One of the nice things about Joomla! is that it comes ready to go right out of the box. For the most part, you just drop it in, and start building pages.

These are best practices that do not come pre-configured and are easy to forget about, but should be considered for every site that you build. If you are using Joomla on your alphaite, look through this list and check to make sure your site is following these best practices where applicable. Most are set within Global Configuration under Site.

Note that update permissions may be turned off for your site for security purposes. Please contact the webteam if you need these changes.

 

 

(This list will be extended over time)

1. Disable “User Registration”. This is a security precaution. Most sites on campus don’t want or need to allow users to register with the site. There are bots on the Internet that will try to register accounts on your alphaite so they can post spam. Simply turn off user registration to prevent this. Located in “Global Configuration” under the “System” tab in “User Settings” section.
2. Turn up the Session Lifetime. The default is 15 minutes. If you find yourself having to re-login you can adjust this setting to 60 minutes or 120 minutes to give you more time to write your articles. Located in “Global Configuration” under the “System” tab in “Session Settings” section.
3. Turn off the Flash Uploader. It seems to work about 50% of the time. It’s best to just turn it off. Its only functionality is a progress bar for your uploads, and it may actually decrease the maximum file size of your upload. If you are having trouble uploading files to Media Manager, this may be your problem. Located in”Global Configuration“under the “System” tab in “Media Settings” section.
4. Change the “Feed Email” option from “Author Email” to “Site Email“. Then set the “Mail from” option to an appropriate email for your site. This option was recently added to Joomla! The default setting causes RSS feeds to reference individual user emails rather than a site global email, causing users of the site being put on spam lists. This is recommended if you plan to use RSS feeds. Located in “Global Configuration” under the “Site” tab in “Site Settings” section.
5. Increase the “List Length” option from the default of 20 to the maximum of 100. This setting only affects lists in the backend. It’s useful because many of the lists in the backend contain more than 20 items, and you would have to flip through pages to get to the option or setting you want. Located in “Global Configuration” under the “Site” tab in “Site Settings” section.
6. Set the Global Metadata Information for the site. This is easy to forget but very important for when a user doesGooglesearchon your site as this is the information that is displayed. It’s bad to have a alphaite about biochemical astropsychology and it’s description on Google reads “Joomla! – the dynamic portal engine and content management system.” Located in “Global Configuration“under the “Site” tab in “Metadata Settings” section.
7. Upgrade the default WYSIWYG html editor that comes with Joomla! with a copy of JCE Editor. This editor has many advanced features that makes editing web pages in Joomla! easier. The most notable is a clickable list of all menu items and content articles in your site when you need to create a link.In the default editor you have to copy and paste the URL, which may not be obvious. JCE also includes a spellchecker and a better code view editor. Located in “Global Configuration” under the “Site” tab in “Site Settings” section.
8. Turn on Search Engine Friendly (SEF) URLs. Without this option your urls will look like this
   https:///index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=12&catid=6
   with SEF turned on they look like this https://pamiralpha.com/web-blog/123-joomla-best-practice. Located in “Global Configuration“under the “Site” tab in “SEO Settings” section.
9. Set the time zone settings. Otherwise your posts will show up as incorrect post times. Luckily, when you update this setting, all your posts retroactively get the correct time. Located in”Global Configuration” under the “Server” tab in “Locale Settings” section.
10. Always create a menu entry for articles you want to link to, even if you don’t want them to be in the navigation. If you haven’t created a menu entry, then you can’t assign module positions to that page. This isn’t always necessary, but can be important.

    To do this, create a new menu called “hidden menu” under Menu Manager. Under Module Manager set the Menu Assignment to None to not display menu on the site. If you want to link an article that doesn’t belong in the navigation, create its menu entry here. You will have something to assign module positions to and it will be easier to link articles.