Monetizing a website is a process that begins when you completely establish the website, put up some great content, and optimize the website for the search engines to generate considerable traffic. The first option that comes to mind to earn from the content-based website is to merge Google AdSense in your Joomla website. A simpler and web-engineering based way to integrate AdSense in your Joomla website is to copy the Javascript or HTML code and paste it in Custom HTML Module.

There are two problems with this type of coding. Firstly, you need to change the code every time you change the appearance of the ads. Secondly, it requires complex web engineering which may not be easy-to-understand for many people. Here are some tips to help you merge the Google Adsense in your Joomla website like a professional and without errors.

1. Setup the Adsense Module

Install the Adsense module after downloading it from the website. Then go to Joomla Administrator and click on Joomla Module. Follow the given steps for advance settings of Module Parameters.

• Go to ‘New’ and click on ‘Sponsored Links’.
• Decide a name for the module and enter it in the given space. For safer names, use numbers and letters like 346xmih76.
• Click on the option ‘Don’t show the title’.
• Without publishing the module, assign a position for the module on your website. If you have already decided the size of the ad then don’t assign the position to the module.
• For publishing the module, go to Menu Assignment and click on Publish Module.

2. Setup the Module Parameters

Go to Parameters and select Module Parameters. In the Advance or Module parameters, you will get options for blocking specific IPs or add advance but optional features to your website. The first part contains information about Middle-Class Suffix, Publisher ID, Channel Number and Div CSS codes. The tip here is to create a backup of this information as this information is difficult to retrieve or change as compared to optional information in the section. The optional information includes ad type, ad layout, link color, text color, background color, border color, URL color and corner styles.

Some more tips for basic and advance settings are given here.

• For Module Class Suffixes, use the Joomla template suffix known as ‘blank’ or ‘-blank’. It allows you to customize the relevant boxes according to your need.
• Make the process of formatting the code easier by entering the information to Div CSS code instead of the CSS template. A few examples of the codes include these.

              Text-align: upper right;
              Text-align: center;
              Float: right; margin-right: 12px; margin-bottom: 12px;

• Find the Google Adsense Publisher ID from the top right corner of Google Adsense. If you are unable to find the ID then log in to your Google Adsense account again and see the ID on the top right corner.
• The ad type is set to Text and Image only by default. Always check the ad type to set it to Text and Image only, Text only and Image only according to the type of your advertisement.
• Always check the corner styles. The options include square corners, very rounded corners and slightly rounded corners. The slightly rounded corners look better on most of the website designs but you can select one according to your choice.
• According to the Google Adsense team, 300×450 works the best for medium rectangle, 160×600 works the best for skyscrapers and 728×90 performs the best for the leaderboard. Make sure that the size of your ad equally fits the size of the module positioned on the web page.

3. Choose the Colors Technically

The use of colors does not depend on your choice or the design and color combination of your website but it depends on the ad given by the advertiser to display. Make sure that the ad is well-blended with the colors you choose. It is important that the ad can be visibly seen by visitors.

Avoid using borders for the ads as borderless ads are more efficient in blending with the ads. The tip is to test and experiment with with different colors and decide one which best suits the website.

Some more tips for choosing the colors are given here.

• Use ‘FFFFFF’ to set the color of borders as white.
• Use ‘FFFFFF’ for setting the color of background as white.
• For link color, use the color you have used in other sections of the website.
• For text, the best color is black as it is more vision-friendly to digital audience as compared to other colors. If you want darker shade but not black then use ‘111111’ for the text color code.
• For URL, use the color that you use for the Link Color or any other shade of the same color.

4. Improve the Performance of Ads by Setting up the Google Adsense Channels

The performance and placement of ads are the keys to know the success of your monetary goals. To measure the performance of every ad individually, Google Adsense Channels are used. For setting up the Google Adsense Channels and linking the ads to be tracked with them, follow the given settings.

• Log in to your Google Adsense account.
• Go to Adsense Setup tab.
• Click ‘Channels’.
• From the new bar, click ‘Add New Custom Channels’.
• Decide a name for the channel and enter it in the given field.
• Click ‘Add Channel’.

5. Attract More Advertisers with Ad Placement Option

The advertisers need a call and place to action for placing their ads. Take the example of Tolet hoardings and billboards on the highway and roads. Similarly, you can improve the value of your website and attract more visitors with ad placement option. Here is the setting for advertising the free space on your website.

• Log in to your Google Adsense account and go to Adsense Setup.
• Go to Channels.
• Now select a Channel for placing the advertisement.
• Go to the ‘Edit Settings’ of the chosen Channel.
• Here you will see a checkbox with statement ‘Show this channel to advertisers as an ad placement’. Click to activate this checkbox.
• Click on Save to activate the settings.

6. Choose the Right Position for Placing the Ad

If you are new to the digital business, you need to attract more visitors to generate money. The established and optimized websites are the needs of advertisers. The position of placing the ad depends on the position of website on the search engine.

The fresh websites need to give more prominent position to the advertisers whereas the optimized websites may give some down position to the advertisers. Module Position is a Joomla template which allows you to choose the desired position of the ad. You may also select the position of ad with the help of Google Adsense Module settings.

7. Check the Ad Placement and Position

Always check the placement and position of the websites every time you add a new ad to the website or change the settings of existing ads. The settings are practically implemented within 20 to 30 minutes. Log out of your Google Adsense account and check the ad position as a visitor.

If you have responsive website then check the position and placement of the ad on different screens including mobile phone, tablet, laptop and desktop.

Using Google Adsense for your Joomla website is quite easier and does not require advance web engineering for editing and formatting the settings. Another important tip is to keep exploring the Google Adsense for Joomla for learning more about the benefits it offers to its users.

The post 7 Steps to Merge Google Adsense in Your Joomla Website appeared first on Digital Marketing Agency - TIS India Blog.

For availing budget friendly solutions as a startup firm, nothing can be more affordable than opting for Joomla Content Management System (CMS) framework that offers an inexpensive substitute to expensive web development and designing services. Joomla was designed with one important function in mind- content management and hence, it is a good choice for developing budget friendly websites for startup businesses. This framework works on template system, which help the users to easily place their content and the website envelops the content around it automatically.

At present, there are various CMS options available in the market, so what makes Joomla a preferred choice for creating affordable websites over others? It is an open source platform that supports many languages and allows the developers to develop search engine friendly websites with minimum efforts. Most of the web designing issues is taken away by choosing Joomla CMS because it comes loaded with various components and extensions required for creating and customizing impressive websites.

