I've been sitting on several half written blog posts for the last week never quite managing to finish any of them. Call it procrastination or just the inability to get back into the work habit after the extended holiday season. You can even call it laziness.

It's even been suggested "He won an award and then quit ...".

The truth is I've been lazy, had too much fun clearing the pathway of snow only for it to snow again a few hours later, and messing about on twitter. (More about that later this week - I promise)

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As we approach not only the end of the year but the end of a decade I spent a little time looking back at some articles I wrote back in 2007. Finding this one I was perhaps not surprised but definitely disappointed that it's as true today as it was then.

The article was not looked at with a critical eye or an open mind in 2007, perhaps it is different today as the same discussions are still taking place?

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On Wednesday I explained how your Joomla site might be exploited

"Just because you keep your server secure and your software up to date you may have been exploited yesterday, ready to be hacked tomorrow."

Today I read an article explaining the exact same thing happening on a Wordpress site. I had tried to explain this to the site owner 6 weeks earlier but...

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..or how do you keep your Joomla web site secure?

I've sat on this blog post for a few weeks as I wanted to separate any connection to the specific client for who this relates to.

So I'm sat in a hotel bedroom, idling away the time before bed, browsing a news sites when a skype window pops up on my Mac.

"Please help!!!! I've got 12 sites all on different servers and they keep getting defaced."

Now obviously I then ran through my usual set of questions:

1. "Are the sites running the latest version of Joomla?"
2. "Are the file and directory permissions set sensibly?"
3. "Do you monitor the extensions and make sure they are all up to date?"

And the answer was yes to all of the above.

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Actually this article should really be titled "How NOT to make a Joomla template".

I've blogged in the past about using Joomla Template Clubs and software to create your own joomla template and I know many people like to design their own template from scratch.

But there is still a significant number of people who just take one of the three default Joomla templates and modify them to suit their needs.

If you are one of those people then this is especially at you.

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You may have been lucky enough to have seen this presentation live in The Netherlands or Germany or even listened to it at slideshare but now you can watch the presentation in all it's glory.

Thanks to my cameraman Fotis Evangelou the entire presentation is now here for you to enjoy.

It's 31 minutes of pure entertainment - I hope you enjoy it as much as those who saw it live.

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With the rise of twitter we are seeing a rapid increase in the usage of short urls (sURLS).

I use a sURL whenever I tweet a new blog post and also if I need to place a url in a powerpoint presentation.

In theory these are a great method of providing short, quick and permanent links to important content.

Sadly they are also often used to disguise the domain until after you have clicked on it.

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Of course he does. If he still has time to use the net then it's a fairly safe bet that at some point he will visit a joomla powered web site.

With Joomla being used by the UN, National Governments, leading NPO's and US Senators and Governors he surely must.

But that isn't what this blog post is really all about or why there is a photo of lion accompanying this blog post.

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This holiday weekend I had an enlightening conversation with a large company, that had been a training client of mine.

They got stuck on a little joomla issue with extension XXXX and just couldn't work out the problem or find the solution.

This client is pretty tech savvy and had followed most of the advice I gave in the training class.

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