth.

To be honest, I really don't do too much work for people without access to web people / web designers / ect.