I have used Joomla framework for different projects and from my overall experience, I have prepared a list of some significant benefits of Joomla that makes it a perfect selection for developing budget friendly websites.

Benefits of Joomla:

1.Open Source Platform with Flexibility

Open source CMS are always preferred over the proprietary CMS because they give developers the flexibility of changing the source codes as per the requirements because the source codes are open for all types of modifications. Now, as a startup business, if you have the option of a CMS where the website’s customization is a simple and easy task, you don’t have to put much investment in its overall development. Moreover, Open source frameworks help in development of websites in a hierarchical manner without requiring code experience.

Also, it will help in saving time required in customizing the features of your website as the source codes are available for free where you can introduce changes according to the needs.

2.Enhanced Usability

This is another biggest advantage of using Joomla CMS for website development. The CMS of Joomla can be used for creating all type of websites starting from bigger simple, small websites to larger and complex ecommerce websites. This is because there are many options available with this CMS that help the developers to create the website including all important changes

Hence, being the owner of startup firm, choosing Joomla CMS will offer you with the advantage of increased usability. Besides, you can also develop government applications, online magazines, online communities, and organization websites with this CMS.

3.Ease of Accessibility

Joomla CMS is easy to use and there is no need of sound technical knowledge or experience for creating website using this framework. Even if you don’t have good experience of HTML coding, then also you can develop website using Joomla CMS that makes this platform stand apart from its other competitors. The ease of accessibility offered by Joomla CMS makes it a popular choice among the startup businesses because all they have to do for having their website live on the internet is to install the Joomla CMS and edit and manage the content on the website.

Even if you don’t have any good knowledge of website development, you only have to put minimum efforts for readying your website to go live on internet.

4.Community Driven

Joomla is a community driven Content Management System and members of its communities co-develop and help the developers in solving all types of technical queries related with the use of Joomla modules and extensions. This makes the websites built on Joomla more responsive for the users and their respective clients as well. Besides, new modules and extensions are created on regular basis along with their updates to keep the website developers tuned up with the latest modifications.

Most of these could be downloaded for free and the assistance for using these extensions is readily offered by the community members. So, you can easily judge now that if you decide to create an affordable website for your startup firm, then Joomla is a perfect selection.

5.Different Templates with Easy Extensibility

It comes with various templates and themes that you can choose for making stunning website for your startup. The themes and templates are frequently updated with loads of features that you can choose depending on your niche or topic. The selection of templates is also very easy in Joomla CMS as you don’t have to put many efforts for doing so.

Besides, you can easily give any identity or functionality to the Joomla CMS as it comes with loads of extensions to create versatile websites for different types of clients such as government, corporate, ecommerce, university website or a news portal as well. You can also develop entertainment and sports websites on this CMS.

6.Easy Transferring

If you want to transfer your Joomla website to any other developer, then you can do so without facing any technical glitch. Moreover, you can also transfer your Joomla website from one server to another with ease.

It clearly means that if you have created you website in Joomla CMS and you want to change it to other server due to some technical issues on the previous server, you can easily do so by simply migrating it from one server to another.

7. User Friendly Administration with Effective Customer Support

The administration of the Joomla CMS is easy for the site owners as it comes equipped with WYSIWIG editor and hence, only word processing skills are required. Apart from this, the customer support of Joomla community is highly effective as you can easily submit a bug or report to the community for getting your problem solved at the earliest.

Wrap Up Note

Now, you can easily see that Joomla CMS is quite powerful for creating blogs, ecommerce sites, and other important corporate sites. Moreover, you can easily manage and modify the features on your website depending on your niche. So, if you are looking for some experience with CMS systems, Joomla would be a good selection for you since, it comes with numerous plugins, templates, themes, modules, extensions and community support that makes it an ideal platform for developing different type of websites.

Do you have any other benefit of Joomla CMS in your mind that you want to share with us? If so, please write in the comment section below.

The post Why You Should Consider Joomla CMS for Startup Businesses appeared first on Digital Marketing Agency - TIS India Blog.

Joomla development framework has gained immense popularity in recent years as one of the most flexible and adaptable frameworks for developing simple as well as ambitious web presence of businesses over the internet. Running in the same veins as Drupal and WordPress, Joomla gracefully holds its significance among the website developers and owners for offering an interactive platform to create website that works and looks well.

What You Are Going To Learn?

Isn’t it great? But, what you are going to learn in this article? Isn’t something related with talking only about the advantages of this popular Content Management System (CMS) or it will teach you the process the setting up websites with Joomla? Yeah the second question is right and goes in collaboration with the title of this article. In this article, I will guide through the process of setting up your first Joomla website by adding all the whistles and bells that you want to create buzz of your site over the internet. Here is all points which I have covered in article:

• Benefits of choosing Joomla
• Best way to choose domain name and hosting server
• Easy method of installing Joomla Framework
• Procedure of creating Joomla site
• Steps for choosing Joomla template as per business preferences
• Procedure of adding textual and graphical content in Joomla
• Steps for configuring menus in Joomla site

Why Choose Joomla?

This is a great question that needs to be answered before we proceed with unbolting the bolts and nuts of our Joomla tutorial.

• A trusted platform- for sure!

Joomla’s own website quotes, “Trusted by Millions”, which claims very true since, 28 million websites present over internet has chosen Joomla for setting up their foundation in this cutthroat IT environment.

Big names like Harvard University, which has celebrated its 350^th anniversary in 1986 has its website Gsas.hardvard.edu developed on Joomla platform and this website is used by Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences for declaring news, showing pictures, offering information, etc. to their visitors and students.

• Extensions available for everything

With a huge library of third party extensions, for almost everything including SEO Joomla gives you an opportunity to add extra functionalities to your website to make them more user-friendly and impressive.

You don’t have to worry if you want to add any special functionality to your side, because someone else has already thought for this before by developing an extension for that purpose.

• Wider user community complete the icing over Joomla Cake

With its immense number of active users, Joomla possesses a wide user community where the users can easily search for forums with hundreds of posts, lots of documentation, different user groups and many other important resources related with Joomla.

Here is an example of a Joomla user group of WA:

It clearly means you can enjoy using website over Joomla platform as you will always be offered with a great user support community of this popular CMS.

• Numerous templates to choose from!

