It really is amazing how some Content Management Systems have been build with little or no regard for Search Engine Optimisation. Out of the box, there are CMS that do not allow customised page titles or alt tags on images. Some CMS like WordPress are good straight out of the box but can be made better with plugins like All-in-One SEO or by using the Thesis Theme.

So if you’re having a website built using a CMS, what should you make sure is provided. Here’s my checklist:

Essential:

• Customisable Page Title’s – The title should be completely configurable
• Meta-tags for each page – well, meta-description anyway
• H1 heading on each page – (still not standard in Joomla!)
• H2 headings for sub-headings
• Ability to add links within text content
• Ability to no-follow those links if required
• Ability to add alt-tags to images
• A structure that avoids duplicate content being shown on multiple URL’s within your site e.g. full length content items on category or tags pages

Would also like to see:

• Ability to generate and store accurate XML sitemaps for submission to Google Webmaster Tools etc
• Broken links are flagged on your dashboard
• Easy user-friendly URL’s implemented as standard

Anything else you’d like to see in a super SEO friendly CMS?

Here’s something to watch out for if you have the Skype browser button. If you use a content management system to edit your website and happen to have phone numbers on the page you are editing, it’s possible that a whole bunch of Skype code will be injected in around each phone number.

It’s not a big deal to strip it out if you’ve only got one or two numbers on a page, but if you have a page full of worldwide agents and each of their phone numbers get the Skype code treatment it’s a real headache to get rid of. So before editing any pages containing phone numbers, switch off the Skype browser button.

Personally it find the idea of an application taking control of web pages and inserting it’s own code before displaying them to be a bit intrusive. Surely web pages should be displayed the way the site owner wants them to be shown.

I’m currently about to redevelop a site and want to use WordPress 2.6 as a full blown CMS. Has anyone done this and what plugins would you recommend in terms of building navigation etc? I don’t really want the thing to look like a straightforward blog so was going to use the pages and sub-pages route to build it, then hopefully style it to make it look like a standard site. Comments will be still be allowed but will be renamed reviews on the products that the site features.
So can you use WP as a full CMS?

This is a nice little trick if you want to open an image or a page for printing in Joomla without having the surrounding template. Instead of having a link pointing at a page like:

index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=65&itemid=

Change the link to point at:

index2.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=65&itemid=

Opening it in index2.php just gives you the content without the navigation or other parts of your template. This means you might want to open the link as target=”_blank” so that the user can close the window again afterwards and get back to your main content.

This works in Joomla 1.0 – haven’t tested it in 1.5 yet.

I found out today that my site was sitting in position 10 in Google for the search “Joomla Scotland“. While it’s true that I do Joomla development in Scotland, I do a lot of Joomla development for companies all over the UK, not just in Scotland.
I would like to see it get a bit higher up the results page though so lets see if this rather pointless post boosts the ranking up any higher than position 10. I’ll keep you posted.

Over the weekend I was experimenting with a component for Joomla called Mojoblog. It is essentially WordPress blog software that works as a component within your Joomla Structure, so no need for building a separate template etc if you want to use WordPress. You can download it and try it at www.joomlify.com.

If you want to blog from within your Joomla build, having a WordPress build is perfect. It allows you access to a lot of WordPress plugins, it gives you a great comments system. The category, archives and latest post links are all automatic and robust, allowing you to get on with the real job of writing content.

And as for the RSS feeds – well, I’ve been trying to get a good RSS feed working on Joomla for a while but never managed to get just what I’m looking for. With the blog in place I can mention any new sections of the site within the blog. That goes into the blog rss feed and gets syndicated by whoever picks up the RSS feed e.g. Technorati.

Congrats to the guys at Joomlify.com for coming up with this and to the makers of JD-WP which is the original component it was based on I think.

If you are using the content management system Joomla, you might also be using the Virtuemart ecommerce plugin. I was looking for a way to integrate Google Analytics into Virtuemart so that I could specify a goal and track the number of converted sales.

For the most part you don’t need to worry about doing anything if you just want Google Analytics to measure your traffic in Virtuemart. Slap the code in your main Joomla template and it will work away happily.

If however you want to set a goal to track sales conversions, then you need to provide Google Analytics with a unique URL for the thank-you page in Virtuemart. I found that Virtuemart was simply returning index.php as the thank you page, so had to find a work around to get that unique URL.

Here’s how i did it.

- Create a normal html page called analytics-result.htm

- Into the body of this page, put your analytics code. Make sure you are using the Analytics code for secure sites rather than the standard code if your shopping basket is secure

- Save it in a location accessible through https (if you are using a secure checkout) e.g. https://www.yourdomain.com/analytics-result.htm

- Search for /administrator/components/Virtuemart/html/checkout.thankyou.php

- At the end of the php file, add this code:
<iframe src="analytics-result.htm" width="5" height="5"
frameborder="0" scrolling="no" name="Analytics"></iframe>

- Setup a goal in Analytics and give it your new page as the unique URL: https://www.yourdomain.com/analytics-result.htm

What this method does is to put an Iframe into the thank you page after a customer has ordered. This Iframe contains a standard HTML file with a unique URL that you can setup as a goal page in Analytics. As long as everything is done through SSL your customer hopefully wont get any security errors.
It’s probably far from being the best way to do it, but seems to be working for me.

In the past I’ve always built CMS (content management system) functionality into websites that I’ve built on a need-to-use basis. If the customer requests a distributor page they can update themselves, or a news page, I’d code it up in PHP and charge for my time. Now though people want to be able to control all the content in their websites.

Around a year and a half ago I discovered a CMS called Mambo. I built a couple of websites with it but never really got into customisation etc. Last year much of the tech team left Mambo and created Joomla. To the bystander, Joomla was just Mambo repackaged. Things are changing though at a pace and in my mind Joomla is now faster and sweeter than the last version of Mambot that I tried.

Customisation is a doddle. Once you get your head round Joomla’s templates and preferably use Dreamweaver with a Joomla template plugin, you can rattle out templates at a pace. I used this Joomla template tutorial to get started on my first one.

You can go out and pay a lot of money for a content management system, or you could just go out and get to know Joomla. It is powerful and stable and I recommend it now to anyone wanting content management on their website. The plugins are appearing thick and fast and the whole Joomla community is very friendly. I think I’ll keep using it unless anyone has a better suggestion that is.

Using a content management system isn’t everybody’s idea of a fun way to build a website, but I’m starting to really enjoy it. You do have to work within the limits of the system but the advantages it gives are fantastic. Instant site-wide changes, automatic navigation updates, auto-generated RSS feeds, loads of easy to setup plugins and modules etc. In effect, it takes the web design out of the system and allows you to spend your time actually creating content.
This site – www.adamchristie.co.uk runs on a basic version of a content management system – blog software called WordPress.
I have one site though – www.love-edinburgh.co.uk where I’m using a content management system called Mambo. Mambo really is quite powerful but the back-end is confusing with sections and categories always tripping me up. A friend was talking to me on the phone and told me that the new version of Mambo is called Joomla. According to my friend Joomla is going to be the powerful CMS driving force and Mambo will be left behind.
So it looks like I’m going to have to get my Edinburgh site onto Joomla if I don’t want to be left behind. Luckily the clever fellows have made the upgrade pretty simple, and although the software is called something completely different, the installation should work right over the top of Mambo. After I’ve backed up the site I’ll try it and see how we get on. Here’s the details on migrating Mambo to Joomla.