Stock Standard Functions and Extensions in Our Business Websites

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Standard Joomla Functions

We can't take credit for these, as these are the "in built" functions of the web platform (Joomla!) we have chosen to build websites with. If we installed Joomla! for you and did nothing else, here's the functionality you would have available.

Simple Content Writing

Joomla! is a CMS (Content Management System), which is a program that allows you to separate writing text (content) from actually designing and formatting a website completely. It is this function that means that anyone can now maintain a website, update it and work with it - all with a couple of hours of learning (instead of months!). The default Joomla editor isn't as nice as the one we work with, but it does the job and it can be worked with well enough.

Content Management

Part of being a CMS is the ability to categorise, edit, publish, unpublish and authorise articles that go live on your site. Joomla! features a very simple and effective content management process that will allow you as much or as little control as you need. If you just want to type and publish content - go right ahead. If you want several people writing articles that you must personally approve, that's built in right off the shelf.

Menu Creation and Linking to Articles/Categories

Creating articles, putting them in categories and authorising them is all very nice. But having to create your own menus to point to articles, categories of articles, weblink lists and news items would be a nightmare. Fortunately, Joomla! handles all that for you.

Blog - Off The Shelf

With Joomla!'s ability to point a single menu item to an entire category of articles, you can have a blog (or several blogs) blended right into your business website, without any extra software or effort. Joomla! will handle the pagination, display, ordering and archiving for you.

FAQs

Joomla! has a very simple (sometimes, too simple) FAQ system that allows you write Frequently Asked Question articles and publish them. We prefer the use of QuickFAQ as it has more features than the standard.

Simple Contact Forms

Joomla! allows you to have "contacts" on your site that are linked to user logins. Lets say you had 3 people who contributed to your website content - each of those would have their own log in. Simple create a contact that links to each of these users and you can then create a contact form for them. We prefer RS Form (custom form builder) as the default Joomla! contact form is plain and not very customisable.

News and News Feeds

This is a big one - RSS feeds, both incoming and outgoing. If you want other websites to be able to link to your newest articles easily, or you want to bring in fresh articles from other sites, Joomla! has you covered. This is collectively known as "content aggregation" or simply "feeds" and it is a very big deal.

Links

Got some links to other websites that you think your viewers might like? Not a problem - Joomla! again has you covered. Create weblinks, categorise them and publish them easily.

Wrappers

Wrappers are a little odd. Lets say you have a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) program (like Salesforce or SugarCRM) - which is a web based product. You could have your Joomla! site "wrap" around your CRM product webpage - so the "outside" of the page would be your site and your navigation, but the "inside" of the page would be whatever page you are wrapping around. If that didn't make sense, let's just say that a wrapper allows you blend a non-Joomla! page right into your Joomla! site.

Search

Not much point in having lots of content if no-one can find it. And once you go past about 20 pages, it can get difficult to find things quickly. Joomla! has its own search engine that you can use to let users find your pages quickly and easily.

Themes and Extensions

A core idea behind Joomla! is that it is modular - the actual "code design" of the site is completely separate to the look and feel of it (the "theme"), which is also separate to the things you can add to it ("extensions"). This means that you can completely change the look of your site just by installing a theme - no need to recode every page from scratch. Additionally, it means that your site can grow with your business in the future, by adding on extensions that do certain things.

Standard Extensions on your Website

Any website by Business Website Designers contains several extensions "out of the box". These are extensions that we feel are beneficial for any business to have and they are not "costed in" to our price - they are just what we think every website should have.

Front End - Extensions For Website Visitors

MorfeoShow - Image Galleries

Image gallery software can be painful, as it quite often uses flash, complicated javascripts and mildly difficult css coding. MorfeoShow takes all the headache out of image galleries, allowing you to create galleries for your website by point & click. "High end" gallery software will allow you much greater flexibility if you have flash, javascript and css knowledge. If you don't, MorfeoShow will do 90% of what anyone could want and do it far easier than manually handling image galleries.

RS Form - Custom Form Builder

Previously, we used a different extension, but found that in some scenarios, it wasn't the best product. So we've purchased RS Forms with an "unlimited license" - which means we can use it on as many client sites as we wish. RS Form has many features and will allow you to put as many forms as you want almost anywhere.

XMap - Sitemap Generator

XMap generates sitemaps for your website. A site map is like an index or table of contents - it lists all the pages on your website in a heirarchy. There are three major benefits to having a sitemap. 1) Search engines like Google use them to get quick snapshots of your website. 2) Users like them to find things quickly. 3) It is always good search engine optimization practice to have a site map that links to every page on your website. This ensures that search engine spiders will see all of your website pages.

GoogleMaps - Google Map Rendering

As the name suggests, this allows you to quickly set up a GoogleMap in your website. This is not a big deal, as it is very easy to use Google WebElements to put a map in your page quickly and easily. But its there, just in case our clients want it.

AllVideos - Embedded Media

Embed FLV, flash, mp4 and YouTube.com videos on your website quickly and easily.

mJaz Personalize - Warm & Fuzzy!

Many websites don't need a place for people to "log on", but for those that do, mJaz Personalize allows you to put the current user's name, username or email address into your website content. As the name suggests, it personalizes messages and pages to the current user.

Back End - Administrative Extensions

JCE Editor - Upgraded Article & Module Editor

JCE is a much "nicer" editor for writing content in your website. It has many more features, allows linking to media and PDF files and looks a lot like Microsoft Word. It is this last feature that we think has the most benefit - editing a website can be daunting, but having something that is familiar helps a lot. So JCE is our standard editor.

JoomlaPack - Backup and Restoration

Backing up a website can be painful - get all the files, make sure they are in the right directories, save all the configuration settings, download the database. JoomlaPack handles ALL of this in just a couple of clicks. Also, the BWD promise is that if you don't want to use our services in the future, we're ok with that. JoomlaPack will allow you to back up your entire site and restore it anywhere else within about 2 hours tops. JoomlaPack is your safeguard against website issues and your easy way out if you ever need to send your site to someone.

jSecure - Website Security

Anyone in the hacking name knows where the administrator entry page of a Joomla! site is. jSecure allows you to assign a passcode to your administrator page, so that no one can even find your administrator page without the passcode. This presents a "glass wall" to hackers - they know your site is there, but they can't find the administrator page to even start brute force hacking your website. This is not a total barrier to hacking, but its more than half the battle.

Missing Meta

Every article you write should have meta keywords and meta descriptions specified - this helps your website out with search engine rankings. Missing Meta reports all articles that are missing meta tags, so that you can see in a single glance where you need to do some work. If you write articles even semi-frequently, this report will save you a lot of double-checking.

Contact Business Website Designers

Phone	(07) 5530 4496
Email	inquiries@businesswebsitedesigners.com.au
Address	25/31 Leviathan Drive Mudgeeraba, Queensland, 4106
Office Hours	8:30am to 7:00pm Monday to Friday We understand that your business is busy and you may not be able to discuss your website needs until after* business hours!*

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