Looking to make your website professional and stylish? Joomla serves this to you by offering thousands of impressive build around themes to choose from, which you can call as “templates”.  So, choosing Joomla not only helps you in creating more interactive website for your visitors, but will also help you in developing attractive website.

How to Choose a Domain and Hosting Server?

Before creating a website on Joomla platform, choosing the address of your website, also known as domain name, which is required for giving your website its own unique identity.

Once, you have selected the domain name, you have to select the hosting company from where you can avail good web hosting services for hosting your website.

While selecting the hosting service provider, you should analyze few points carefully:

• Evaluate the pricing packages accurately to know which of them will best suit your expertise and requirements.
• Take time to think about the potential growth of your business. While selecting the hosting service provider, always keep yourself updated with the future plans.
• Look for the best customer support service since; it is necessary to get technical assistance whenever any glitches occur in your hosting services. Choose that hosting provider whose customer support services are prompt and fast for their customers.
• Read the reviews given by the customers about the company’s services.
• Estimate the storage space offered by your hosting service provider better performance of your website.

Joomla Framework Installation- The Next Big Step

Once you have selected the domain and hosting service provider for your website, the next thing is to install the Joomla framework.
1.Once, you will sign up to your hosting server, the hosting service provider will send you the vital credentials of your C panel account to your registered email ID. Use the Login credentials offered to you by your hosting service provider to logging to your C panel account.

Here I am proceeding by taking example of Host Gator hosting server:

2.Look for the “Fantastico De Luxe” or “QuickInstall” automated installer on the C panel as Joomla is accessible with both of these installers.

3.Click on the icon of “QuickInstall” and locate Joomla in the “CMS Software” section. Select Joomla and click on the “Continue”.

4.If the domain is set up appropriately, you will see the domain in the drop-down list, followed by a blank box where you can mentioned the sub-directory where you want Joomla to get installed. Once, you have entered the sub-directory, click on the Install Now to start the Joomla installation process.

When the installation is completed, you will be provided with a login URL for administering your website with the confirmation of your admin credentials.

Once it becomes accessible, the login screen will be displayed, where you can put your credentials for logging and start with the Joomla website creation process.

Getting Geared Up For Creating Your Joomla Site

Login to the Joomla admin interface by entering the username and password, where you will find the name of your website. Here, the example is taken as “Demo Joomla Site”. As soon as you will click on the website name, you will be directed to the front end of your Joomla site; here you will see the first basic view of your site.

Once, you basic Joomla site is ready, all you have to do is to continue with its design process.

Choosing Joomla Template as Per Your Business Preferences

For controlling the general appearance of your Joomla site, you can choose any of the thousands Joomla templates available online as per your business preferences. For doing so, you have to perform some simple steps listed as below:

1.Go to Control Panel and Click on “Template Manager”.

2.All the currently installed templates will be displayed in a menu like structure on the Control Panel like this:

Generally, templates are provided in ZIP files. Once you will upload the new template, it will appear at the back of the “Template Manager” menu as a new option.

When the template is selected add some content in your Joomla site as the next vital step.

Adding Textual and Graphical Content in Joomla

Content is place in articles in Joomla websites, which in turn are consigned in categories. The simple steps for adding content in Joomla site are:

1.Click on the “Content” followed by “Article Manager” and then “Add New Article” as given below:

2.The Add New Article page will appear on your screen with numerous options that you can use to make your content more impressive and expressive.

3.You can add the content in the blank section and once it is done, you can upload an image as well by clicking the “Image” button on the bottom of the post content window.

4.A new window will appear and scroll this window at the bottom to locate the “upload file” option. Click on Choose Files and then “Start Upload” button to upload the image.

5.When the image will be uploaded, you can find this image in the image gallery of Joomla from where you can use this image along with your content to publish your first post on your Joomla Site:

Configuring Menus in Joomla Site-Another Important Step

After adding the content, when you go back to check your website live, you will find that it has not changes distinctively because you have to change the menu for doing so, follow the given steps:

1.Click “Menus” on the Control Panel followed by clicking on “Main Menu” and then “Add New Menu item”.

2.Fill the “Menu Title” field on the window such as About Us, Contact Us, FAQ, etc.

Once it is done, click the “Select” button located at the right side of the “Menu Item type”.

After adding the Menu Title, click on the “Save” button for completing the menu item. Now, when you will refresh your live site, the new menu will appear in your Joomla site (in our case, I have written the Menu Title as “About Us”) as shown below:

Bottom Line

In this way, you have created your first Joomla website. While these steps are just to give you a layout of how to get started with Joomla website, you could never stop testing your site with uncountable templates or adding something more interactive, thanks to the vast user community of Joomla. If you want to get your business on floor with an attractive Joomla site, you can contact our experienced team of Joomla developers to get the best services at cutthroat prices.

The post How to Set Up Your First Website Using Joomla appeared first on Digital Marketing Agency - TIS India Blog.

Are you planning to take your business online for reaching newer audience segment over Internet? If so, developing a Joomla website is absolutely the best choice to start with, but selecting the right template framework solution, which is both adjustable to your brand identity and able to enhance the user engagement ratio on your site is a bit difficult task for Joomla developers. Your website is not mere representation of your services and brand, but it adds more values to your business and assists in expanding your business prospects. Hence, you cannot simply choose any Joomla template for developing your website as it requires adequate knowledge of the benefits associated with these template solutions.

Exploring the Definition of Joomla Template Framework

Among the various definitions of this term, the one which correctly explains its meaning is:

“The Joomla template frameworks are base skeleton outlines that consist of fresh and blank HTML codes with no gradients, colors, and borders, but only margins, dimensions, and menu system styling.”

It means the Joomla developers can efficiently use these template solutions for expressing their talent and coding knowledge.

What are the Best Joomla Templates for Developers?

When it comes to choose the appropriate Joomla template framework solution for your website development, the basic set of requirements for all developers is that the template must be time saving and easy to implement. If you are still not able to get the best Joomla template that suits your requirements, here I am going to list the best Joomla template frameworks, which you can use for expressing your creativity and talent while developing your website. These templates are similar to empty canvas, where the painter paints their imagination on their own.

1. Helix3 Framework

Helix3 is an entirely modern and highly customizable template framework which can be used to build your Joomla 3+ website as per your estimates and thoughts.

