Brian Teeman

I'm often asked for an extension that will translate a website into other languages. Although there are several available at JED that provide automated translation services I can never recommend them.

Why? Well if your content is important enough to you to write it in the first place then it is important enough to ensure that the translation is correct and no automated service will ever capture the nuance of a language accurately.

I love the ability in Joomla 1.5 to override the developers idea of how to present the data without touching their code. This means I can modify the output to my hearts content safe in the knowledge that if a new version is released my changes won't be lost.

Well that's almost true.

This blog is my place on the net to say what is on my mind, it is not a (potential) source of revenue. Unlike other blogs or websites you can be confident that anything you see or read here will be purely my opinion and has not been influenced by any third party.

Is your domain HEF?

Selecting a name for your new site is perhaps the most important thing you will ever do. Of course the content and design is important but if no one can remember your name all that time and effort will be wasted.

You'll find loads of sites on the net telling you the golden rules of domain name selection:

Dork : An inept or foolish person

What does this have to do with Joomla? Well a dork is also the name given to the method hackers use to identify if a site is running a vulnerable extension.

As soon as a vulnerability in an extension is revealed in either the hacker forums or on responsible security sites such as milw0rm or The Open Source Vulnerability Database the hackers of the world use google to search the net for sites using that extension.

It's true you really can make money with Free software. Dutch Python developer Stani Michiels has won a competition to design a 5 euro commemorative coin with the theme 'Netherlands and Architecture'.

So the next time a colleague or friend tells you that you can't make money just flip this 5 Euro coin at them.

On 14th April 2003 I released a newsletter component for Mambo 4.0 which at the time was one of the only "extras" you could get for a Mambo web site and yet today there are approaching 4,000 extensions for Joomla.

That newsletter component had to be installed manually via ftp and phpmyadmin was required to create the database tables and add the component to the interface. It was also the very first extension to use a WYSIWYG editor - at the time you needed to write all your content using pure html.

What do you use for backups of your Joomla web site? Until Joomla 1.6 (thanks Sam for adding this) there has been no backup routine built in to Joomla and yet backing up your website is the most important thing you should do.

No matter what your web host offers as a backup service this is your responsibility and only yours. Backups are too important to rely on anyone but yourself.

Since the beginning of Mambo "I want/need/demand ACL" (access control lists) must be one of the most common threads in the forums. But what do I/you mean by ACL and why is it just so dam hard to implement. (I assume it must be hard or it would have been done by now in the core)

Keep It Simple Stupid

Where do you stop. You've got a great idea for an extension but at what point do you say enough is enough and release. There has to be a point in the development of an extension where adding additional features actualy detracts from the effectiveness of the extension rather than adding to it.