Ten Things to do after a new Joomla installation
Here are Ten Things that I do after a fresh Joomla installation, If you haven’t done this to your installation, you can always correct it !
Just kidding, its more like one of my Joomla best practice things…
1. Change the admin login name
2. Secure the Administration directory
3. Install SEF Patch
4. Install OpenSEF (or other SEF component)
5. Install Joomap component
6. Install JoomlaXplorer component
7. Create sitemap.xml
8. Disable statistics except search
9. Set Configuration file SEO on and place htaccess file and Fill Metatag Data
10. Change Configuration content basics and Close IT down!!
And I even through in a - Bonus installation Tip
1. First login to you back-end and go to user management, then choose the newly created admin and change the user name to your liking, but remember it !!
Click save , logout and login with the new user name, done.
2. Securing you administrator directory can mostly be done via you web hosting cpanel. And involves a user name and password, make it different than your login.
Read more on securing-your-administrator-directory-using-.htaccess-files
3. Installing the SEF patch of http://www.joomlatwork.com/ is just an upload of unzip files via FTP, but these files do wonders on your SEO efforts, still hoping this one gets into the core files.
4. Installing an SEF component is critical for you success in my opinion, but there are others who think the basic SEO option for Joomla 1.0.x is enough.
My favorite still if OpenSEF but there are others out there that can do a nice job for you, but please use one…
5. Joomap is a sitemap component, one of the best.
Configuration is kept simple, just set the order of the menu’s to appear and make a link to it in one of your menu’s.
Very user and Search Engine Friendly….
6. JoomlaXplorer is a great tool is you need to do some file handling on-line.
You can use it to edit almost any file if you need to, and if you have the rights to do so..
7. Using the sitemap.xml file for Google and Yahoo, Live is lagging behind on this one.
It is a file in which you list all your content for a Search Engine robot to read.
You can create one, with a simple editor like notepad, just open it, and save the file under the name sitemap.xml and upload it to your domain root.
Set the security to 707 (read and write access) and a component like OpenSef or Joomap to fill it…in both cases change the configuration to point to your sitemap.xml file.
OpenSEF does give nice clean URLs in the file.
8. Now this might just seem a but strange, but I do some things in the global configuration.:-)
First one is to disable some statistics functions, on the Tab Statistics you find three options, You will only need the one “Log search strings� set to Yes, both others go to No.
This will reduce your loading time of th site, because you don’t have to write all that stuff to the database. Use external counter like http://www.statcounter.com/ instead.
9. Af course you need to make sure the SEO tab is set, use both options and make sure you have the right .htaccess file to match your SEF Component !!
Dynamic titles you really need set to ON, otherwise all you Page titles are the same!
Fill the Metatags option and set the values to ON. (Use the SEF patch as well!!)
10. The best part to change is the content tab:
These settings are largely depending on how you are going to create and present the content of you website.
I like having “Linked Titles� set to yes for SEO purpose.
The PDF is always set to Off, because you don’t want Google to index the PDF created pages. They are dead ends if it comes to reading the site, just try a PDF created page and see what I mean..
Once your done, save it can change the permissions to 604 (Apache read write and Public read)
Now you are ready to Build you site, fill it with meaning full content Make it Beautiful with an SEO Optimized template and use the Sitemap component to tell Google and Yahoo when you think you have enough to get crawled….
Bonus Tip: You could give the Joomla Plugin JoomlaFCK a try, doesn’t cost anything except a short time to install, but it brings great editing power for your content creation….
You are welcome to share other best practices you can think off, I always like to learn more about Joomla!
How I can make Joomap to fill it????? Is here a settings somewhere???
@Igor
You don’t have to fill it, its done automatically.
One you have the Joomap component installed, create a Menu item and select the “Component” item in your right hand top field.
Publish the Menu item and visit it from the front-end of your website.
You should have a page with all the pages of you site (depending on you configuration settings)
OK. So I have sitemap.xml in root right now. All what it have right now:
-
-
http://aromacup.com/
0.5
daily
How I can fill it with right info. For example this:
http://aromacup.com/index.php?option=com_joomap&view=google
@Igor,
You are mixing two things.
I normally use the OpenSef component to fill the sitemap.xml file.
Joomap won’t do that.
If you want to use Joomap as a service to put into Google’s webmaster panel, you have to put the URL given by Joomap on the second page of the component to Google.
If I look at your website you use some kind of SEF Component, please check if that delivers a sitemap.xml file
Like said, I normally use the OpenSEF component to handle this, because it puts clean URLs in a real sitemap.xml file.
Cool. Now I got it. I have SEF Advance. I’ll take a look it it have that feature. Thanks. So when Google or Yahoo visiting my site for crawl it will check sitemap.xml first??? What if sitemap.xml is empty (like in my case)???
Or should you specify it somewhere so Google and Yahoo must start checking with sitemap.xml .
igor, until you filled the file, I would suggets you delete it.
In the Google webmaster panel (reachable via Google About, Webmaste central, webmaster toola) you can give the links from Joomap as the place of the sitemap.
In siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com (you need to get a free yahoo account to login) you can put the link in as a feed from your website.
Wow. Thanks Pathos!
You’re very helpful. I appreciate it.
Is there a preference in global configuration between the PHP mail function or the SMTP? I’m wondering if I should switch to SMTP because I have some that are not receiving email.
@Lafayette
Yes, there is a big difference.
The PHP Mail function is run on the server of your provider.
The second SMTP is used for accessing a remote server.
Both have their drawbacks, especially for security.
If you have trouble receiving emails because your hosting provider has changed some setting to prevent spammers from using this functionality you should switch you contact form.
In the menu parameters of the contact form I now just use the show email function and no longer the form.
The email is encrypted by java script to prevent email harvesters to get the mail address to spam you.
So its a safe way to go, and people are sending your the mail via their own mail program.
In that case is anything goes wrong they get an error message as well, which is not possible via the mail form.
Wow thanks for that! I just saw that google had all my print pages listed, I knew straight away that it meant duplicate pages (not good for SEO, so i’ve heard). I knew how to turn off the icons, but then I also found this page.
Great info thanks!
Nice checklist. Though I would recommend that instead of listing the steps first then explaining, it would be best to just bold out the steps and explain it one by one. Just a little suggestion.
Hi,
Thanks for the step by step guide, however after uploading the files to the SEF files via the FTP i’m no longer able to access the admin directory. Below is the error message:
Fatal error: Class ‘JAdministrator’ not found in…(server location info omited)…_beta/libraries/joomla/application/application.php on line 139
Looking forward to your feedback,
-Arnold
@arnold: Looks like something went wrong with you upload, please try to upload the files again and make sure you keep the directory structure in place.
Also check if you have the right files for your Joomla version, this is really essential!
If you still keep getting errors, you can revert the process with the undo files from joomlatwork.com.
Great list, I’ll give these a try. I’ve been reading about the JoomlaFCK plug in too, it’s had some great reviews and I want to try it for my site, because it will need quite a lot of regular and frequent editing. I need something that will make my life a lot easier so that I don’t have to spend a lot of time or money updating my site and it will still look great.
For SEF personally I prefer artioSEF because he has absolute control of all pages.
For sitemap I use Xmap, although the latest version of artioSEF includes functionality to generate stiemap