It has one of the most user-friendly approaches with an easy integration solution to the construction of a Joomla 3+ website. Once you install Helix3 Framework to create your website, you would find loads of inbuilt features and predefined options for the template development of any Joomla 3+ website.

Helix3 Framework is not a mere plugin or template. Rather it can be hailed as a complete package which can be accessed very easily.

The Benefits of Using ‘Helix3’ framework are listed as follows:

• Drag and drop layout builder helps you to decide the module positions by switching options to choose the size, margins or displaying in the mobile devices
• You can control the display of the menu like the width, size, alignment, etc. simply by availing the mega menu builder.
• You have the benefit of producing good blog posts in all the six forms without using an extension like EasyBlog due to the post formats feature.
• Helix3 benefits by providing unlimited colors choice for your website.

2. HLi Framework by 7 Studio

HLi by 7Studio is a responsive Joomla template framework, which uses the new features of Joomla 3.X series like flexible and customary module positions, Custom Template Backgrounds, and Google Analytics elements

The benefits of using HLi template framework are listed as follows:

• It offers flexibility to the developers while coding and they can use its built-in features to develop a theme of their own choice.
• It not only helps in easy development of the website, but it also offers flexibility to the developers to use all of its features whenever required.

3. Gantry Framework by RocketTheme

Another popular framework of Joomla is Gantry Framework, which is offered by RocketTheme, one of the principal vendors of Joomla products. Integrated with the benefits of all preceding Joomla template frameworks, it provides impressive design patterns for developing both the backend and front end of your Joomla website. It comes integrated with in-built Gantry RocketGZipper feature, which squeezes the CSS and JS for offering optimal performance. For speeding up the upload time of your website, you can also use the Gantry Cache plugin.

The set of advantages that comes packed with Gantry Framework of RocketTheme are listed as follows:

• It offers super flexibility in its layout design with 65 amazing base module positions.
• Both documentation and on-site instructions for using this template are simple and comprehensive for Joomla developers on all required user levels.
• It is integrated with the facility of customizing the individual web pages layouts in their backends, which makes Gantry Framework distinguishly apart from other Joomla templates.
• It is incorporated with complete Google font library.
• It has LESS CSS compiler.

4. Vertex Framework by Shape5

Vertex Framework is one of the best solutions especially for those developers, who want to create template of their own for the website development. This impressive framework comes with loads of built-in impressive features, which consists of flexible layouts like social media, fonts etc.. Moreover, this framework is fully functional and free, which is good for both developers and newbies.

The various advantages of using Vertex framework is given below:

• It comes with a clean design with accessible tool tips.
• It has 90 subsiding business module positions .
• Developers have the facility to select between a fluid and fixed layout and both of them support responsive design.
• Moreover, you can easily upgrade the Vertex frameworks conveniently because you only have to follow their instructions.

5. Warp Framework by YooTheme

Warp Framework is developed by YooTheme, which comprises of a team of experienced and skilled German developers. This framework of Joomla is considered as a toolset of important features that are required for developing attractive YooTheme templates by the Joomla developers. Apart from this, more than 50 templates are available over internet, which are based on Warp 6 and Warp 5.5. The websites developed sing the Warp frameworks have amazing loading speed due to CSS Sprites and Gzip compression.

Benefits of using Warp Framework for developers are given as follows:

• It offers optimal yet very fast website loading speed.
• All the template parameters of Warp are well organized and are grouped in majorly three panels: Mobile Panel, General Panel, and Profile Panel.
• It comes with instructional document for offering ability of customization to the developers.
• The width of the templates is responsive or you can also fix it to any size of your choice.

6. XTC Framework by JoomlaXTC

Developed in XTC templates, the XTC framework is yet another leading template solution for Joomla developers that is simple and easy for implementation. It comes with numerous attractive features that helps the developers to continue with the development of their Joomla websites with convenience and ease. Moreover, developers can create their own designs using the XTC framework as it comes with “Advanced Options” tab which assist in developing design of your own choice.

The impressive range of advantages accompanied with the XTC framework is listed as follows:

• It comes integrated with basic functions like Styles, Grids, Layouts, Typography configuration etc.
• It offers the ability to choose every parameter as per your own choice for developing the websites the way you want.
• It is considered as the best starting point for those developers who do not have any significant experience in creating a template.

7.  JA T3 Template by Joomlart

With 5 years of immense experience in Joomla template development, Joomlart has launched another impressive framework for creating Joomla templates known as JA T3 template. Considered as one of the most admired Joomla template framework, it comes incorporated with bundle of unique features. In the version 2.0 of this template, you will find range of administrative features like peasy profile management especially in the backend along with easy typography and others.

8. Wright Framework by JoomlaShack

Known as a minimalistic framework, the Wright Framework by JoomlaShack comes with an easy and clean backend code, quick loading speed and a responsive design. This framework is especially developed by the JoomlaShack to help in fastening the upgrading process to the latest versions of Joomla. The advantages associated with the Wright Framework by JoomlaShack are listed here:

• It comes integrated with a simple and solid code base.
• It offers the freedom to the developers for customizing the websites with their preferred designs.
• It comes with neat and simple HTML base which is sufficient for the Joomla developers to explore their creativity.
• Moreover, Warp framework has the ability to combine perfectly with the free components of YooTheme’s such as Zoo and Widget kit.

Final Words

Most of these Joomla template frameworks have extensive control panels and loads of module positions, but do not consider only these reasons when it comes to choose the right template framework for your Joomla website. Being a Joomla developer, you should know that you will not use all the available module positions of the template frameworks at the same time. Moreover, you will use control panel for lesser time once the website is launched on the Internet.

Therefore, it is advisable to install any of the free Joomla template frameworks available over internet and then you can explore its features to understand whether it suits your requirements for developing your website or not. You can also perform the comparison between the features of any of these two leading frameworks to comprehend which one of them fits your needs because majority of these frameworks are fitted with proper documentation to help the developers in following proper guidelines during website development.

The post Best Joomla Template Framework Solutions for Developers appeared first on Digital Marketing Agency - TIS India Blog.

Joomla is a free and open-source content management system, which is used in over 30 million websites, with over 200,000 community users and has endless amounts of extensions. This renowned platform offers a vast array of easy-to-use and free extensions that will enable you to optimize your website quickly and make it search engine friendly, faster. In this blog post, I will introduce you to five free and remarkable Joomla extensions with which you can improve the search ranking of your website easily.

