Component

Joomla websites can be speeded up by caching and there is a component developed in 2007 that helps caching the joomla website. The visitors to the website are benefited with increased loading time due to this component for caching. The component has received good reviews on IrcMaxell and Joomla extension site as well as on the Review of Page Component. The component can be downloaded from the site http://www.ircmaxell.com/. The webpage is cached quite efficiently by the component to drastically reduce the loading time. Sometimes such reduction may be over 90%. The component works in addition to the default joomla cache.

Component Drawback

The component can be installed in a short time and installation process is easy. However for getting into the cache, initial one time loading of the page is necessary that can run for a few seconds. This is a drawback of the component. After that depending on the volume of new content created for the joomla website, the active time period of the cache is determined. The standard time for the cache to remain active is usually 10 minutes. Another drawback of the component is that it cannot work for members logged in but only for the visitors to the website. This drawback is really quite difficult to fix as caching for individuals itself is quite difficult. Per session caching could have solved the problem but then it is hardly possible to do. However since the component speeds up the joomla website, the benefit goes to those visitors called the search engine spiders. Joomlaboard is another specific component that can be helped out by some plugins. Another option is not to make the page cache handle the problem component.

Footer

Another feature of the component is its leaving behind on the joomla website a footer “powered by Page_Cache by Ircmaxell”. This footer can be removed by diving into the code. The developer Ircmaxell can also be paid some specified donation to remove this footer. In spite of the drawbacks, the component is worth giving a try as it certainly provides speed to the joomla website by reducing the loading time.

Basic Information

For people exposed not much to website management or management of HTML, that is a little low on the technical front, and want a simple website containing basic information, WordPress is the answer. Both blog and non-blog websites can benefit from it. It is a good tool for a site that wants to be interactive and provides sound web publishing infrastructure.

Types of Contents

Pages and posts are the two fundamental types of contents supported by WordPress. Information held in the web pages is meant to have continuity for a larger time span. Here always the earlier content gets changed whenever there is new writing on the old ones. However updates and news are contents that have to be more dynamic. Posts instead of pages are used for such contents so that overwriting for changes are dispensed with and an archive of contents can be built. In the backdrop of the needs of the present day, both pages and posts are used for contents in the websites be it of individual or institution or corporate. By use of WordPress, subscribing customers of a website can be fed with helps, updates and news to keep them abreast of the latest developments. The entire blog website is controlled by the posts whereas non-blog websites are more dominated by the pages. Current WordPress versions enable setting of one of the web pages as homepage of the website. This way a corporate user interface is created to replace the archive and blog of a website. There may be a need to have posts for more than one type of content especially in case of articles and news. The two content types can then be differentiated by use of categories which for content classification are the best options. One can go for any number of categories and in hierarchical orders if intended.

Generating Feeds

The most common technique for keeping the readers of a website continuously updated is the Feed. Different types of queries including feeds for pages and posts are generated by WordPress for the visitors of a website. Because by use of various services there can be easy conversion of feeds to emails by WordPress that it is so popular. Making the content published just once, the content can be fed to the email users and readers of the website by WordPress.

Search Engine Ranking

The better the search engine optimized template is the better is the chance for having a good ranking in the search engines. A website that allows the search engines to read it easily would find success much more easily. Google ranks a website in terms of the duration of stay by a visitor to that website. Thus one way to make the website attractive to visitors is to have templates that are search engine optimized.

Joomla Template Elements

Joomla templates are search engine optimized and are thus more search engine friendly. They offer better visitors appeal by easy customization. The CSS template template_css.css (named styles.css in joomla 1.5) that defines the CSS styles in template design though not mandatory is a must for search engine optimization. The main template elements of Joomla with built in CSS style options are validation for W3C CSS and W3C XHTML 1.0, RSS Feed icon, Font changes for different text sizes, font colors, link colors and behaviors and width and background of page. The mandatory joomla templates are index.php that as the main template file defines the joomla structure and templatedetails.xml that defines the template parameters like name, type, etc. Other templates are templates_thumbnail.png and images directory.

W3C Validation

W3C validation reduces the loading time of the website thereby causing faster loading of web pages. This ensures that the code can be read quicker by search spiders and they can more easily find out the actual content on the web page.

CSS

Content in the web page has to find a place as close to the beginning of the page’s XHTML code as possible for getting higher ranking in search engines. However often the important content in the middle or side column tends to get lost in the crowd of XHTML outputs that are many in joomla. Here the CSS ensures that such contents make appearance at any location in the source if they are included within the wrapper. These contents can be placed after the main content. For this purpose a header container can be made in joomla and placed after the main content for non-important contents in the website.