Today Joomla 1.5 Stable release is a fact, Just read the announcement form the Joomla Core team and Download your version form the Joomla 1.5 Files.

So how to move forward from here, and what will bring Joomla 1.5 use in SEO and SEF options?

I will not be writing about this release here, but on my own Joomla SEO Blog, because I don’t have the time anymore to update three blogs.

So if you want to keep getting great information on Joomla and Search Engine Optimization, make sure you get the RSS Feed of Joomla Search Engine Optimization.

I hope to see you there! I wil still monitor this blog and reposnd to comments, just no new posts…

Just a quick post to inform you that Joomla! once again has won an Award..

This time it is the Packt Publishing Award for Best PHP Open Source Content Management System

Which they won last year as well, and they are still in the running for Overall winner!

I wrote some time ago that OpenSEF development has been taken over by new maintainers.

Because I don’t know yet how and when a new release is planned I thought I would start looking at alternatives to some of the most used features in OpenSEF.
Now, don’t take this the wrong way, OpenSEF is still a great component that has many great features and you can still Download OpenSEF

So here is a short list of the items you could work with to get the best options for Joomla SEO in Place:

• sh404SEF - The best free SEF Component at this moment
  I even provides a function to edit you 404 page and give you a proper Joomla 404 Header!
• iJoomla Metatag Generator - Getting an overview of the Fields you still have to fill with Metatag Descriptions and Keywords (you can even do it automatically.. not recommend for best results)
• Sef Service Map , this was the hardest one.. because you can give Google, Yahoo, Ask and Live a sitemap file to make sure they can find all the content on your website.
  OpenSEF has a great part in it that creates a sitemap.xml file with the SEF URL in it…
  I tried Joomap and encountered the same problems as Joemar and tried the new version of Sef Service Map, and that worked out fine!
  It even updates the file automatically after the cache time, so this on it a set and forget it… an improvement over OpenSEF.

You can use these separate components and get even better SEO work done, but the installation and configuration takes a little more time, but that is well worth the effort!!

As you might know, the most important factor for Search Engine Optimization (besides content..) is the Title Tag.

In Joomla the Title of your page is the first part of your Content screen.

Writing good titles is essential if you want to get found on the keywords you are targeting.
But you also want to keep the titles on your pages short, to make sure you don’t clutter your page with long title headers.

Long Titles can all so be a problem if you use a SEF Component that rewrites your titles in to URLs.

But there is help on the way… with the new Joomla Content Title Plugin!

You just install the Plugin and start rewriting just your Title Alias to get better Keyword targeted titles that show up tin the Search Results Pages.

There are some things you need to be aware off if your use the alias as a rewrite option in your SEF Component, you can read more about that on my Pathos SEO Blog post: Improve the Joomla nr One SEO Factor 

If you want to read more about the use of Joomla Titles you can read What Title to use in Joomla

I know, some shameless self promotion, but I hope you find even more interesting information on Joomla SEO there that might benefit you in your search on improving your website.

Steve Burge over at www.alledia.com (great Joomla SEO Blog, highly recommended) does a quick update on the status of the mayor Joomla SEF components 

Most Interesting and schocking to me was the fact that the site of OpenSef at http://j-prosolution.com/ has been taken off site….
Luckily the component has been rescued by Chris Davenport and is now available as NuSEF

I am currently looking at the sh404SEF on my new site and must admit it is indeed looking great, you can also read Steve’s Review of the sh404SEF component.

Yesterday I was browsing some of my statistics and found a querie in Google that was very interesting.

It was a search for a manual for the OpenSEF component and the top ranking site, which I didn’t now of was this one:

The Open Source Network.eu which holds over 160+ Joomla and Mambo video tutorials for free !!

So what kind of tutorials to expect:

• JCE Editor Tutorials
• DOCMan Tutorials
• iJoomla Magazin Tutorials
• Virtuemart Tutorials
• Community Builder Tutorials
• OpenSEF Tutorials
•  Fillezilla FTP Tutorials
• XHTML Editor Tutorial 

Of course the Company provides other service as well, but its a great initiative to give these tutorials to the community.
Pay them a visit and check out what the site is offering you.