1. JoomSEF

An Overview

• Developer: ARTIO
• Latest version available: f4.4.4
• Compatibility: Joomla 2.5, Joomla 3.x
• Last Updated: Aug 29, 2013

Download

JoomSEF is a powerful SEO extension that helps you to generate search engine friendly (SEF) URLs for your Joomla website with great ease. Search engines prefer to those web-pages, which have simple and keyword-rich URLs but not those with URLs consisting of meaningless words and phrases. This extension not only makes your URLs search engine friendly but also makes them comprehensible to humans too that boosts your visitor numbers. The JoomSEF extension is an absolute must-have for anyone running a website based on Joomla platform.

Main features:

• Advanced SEF URL management
• Keywords management
• Generate and manage metadata (component- based)
• Can override default metadata generated by component or Joomla (title, meta-tags)
• Duplicates management
• 3rd level domain support
• UTF-8 URLs support
• URL caching
• 301 Redirections management
• 404 Page Not Found customization
• Online upgrades and extension installations

2. Tag Meta

An Overview

• Developer: selfget.com
• Latest version available: 1.7.2 Community
• Compatibility: Joomla 2.5, Joomla 3.x
• Last Updated: Mar 20, 2013

Download

Tag Meta is a powerful extension, which is widely used to manage the meta-information of a website efficiently, in this way it greatly improves website positioning in searching result list. With the help of this tool, users can easily set title tag and meta tag description, keywords, author, robots, content rights and external reference. In addition to this, this extension also supports for macros that means the user can generate meta-information dynamically for each webpage. This extension comes with support for an ontology database of synonyms, which allows generating and adding new synonyms of existing keywords automatically in any webpage.

Main features:

• Support for Robots options Index, Follow, Archive, Snippet, Odp, and Image Index
• Case-sensitive option on the matching source URLs
• Use of regular expressions into matching rules
• Request only option to match the full URL or just the REQUEST_URI part
• Last rule option to break application of matching rule
• Support for placeholders
• Use of macros to specify meta info (dynamic meta info, 33 macros)

3. SEOSimple

An Overview

• Developer: Dao By Design/Ryan McLaughlin
• Latest version available: 2.2
• Compatibility: Joomla 2.5, Joomla 3.x
• Last Updated: Apr 2, 2014

Download

SEOSimple is considered as one of the best Joomla SEO extensions and it automatically generates description meta-tags by pulling text from the content to help with SEO. For the best SEO results, it is quite important that your meta-descriptions, which are the snippet that appears below the blue link in Google search, contain text that is relevant to each webpage’s contents. Filling in descriptions for every page can be a tough task, which is why Joomla experts incorporate this extension into every website they build. This extension automatically uses a chunk of text from the top of each webpage as its meta-description. In addition to this, downloading and installing SEOSimple takes no more than 2 minutes, but it could save you hours in the long-run.

Main Features:

• Helps to arrange the positions of the Site title and Custom title so the keywords will be in the positions you want
• Gives the ability to set different title configurations
• Ability to customize how the front page meta-description is handled
• Ability to set ROBOTS Meta “noindex, follow” for category pages
• One can easily customize the front page of site’s title tag in a number of different ways

4. Xmap

An Overview

• Developer: Guillermo Vargas
• Latest version available: 2.3.4
• Compatibility: Joomla 2.5, Joomla 3.x
• Last Updated: Nov 10, 2013

Statistics have shown that a website that contains sitemap has a higher ranking on various search engines as compared to the one that lacks it. Sitemap is a list of the pages on your website and creating it helps any search engine to know about all the pages on your website, including URLs that may not be discoverable by search engines’ normal crawling process. After installing Xmap, you can stay stress-free about the generation of a well-defined sitemap for your site. This Joomla extension automatically generates an easy-to-interpret sitemap for your website based on the structure of your website’s menus. Further, this extension also shows some statistical information for each sitemap such as last visit date, number of links generated on the last visit and number of visits.

Main Features:

• Capability to create more than one sitemap with different preferences for each sitemap
• Generation of XML sitemaps that are compatible with Yahoo, Google, Bing and others
• Cache system to allow a fastest sitemap generation
• Ideal for large or high traffic sites
• Easy to enable or disable this feature independently for each sitemap
• Option to compress the XML sitemap
• Better presentation of the XML sitemap on browsers

5. EFSEO – Easy Frontend SEO

An Overview

• Developer: Viktor Vogel
• Latest version available: 2.5-8 / 3-2
• Compatibility: Joomla 2.5, Joomla 3.x
• Last Updated: Feb 13, 2014

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EFSEO is an SEO extension (consisting of a backend component and a system plugin) for Joomla that helps you to control all important metadata. Metadata is descriptive information about a particular object, data set, or resource, including how it is formatted, and by whom and when it was collected. EFSEO extension makes handling of the metadata quite easy, as with this extension you can change and add meta information (description, title, keywords, generator and robots) without difficulty at the front end. The best part of this extension is it remains active on every page of a Joomla installation and may be used correspondingly. Further, this extension does not change or delete given Joomla data and the original data is used until you alter them with the extension.

Main Features:

• Automatic Mode- Metadata are generated automatically for certain extensions or via the global settings
• Data may be assigned to every given page, regardless which extension is in use
• Two different styles: Modal window and Top bar
• Define a global title attribute, global generator attribute and global robots attribute
• Word and characters counter
• Set maximum number of characters for title and description
• Meta data is assigned using internal URLs – independent of SEF URLs
• Its backend component allows you to edit and add entries directly in the backend

I recommend you to analyze your website prior to installing a Joomla SEO extension. An organized extension installation will definitely work in your favor and immensely help you to improve your visitors count and sales. Last, but not least, do keep in mind that website search engine optimization is not a one-time activity; it is a constant work in progress. If you want your SEO efforts to be a success than you should measure it on a regular basis.

The post Top 5 Free Joomla SEO Extension Unleashed appeared first on Digital Marketing Agency - TIS India Blog.

Joomla is the second best – widely used Open Source Content Management System after WordPress. One of the biggest reasons of Joomla being chosen for CMS based websites is its built-in multi lingual capability and the ability to create a community like network along with newsrooms, forums, articles and other complex functionalities. If we talk of figures, you will be surprised to know that Joomla is downloaded every 2.5 seconds and serves as the backbone of nearly 3% of the total websites in the world counting to approximately 35+ million downloads so far. In fact, many of you might not be knowing that the websites of the most popular food brands — Pizza Hut and Kelloggs are running on Joomla.

