This is a topic covered in my recent book, but the question comes up all the time.

In the early static days of the web, there was really little difference between one host and another. You uploaded a bunch of HTML pages and images (and later a CSS file or two) and the web host just worked. There wasn't a lot of analysis to do for the average small business site. One host was pretty much as good as another.

Now we're working with Joomla. And now, when it comes to hosting, everything has changed.

Chapter 15 of my new book is available for you to explore! It covers all of the usual post-launch issues, including ongoing site maintenance, upgrades, backups, and training your client how to use Joomla.

Download Chapter 15 here (PDF)

Sometimes you want to create more than one link to a given item in your Joomla site. Let's say you have an article that you want to show up as subnavigation under Item A and Item B on your menu.

You could create two identical articles, linking one to Item A and the other to Item B. We used to do that in the static HTML days. Unfortunately, that generally meant that you had a maintenance nightmare, since when the page's content changed, you had to change it in two places.

With Joomla, you could create two links, one from Item A and the other from Item B, to the same piece of content. This works, but now you have two different URLs for the same page. That can lose you points in search engines.

I was recently asked if there was a way to get the topmost menu item in which a page sits. Let's say you have a menu like this:

Item 1
--Item 1.1
--Item 1.2
----Item 1.2.1
Item 2
--Item 2.1
--Item 2.2

Let's say you wanted to do something special with all the menus in the 'Item 1' tree and something slightly different for all the items in the 'Item 2'  tree. You'd want to know which tree you were on. Here is a bit of simple php code you can use the get the top most menu item no matter where in the navigation you are (see php 4 version further down):

If you ever installed the sample data in Joomla, you've seen that little "welcome" message over on the right side of the screen, right in the control panel.

Ever wondered how to get rid of it? Ever wondered if you could make your own, so that it was actually useful to your client and not just you?

It's easy to do!

It's been way too long since I've posted, but that's because I'm spending many hours each day writing a book. Joomla! Start to Finish: How to Plan, Execute, and Maintain Your Web Site is due to be published in January next year by Wrox Press.

Writing a book has definitely been the most challenging project I've had for quite a while. Knowing something and teaching it are always two separate things. You have to know what you're talking about at a very deep level to really teach it well.

I've also been learning a ton about Joomla, not to mention noticing a bunch of little usability problems that I'd overlooked for years. Why, for example, is there an option to "show hits" in the menu item for a Category Blog when there's no place that hits ever actually show in that layout? Why is it called Published in the Article Manager, but Enabled in the Module Manager?

Great news for Joomla developers! Elance, a site putting clients in touch with freelancers, says that the 8th most popular freelance skill out there is Joomla. PHP came in at #1, MySQL at #4, and WordPress and #10.

I can certainly confirm this based on how many calls for help we've gotten lately here at 4Web. We're taking projects with a September start right now -- in this economy!

The Marlboro College Graduate Center in Brattleboro, Vermont, just released its Open Source Web Development certificate in a wholly online format.

If you've been working with Joomla, but you want to know a lot more about it, this is the certificate program for you.  The certificate introduces students to Joomla, as well as planning a website, understanding the code that runs it, and developing and executing an online marketing plan.

The certificate consists of 12 credits:

You've got your first Joomla site running! It's fabulous! It's amazing! And now how do we start taking it to the next level?

Just like you should never wear white shoes after Labor Day, and visible panty lines are never cool, there are a few fashion NOs that you should stay away from doing on your Joomla site.

1. Why does it need to say "Main Menu"?

So you've built a site or two or five in Joomla 1.5.

Maybe you have a background in HTML/CSS, or maybe you've been learning it, but you don't necessarily have a background in PHP/MySQL.

You're interested in taking your Joomla site to the next level. You think you could be doing more with your Joomla sites than you are already.