Welcome to the third incarnation of this blog.
When I first started this site - as well as sharing my thoughts on Joomla! and the web in general my intention was also to show how Joomla can be used to build a really great blog.
The first version was built with regular Joomla content and as soon as K2 was released the site was redesigned, rebuilt and given some K2 magic by the guys at JoomlaWorks. With the release of Joomla 2.5 it became clear to me that not only was it time to migrate my site to 2.5 it was also time for another experiment.
I have taken the opportunity with this rebuild to look at how you use this blog, how you find the content and the best way to satisfy your requirements. After studying the analytics and heat maps one thing was really obvious, the overwhelming majority of site visits are via Google and other direct links such as newsfeeds and social media. So did I need 15 categories, latest content modules, top content modules or tag clouds? It would appear that I did not.
Recently I have taken on some new work with an awesome little graphic design/branding house. They are great people and I'm really looking forward to working with them.
Previously they used their own in house employee for web work. The employee was a good person but probably lacked some real web skills and was at times out of his depth in regards to building sites with Joomla, which he used exclusively for all sites.
I was amazed to see that all the previous work done by this cool and funky design house were all completed using commercial templates and hence starts my first little "rant".
Well not just one site but one hundred all on the same server, all running under the same user and some defaced.
Shit happens and when it does you know you are in for some long hours fixing the problem.
On this server there were a mix of Joomla 1.0, 1.5 and 1.7 web sites some of which were live sites and others were old demo and test installations long since forgotten and woefully out of date.
Removing the defacement is actually pretty easy to do but that will often just mean that the naughty little toe rag will come back tomorrow and do it all again. You need to find the entry point to your server and kill it forever.
Spreading the Joomla!Love a Little Wider