As a consequence of the worldwide popularity of Joomla web development service, the responsive versions of Joomla – Joomla 3.x based on twitter’s bootstrap framework soon landed up in the market and hence highly qualified Joomla Experts are in huge demand. But amongst thousands of great extensions that are populating the Joomla Extensions Directory, there are just a few that I feel all Joomla developers must keep in their repository to spruce up a brand new Joomla website with essential features. All the extensions that I have mentioned here rate 4+ on the Joomla Extensions Directory and provide immense functionalities that can be sensibly utilized only by a Joomla expert professional. For those who already have enough knowledge of Joomla, I have also included a “How to configure and use” section to let you sail smoothly in your Joomla projects.

Top Extensions for Joomla 3.0

Xmap

Xmap is basically an automatic sitemap generator component for Joomla Framework that lets you create a map of your website that is compatible with all major search engines including Google, Yahoo, Bing etc. With Xmap, you can even create multiple sitemaps with specific preferences for each one. Plus, it has a cache system that allows fastest generation of sitemaps and hence makes it ideally suited for large websites that attract high traffic.

How to Configure and Use Xmap

Download the extension and Login to your Joomla Admin Panel Backend. Go to:

Extension – Extension Manager, upload the downloaded file and click install. After installation, go to Component – Xmap, and click on the new button to create a sitemap for yourself. Here you will be asked to fill out a field that asks for “title” of the sitemap. Next, you need to switch to menu tab where you can select the menus which you want to include in your sitemap. Click on save and close button and your sitemap is ready to be submitted to Google. Now, you need to navigate to Menu – Main Menu – Add New Menu Item and click on select button to select HTML Sitemap. Finally give a good title and click save and close to get your site map published on your Joomla site.

Acymailing

If you are looking to shoot promotional mailers to your customers, Acymailing is the perfect extension to download !! Acymailing is by far the most reliable and robust email marketing solution for Joomla that is equally comparable to dedicated bulk email marketing softwares like Mailchimp and Sendblaster. Not only it lets you create and manage email templates, but organize bulk mailing lists along with large no. of subscribers and finally preview and send customized newsletters via a queue system that handles multiple subscriptions, validates emails and confirms the delivery as well. The best part about this extension is that it supports 40+ languages and even allows you to import your contact lists in multiple formats including CSV.

How to Configure and Use Acymailing

To get started with Acymailing, just Sign in to the admin panel and move your mouse cursor to Components – Acymailing. Soon a menu containing a bunch of module sections will show up. The “Users” module will let you add people as subscribers to sign up for your newsletter and here you can also manually add new contacts or delete the existing ones. Unsubscription links are also managed in this section. “Newsletter” module lets you create a beautiful newsletter for your marketing campaigns and automatically loads a default template as soon as you enter this panel. This module comes with all useful tags that puts in the user name, date and unsubscribe links as well in your mailer. Next, if you also need to add articles in your newsletter, go to “Article” module for article management. Finally, don’t forget to preview your newsletter and send a test mail to yourself before shooting mailers to your subscribers.

JFBConnect

As the name itself suggests, JFBConnect is an extension that offers complete social media integration solution for Joomla. Apart from cool social media widgets, this extension adds myriad of important social connect features to your Joomla website like Registration and Login through Facebook, Twitter, Google+. It also handles all your Facebook Open Graph Actions like autopost to user’s FB timeline when they read your articles, upload photos or leave a review of your product. This extension can also configure the 3rd party Facebook Profile Integration and can even send Facebook Requests to let your visitors invite their Facebook friends and grow your network organically.

How to Configure and Use JFBConnect

Installation is as simple as other components of Joomla. Go to Extensions – Extensions Manager and upload the downloaded package file. As soon as you install it, the modules for integration with all major social media platforms are automatically configured. After this process finishes, you need to click the “Run autotune Now” button that uses the Facebook Auto Configuration tool and promopts you to enter your Facebook App Id and Secret key.

Easyblog

A website without a Blog is like a cake without sugar. Easyblog is the most flexible all-in-one solution for quick creation of a professional looking blog along with social network integration. Easyblog already powers 5000+ Joomla websites across the globe and manages both your personal or business blog with ease.

How to Configure and Use Easyblog

After installation just like other Joomla components, go to your Joomla Control Panel,

Navigate to Components – EasyBlog. The page that lands up shows some sectioned modules like “All Blog entries”, “Categories”, “Tags”, “Comments”, “Bloggers” etc along with “Settings” so that you can explore and check extra functionalities. To create a basic Blog quickly, just go to the

Categories module – Create a new category for your blog (using “New” option on Top or choose from the existing categories). – Switch to “Blogs” tab (present on the Category page itself) – Click on “Add” button (on the top) – Fill out the title, intro text, multiple other options – Save – Publish it after you complete.

If you create a Blog with EasyBlog but you don’t feel like publishing it now, you can save all your work using “Save” option and return later.

Akeeba Backup

Akeeba Backup extension is the extended version of the most popular Joomla component –JoomlaPack and comes as a boon for those who are looking for an open source Back up solution for their websites while maintaining complete security. Akeeba smoothly runs in the background to create timely backups and fully restores your website on any Joomla Server. The Back up and Restoration system of Akeeba is Ajax powered and thus you need not worry about any server timeouts even with high traffic websites. Akeeba offers a one click backup in a single compressed archive that constitutes all your files along with a database snapshot and an installer similar to the standard Joomla Installer.

How to Configure and Use Akeeba

After downloading and installing the extension, navigate to Components – Akeeba Backup, agree to the terms and conditions and Click the “Back up Now” button. Here you need to add a short description with comment and the backup creation process will soon begin. Now sit back and relax waiting for its completion. When the backup process finishes, the screen will automatically refresh and navigate you to the page indicating that the Backup process was successful. Next, you need to proceed by clicking on Manage Backups button wherein you will see a list of all the Joomla backups that you created. Quickly look for the Backup you created just now and download the archive to store a backup of your site on your hard disc.