Update: I just found the original source of the Flash Tutorials, and they even have more of them…
So You better check this link.. http://tutorials.buyhttp.com/flash-tutorials/

I few months back I had a problem with one of my Joomla based websites.

When I accessed the site there was just thus error about session_id’s
And a problem that I now know how to solve “DB function failed with error number 1016″

If you need to now how to fix this, check this Joomla Forum post .

The problem could occur if there is no regular login from the Administrator to work on the site.
The session table’s are filled by visitors automatically and cleaned after you login.
Of course you keep your site well up to date, so you don’t run into this problem.
But what if you are going on a holiday for several weeks?
You still want your site to be running, then if its not running for several days, this could seriously damage your ranking!

The Session Plugin for Joomla! Table error Prevention

Luckily for you, I found a solution in a Plugin that is offered by http://www.sm2joomla.com/this Plugin is called SM2 Session Plugin and can be downloaded from SM2 Joomla! Extensions

What is does is delete, check or repair the session table if necessary, you can read more on the download site.
You just install it as an Mambot, and make sure you publish it to

It not only keeps your site running, it also optimizes the session table, and by doing so, keeps your website running better al the time.
Without any effort from your side.

And if you want to run further optimization on your MySql tables you might want to read this post Optimizing your Joomla Website from the back end

Inspired by some other projects I am working on, I though it would be nice to cleanup this Blog, and make it into a cleaner layout.

So I switch to the layout you see here, which is my Favorite one, The Cutline Theme from Chris Pearson.

I am switching some other Blogs I have here On WordPress to the same theme, but with different Headers.

I hope you like the change..

I talked to you about How to speed up your Joomla Site and now I have to tell your the next step to take…

A new Joomla Cache Component 

There is a new component for Caching your Joomla website, and it works great for the sites I run and my customers websites.
Dramatically increasing the loading time of your visitors!
The component comes from www.ircmaxell.com and was first brought to my attention by www.alledia.com

This new component has gotten some great reviews on the extensions site of Joomla and IrcMaxell collected a few on the Internet as well on the Review of Page Component.

What the component does, is cache the page in a very efficient way, so loading time is dramatically reduced, sometimes over 90%.
It works on top of your normal Joomla Cache, so please leave this on as well.

How to Install the component

This is very basic, but you need to do some simple homework before trying to install.
Believe me, this time is short and easy.. read it on How to Boost Joomla Performance  the Installation part.

There is however a drawback… the page has to be loaded once to get into the cache, and this initial load takes a few seconds…
After that it is of course up to you for how long this cache stay active, standard is 600 seconds I believe, but for my sites I run it up to 3600 seconds or more depending on how much new content is created.

The next thing is that it only works for your visitors and not for Logged in members.
This is not something that is going to be Fixed, because caching for individuals is not that easy as it sounds.
Caching than has to be done per session… which is really not do able.

But the good news is.. Search Engine Spiders are “visitors” so they will benefit from Speeding Up your website.

There are also som Plugins to help out on more specific components like Joomlaboard.
Otherwise you can exclude you problem component form being handled by the Page Cache.

Last but not least

The component leave a nice Footer behind on your website “Powered By Page_Cache by Ircmaxell” which can be removed if you dive into the code.
Or by a Ten Dollar donation to the developer. Which of the options you like to use, its fine or as he says “It’s your choice” 

I consider this one as a “must have” for the sites I build in Joomla.

Try the component, if you like it, keep it, if not… you probably did something wrong

A couple of months ago I told you about the Joomap and why you should get one but Alledia now wrote about an additional way to Improve your indexing.

But that was not not all, they recently done a Joomla URL week about several Joomla SEF Components, the conclusions can be read at Joomla URL Week Conclusions

I stick to my OpenSEF component as my most favorite one, and testing Joomla 1.5 which looks very promising.

One tip on the use of Joomla Sitemaps..
If you are on Forums commenting and reading and you have the possibility to link to your domain, try linking to your sitemap instead of the Homepage…