One of the issues that I have been researching is Search Engine Optimization and menu modules.  Joomla sites whether the Joomla 1.0 version or the Joomla 1.5 version are prone to using menus that have sub menus, these are either drop down or slide effects. 

An important factor to consider is whether the menu module that is used is SEO (Search Engine Optimised) for the sub menus.  What is assessed is whether the spider that crawls the site from the Search Engines can read the text in the sub menus?

Here at wowjoomla the 'template menu' is custom built, now this points to something interesting; why is this decided also at a template level? is this not something that is relevant to Joomla internal module or one created by a 3rd party?

I asked Anton this question and he told me that Joomla does not allow 'rich menus' and neither does it allow you to add javascript to menu items, they are plain css.

Here is what you want to do, run your site through a spider simulator and see the results; does the submenu items get picked up? If not then this would imply that there is too much going on with the javascript or css, as spiders do not render the javascript or css.

The suggestion to completely overhaul the template would be too much work therefore head over to the designer that you got the template from and ask for a solution, it could be something simple as a few lines of code modification. 

Some additional things to consider would be to play with the sub menus and the module positioning.  What you want to do is include the keywords in the anchor text where ever possible and make sure that the spiders pick these up at the top for the home page, however you may not want that for the other pages. 

For the home page the 'category listing' with sub menus could go to the top, for internal specific pages you may want to shift to a right or left module.  You maybe thinking what is this? Well there is a method to the madness.  On the home page you want the spider to know straight away what is 'on offer', as the spider will read the top menu first; within the sub menu you want to include the keywords that describe the internal pages i.e. A mobile phone page for Sony Ericsson K800i would be a sub menu item and would link to an internal page.  but if you have many sub menus you do not want it to dominate the top part of what the spider sees for every page, for an internal page you want the spider to pick rich keywords specific to that article initially from the heading (h1 tag) and the article content itself; makes sense? good.

• 0 Comments

All of us want to achieve the best possible design for our website, that is why Joomla 3rd template providers provide some of the best designs for Joomla 1.5 templates.

But what about the rest of the site.  It has been stated that the impact your site has on whether a user will stay or not is within approximately 10 seconds, that is the length of time that you have to make an impact on the visitor!

The logo or header is essentially the first visitor experience that a visitor to the site has.  Good graphics and a 'hero' image can compel the visitor to browse more.  'Hero' image is an emotional trigger, it is something that captivates a visitor when they sense a connection to the site.  A hero image can be likened to a a family sat in a car happily when the site is related to car insurance. 

Generally most site owners either design their own logo, header, 'hero' image or outsource a designer after once looking at a portfolio.  What if you could get 10, 20, 50 or even 100 designers to pitch an actual design that you can select the best one for your site?

This is crowdsourcing.  99designs.com is such a site, you would pitch your requirements to the service and offer a cash incentive to the winner; sure you may have to give a prize amount then you may normally pay for a logo, header or graphic but you are getting access to so many designs and potentially one better then the other.   Once the designs are loading to the site other designers will see then and join the fun, you can assume that designers will look at getting a better design out there then one already submitted.  

The question is how much of an impact do you want to make to the visitors?  Is it worth the cost? 

• 0 Comments

An interesting email from Phil Taylor of Blue Flame (I am a subscriber to his news updates) about integrating Google Gear into the Joomla 1.5 Admin Console that will apparently turbo charge the console. 

For those of you unaware of Google Gears the Google Gears Blog says “Gears is an incremental improvement to the web as it is today. It adds just enough to AJAX to make current web applications work offline.” And they absolutely deliver on that promise.

For the simple minded of us in relationship to Joomla, it would be a tool that will run Scripts in the background to improve performance similar to cache.  The administrator admin console is approximately 900+ files, Google Gears will download this and access it using ajax to speed the process.

Head over to the post over at Phil's blog and follow the instructions provided.

• 0 Comments