JCE – Joomla Content Editor

JCE is a rich WYSIWYG editor extension for Joomla that allows you to build, control and present your content the way you want and give it a customised look in accordance to your requirements. This extension comes bundled with exclusive core functions just like MS Word that even lets you insert media files and manage the access control level of different sections. Its extensibility makes it the most powerful Joomla Editor component

How to Configure and Use JCE

Install the extension and go to users – User Manager – Basic Settings and set the editor as JCE. Now save and close this screen and go to Site – Global Configurations and set default editor here also as JCE. Next go to components – JCE Admin panel and switch to global configurations tab to change the configuration as per your requirement. And that’s all for you to get started.

SH404SEF

If you are looking for an amazing all in one plugin to take full control of SEO power in your hands, this plugin is a must have. Not only it comes bundled with Google Analytics Dashboard, but it comes with all the social sharing options included and advanced security features to block spammers and hackers. Plus, it helps you rewrite your URLs according to search engines, customize metadata and insert H level tags. The bestest part is it solves all the hassle with redirection of error pages like 301 redirect or 404 errors in a jiffy.

How to Configure and Use SH404SEF

Before getting started with SH404SEf, I recommend you to take the backup of your whole site using Akeeba backup and test it before going live to ensure everything works fine. Install the extension as you install all other Joomla components by going to Components – SH404SEF and soon a menu will show up. Now go to URL Rewriting Mode, check the Enable URL optimization and finally press the start button at the bottom. And now you are ready to invite traffic on your site.

Advanced Module Manager

This extension is the most important extension to have ultimate control over all Joomla modules . With this module, you can just control or modify the menu items but you can edit the modules, give color codes and can even choose whether to display them or not.

How to use Advanced Module Manager

After its installation, the core Joomla module manager will be automatically replaced with this and you will see an Options button on the toolbar. Here you need to change the Default settings as per your requirements and set permissions to control access to different actions.

K2

K2 is an out of the box CCK (Content Construction Kit) solution for your Joomla website that features rich content forms for items along with additional fields for integrating text based content(articles) and graphical content(images, videos, galleries and attachments) to transform your Joomla site to a news/magazine site with author blogs. This addon also comes bundled with automatic integration of Captcha and Google Ajax Search Engine.

How to Configure and use K2

Configure K2 just like you do it for all other components by navigating to Components – K2. As soon as you finish, you’ll see the K2 icon appearing in the menu toolbar. Now quickly import all your Joomla content by clicking the “Import Joomla Content” button right at the bottom to get started with K2.

Admin Tools Professional

Admin Tools Pro is an Akeeba product and is a must have extension to secure your website from spammers and hackers. Before you figure out your site acting weirdly due to external attacks by antisocial elements, I recommend installing this plugin as the first task and make your site 100% secure from any type of attacks.

The Final Piece of Advice

In a nutshell , I would like to say that there is no worth flooding your website with tens of extensions and getting frustrated with regular updates and making yourself vulnerable to potential cyber attacks. Installing everything is not the golden mantra to have a great Joomla website. If you are a newbie to Joomla, seek help from Joomla experts and configure only the ones that are actually required for the kind of website that you have. Do leave your comments below to let us know your experience with these extensions.

The post 10 Must Have Extensions for Joomla 3.0 Website Development appeared first on Digital Marketing Agency - TIS India Blog.

There are 7500+ extensions in the Joomla Directory amongst which it is impossible to single out the best extensions for the 5 major ecommerce website requirements that are a pre-requisite to be achieved for every business owner. In an endeavour to make sure you don’t jitter looking at that unending list, I decided to compile a list of some of the best extensions that all website owners or developers might be looking to integrate with their Joomla Web Designs for a complete Ecommerce Solution, Mobile Friendliness, Search Engine Optimization, Promotional Marketing and last but not the least, Analytics!! All of these are chosen by me after careful evaluation based on the number of users, excellent technical support, ease of use, overall customization capabilities, reviews, ratings and compatibility with other Joomla components so as to save your valuable time, hard earned money and ever-exhausting energy !!

Sell 24 X 7 with this Ecommerce Plugin – VirtueMart

VirtueMart is a Free Extensible Ecommerce Plugin for Joomla that can be used as a consolidated Shopping Cart Solution for all your ecommerce needs. The source code of VirtueMart is written in PHP and being an open source software, the code is released under GNU public license for developers to use and extend upto their customized requirements.VirtueMart is a Feature–rich extension based on Joomla MVC Framework and comes bundled with the below mentioned functionalities.

• All types of Product Display features like “Last 10”, “Top 10”, “Newest”, “Featured”, “Sortable”,”Searchable” etc.
• Major checkout functionalities like Guest Checkout, Completely Anonymous Checkout, Multi-Page, One-Page Checkout and even One-Click checkout
• Advanced security with SSL Protection
• Invoice Generation in pdf format.
• Multilingual support for different languages
• Multicurrency support for displaying prices for different currencies.
• Varied Marketing & Promotional Tools like Coupon Handling option, “Recommend a product to friend” link, “Mail to shoppers who bought the product” etc.
• Shipping Modules and Payment Gateway Extensions.
• Dynamical Price Calculator that measures discounts or additions based on tax, category, shoppergroup, country and state.
• Easy integration with other Joomla Extensions, Templates and Themes.

Mobilize your Website in a couple of minutes with Mobile Joomla

Every business owner, who is active on this Digital Planet dreams of a splendidly beautiful responsive website that looks good on iPhones, Windows Phones, Android Phones, Blackberry Phones, iPads, Tablets and on every other device and mobile specific browser. To speed up this task, let me introduce you with an extension, “Joomla Mobile” that is entrusted by more than 1,50,000 users and web designers across the globe.

Major Highlights of Mobile Joomla

• Easy to install and configure.
• Solid UI/UX along with 400% performance boost for all responsive templates
• Multi layout support and Multi template support for different devices and browsers
• Best front end interface and astonishing responsive templates for featured smartphones and tablets.
• Easy Compatibility with 3^rd Party Extensions, Modules and Plugins
• Fast load times irrespective of devices and browsers.
• Customized mobile modules, menus and layouts.
• More engagement with visitors and thus higher conversions are guaranteed.
• Advanced Image optimization with “Subdomain Redirection” functionality for respective devices and browsers.

Make yourself visible on the web by using Easy Front End SEO (EFSEO) Plugin

Easy Front End SEO is a Joomla extension that lets you control all your important metadata both, manually and automatically, thus making it easy and less-cumbersome to handle. The biggest advantage of this plugin amongst all other SEO Plugins is that it automates the process of generating metadata.

Exclusive Features

• You can alter all the meta information at the front-end while setting access through user groups and user Ids. Plus you can define your own custom meta tags, global title, meta description, keywords and robots attribute.
• Comes with an “Automatic Mode” that generates automatic metadata tags and descriptions via the Global settings.
• There is a Backend component also which allows one to not only add, but edit entries directly in the database.
• EFSEO assigns metadata to every page using internal URLs regardless of  Data, extension in use and Search Engine Friendly URLs
• Provides a Compatibility mode for external SEF components and
• Supports 2 major Languages – English and German
• Displays warnings regarding the settings of information.
• Saves entered data directly into the “content table” and “menu table” and is independent of the URL structure and Plugin.
• Comes in two different styles – Top Bar and Modal Window.

Shoot Promotional Marketing Mailers to your subscribers via “Jnews”

JNews is a powerful newsletter component that helps you conduct your Bulk Email Marketing Campaigns easily. JNews integrates with almost all popular Joomla Extensions and comes bundled with all the classical promotional marketing features like –

• You can send emails to one or several lists via the enhanced jNews Module that comes with stunning Ajax effects and cool display options like Mootools Slide, Mootools Modal etc
• You can manage multiple Newsletter templates, unlimited contact lists and countless no of subscribers in a jiffy.
• Advanced Statistics Management wherein you can see, who received your newsletter, who opened it and even who clicked through it thereby giving a clear picture of No. of Sent Newsletters, No. of Opened Newsletters and No. of click through newsletters.
• This plugin also lets you track the subscriber’s IP and also helps in handling registered and unregistered subscribers quickly.
• Integrates well with all the other Joomla extensions and your social media platforms like Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Linkedin etc
• Manages Queues and resends mails to overcome hosting limitations.
• Easily integrates with other popular Joomla Extensions
•  You can even preview your Newsletter before sending it to anyone either on your screen or via test mails to have a layout-check.

Watch your Audience Live through the Analytic Tool – Extrawatch

Thinking of generating high ROI and bigger conversions without tracking the visitors is like frying a fish without oil. It’s critical to know what’s going on in your website, who is visiting your site, where the traffic is prominent, what are the keywords they are searching and what are the browsing habits and trends of the targeted audience. All this will be easier to achieve through the “Extrawatch” Plugin which comes with the following features –

• Extrawatch can be activated within 5 minutes if you use one of its cloud hosted version by just placing a single HTML code snippet in your Joomla website
• With Extrawatch, you need not wait for 24 hours to see your website statistics since it allows you to scan your visitors with its Live Stats in a jiffy.
• A free android app of Extrawatch is available on Google play that lets you access the whole administration panel of Joomla and see who is currently visiting your website from your mobile or tablet. Not just this, you can directly access all your favourite components and multiple configurable items in just a single click.
• Extrawatch Click Heatmap is a feature that allows you to know the most prominently clicked areas of your website.
• Extrawatch SEO reports show you detailed statistical information along with the internal traffic distribution as well.
• With Extrawatch, you can even ban some of the visitors as per your wish and can also see a list of all banned IPs. Plus, there is an option to embed spam filters also if you are irritated with lots of Spam Attacks on your website.

By now, you all might have crafted an opinion as to how fruitful these extensions can be for your Online Presence. I recommend you to keep your website updated with newest versions of all these extensions to have an incredible experience of Joomla!! So what are you waiting for?? Hire expert Joomla developer for integrating SEO friendly joomla extensions on your joomla website

The post Best Joomla Extensions to fulfill Top 5 Ecommerce Website Requirements appeared first on Digital Marketing Agency - TIS India Blog.

It cannot be denied that the Content Management Systems (CMSs) have certainly brought a huge revolution in the field of website designing. Today, even the individuals without any technical knowledge about programming are handling and updating their own website frequently through the CMSs. You can find plenty of CMSs available in the market, but there are only few that have attracted a large percentage of user-base in a very short period of time due to its excellent user-friendly features. One of them is Joomla!

Joomla is an advanced free open source content management system that helps the users and companies to develop highly dynamic web applications. You can create your own business website and can easily add, edit content without the assistance of a technical expert, but there are some reasons, where you may feel the need of hiring an expert Joomla developer to create your website. The prominent reasons are as follows:

• You may not have domain knowledge expertise to develop a website.
• You may want to include a particular feature or plug-in (Joomla template development, product development and extension development) in your site, but do not know how to do it.
• You do not have the required knowledge about creating professional application architecture for your website that is fully optimized and productive.
• You do not know how to convert your existing website into Joomla.

How an Experienced and Skilled Joomla Developer Can Take Your Business to Another Level?

The trend of designing business websites through Joomla is fast catching on. Every business, whether big or small looks to design a website that can help in reaching the global target market, increasing online presence and generating the high sale leads all across the globe within a short period of time. Website development is indeed a very challenging and time-consuming task. Some firms quite often find it a very difficult task to develop a website according to their needs and business requirements. This is where the work of an expert and knowledgeable Joomla developer comes into the picture. Here are the various benefits that a good programmer can provide you to build an effective website that attracts excellent traffic:

Vast Knowledgeand Expertise

Creating a Joomla website includes some complex inner coding methods that can only be executed by the proficient Joomla programmers. They are aware of all the desired Joomla components that are required to make a professional and user-friendly website that can materialize your dream of attracting more traffic and multiply profits.

Installs Necessary Features and Provides Excellent Customer Support

The professional Joomla developers leave no stone unturned to make sure that your website is replete with all the necessary plug-ins, themes and components within a scheduled time frame. A great deal of attention is also paid towards providing an excellent customer support to the local and global clients so that they handle them in a very hassle-free manner.

Get Well-Detailed Report on Timely Basis

The proficient and dedicated Joomla experts have years of rich experience and this can be determined from the fact that they make it a point to maintain a well-detailed report related to their work. Through the report, you can quite easily ascertain, whether the work of Joomla website designing is moving in the right direction or not.

Offer Necessary Tips and Information

Before creating a website, the developers first take into the consideration all the desired requirements of their clients and then come up with the necessary tips or information that can help in designing a top-quality website.

An attractive website is certainly your signature on the internet. It can open the door of opportunities for you to take your business to another level. Therefore, you must be pragmatic in hiring the right Joomla website developer and experience the difference!

The post Hire an Expert Joomla Developer for all your Business Website Needs appeared first on Digital Marketing Agency - TIS India Blog.