Your website is representative of your business, its reputation and even credibility. When getting ready to build a website, consider the following factors:

• Your website needs to have a modern look and feel, appropriate for your type of business (e.g. social networking website versus financial planning firm; alternative energy provider versus HR software developer)
• Your website needs to offer a good amount of free and interesting information to its visitors (links to quality websites in your industry, free PDFs, demos, etc.)
• Your website's content needs to be written in a simple language and presented in an easy-to-read format (suitable for visual scanning)
• Your website needs to have clear and visible calls to action (buy, order, download, register - links, banners, and buttons)
• You webiste needs to collect emails of your visitors or other contact information (newsletter signup, registration form, free download, free demo)
• You need to conduct a thorough keyword research as well as competitive analysis
• You need to SEO your site's design, content, and formatting by incorporating your main keywords in all structural elements
• You need to build as many incoming (back) links as you can from sites and blogs in your industry
• Your need to learn about online PR and Social Media Marketing (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus, and Pinterest)
• Your need to participate in your industry's reputable forums and blogs and offer your professional advice

You need to enrol in Google AdWords; you need to create custom landing pages for each ad group (one per each ad group, keep them orphan)

You need to collect your website statistics and analyze it on a regular basis (Google Analytics is a must; remember to set goals)

In summary, you need to be constantly creating content: on your website's blog and on the leading social sites, as well as posting comments on forums and blogs with links back to your site where possible. The key is to create meanignful and useful content for your visitors and for the general public; re-writing your press releases and posting them on all social sites will be counter productive.

Above all, you need to entice your users to clicking on Social Media buttons: "like" and "plus" and "share" your pages as well as posting comments on your site. Those comments should ideally contain your most important keywords. Comments are key. Simply clicking the buttons is not enough, or you need hundreds of those clicks. But comments, if you can get 40 social media "likes" with keyword-relevant comments, you site will move up in ranking on Google very significantly. Being on the first page on Google will drive traffic to your site. Your next objective is to retain this traffic by earning its interest.

If you'd like to talk about your website marketing objectives call Joomla Bliss at 613.231.6308

If you are considering a new Joomla website or converting your old website into a Joomla website, start with finding out whether your current hosting provider supports Joomla properly. Joomla runs best on the *nix apache type of servers (not Windows apache), Linux apache is often the best choice if you are getting a Joomla-driven website.

Most hosting companies say that they "support Joomla", but in reality they often support only "plan vanilla" Joomla but for more advanced requirements they implement "work-arounds" or don't support them at all. Some advanced Joomla security components do not run well on these servers. In theory, you can add plugins and customize configuration on any server to get it all working, but in practice - it results in endless communication, hosting support folks are not always knowledgeable, and in some cases, additional tweaks destabilize the site and can even break it.

It is best to do things in the right way right from the start. Get a Linux apache server to host your Joomla websites.

Joomla Website Hosting Requirements

1. LAMP server: Linux + Apache Server + MySQL + PHP/Perl
2. PHP scripting available (PHP Version 5.3.10+, 5.5+ recommended)
3. Access to MySQL database. MYSQL Version 5.1+
4. FTP/Control Panel Access. Database access.
5. Support for mod_rewrite (for SEF) - a Linux apache server supports it natively
6. Support for apache/PHP modules: mod_zlib, mod_sql, mod_xml, curl, curlwrapper, GD library, ionCube, rewrite.

To be sure, please review the official Joomla Technical Requirements page.

Love it or hate it, but you can't deny that it's there. The single page web design is the most noticeable trend of 2022.  

When we ask our clients what website designs they like they send us samples of the sites that all have a few things in common:

1. Scrolling: One page (i.e. wall) design where the main menu tabs, if present, do not take you to new pages but jump you down on the same page. Scrolling can be quite extensive!
2. Flat navigation, i.e. no submenus visible
3. Excessive pagination, where one article is spread through multiple pages, making users click "next" multiple times
4. Sliding in and out of side navigational panels a la Windows 10
5. Zigzagging of on-page information by presenting a chunk of it aligned to the left and then the chunk that follows aligned to the right
6. On-page boxes instead of the traditional navigation with the main menu on the top or side bar
7. Use of imagery, icons and buttons of huge dimensions; use of huge font sizes; use of contrasting bright colors
8. Use of transparent background with overlayed images and buttons
9. Stacking links to key information points in the footer area, with no site map
10. Limited amount of information presented on a page

Take a look at some of the examples that illustrate this web design trend:

One-page desing with zigzagging of information

Huge overlayed images with transparency work

Large images, large buttons, centering small chunks of information

Oversized images, fonts, buttons, and boxes

As with everything, there are pluses and minuses of this web design trend.

Hi from Joomla Bliss, a web design agency in Ottawa

This post is a review of one of our favourite website template designers Yootheme. The company is based in Hamburg, Germany and run by a team of young designers and developers. They build their templates using Warp framework . 

We like their style. Their website templates come loaded with a suite of neat widgets. We find that for North American business environment their templates are best suited for small businesses and consultants, and not for medium or large corporations.

They stay in synch with times and add new templates often. The demo site is very easy to use, each site comes in several color schemes. Their website templates are designed for Joomla and Wordpress. 

The prices are higher than average and the Euro conversion makes their templates adn subscription almost double of those of Rockettheme or Joomlart.

If you are interested in finding out more, contact Joomla Bliss via this site or give us a call at 613.231.6308.

Hello from Joomla Bliss, a web design agency in Ottawa

This post is a review of one of our favourite website template providers Rockettheme. The company is based in Denver, Colorado and run by a team of experienced web designers and developers. They build templates for Joomla, Worpress and Magento.

We love them almost as much as we love Joomlart. Their website templates come loaded useful extensions and neat modules. And their templates are very well suited for any type of business in any country. 

They stay in synch with times and add new templates often. Rocketheme has a vast network of partners who offer signigicant discounts on their products via Rocketthem

The prices are very reasonable in the web design industry. We love how clean their code it, how scalable it is and how rich with extensions their website templates are. 

If you are interested in finding out more, contact Joomla Bliss via this site or give us a call at 613.231.6308.

Greetings from Joomla Bliss, a web design agency in Ottawa

This post is a review of our favourite website template provider Joomlart. The company is 11 years old, which is very old for web businesses; it is based in Vietnam and run by a team of young web designers and developers. They build their templates using powerful T3 framework.

We like their style. Their website templates come loaded useful extensions and neat modules. We find that Joomlart's templates are very well suited for North American businesses of any size as well as for individual owners and consultants. 

They stay in synch with times and add new templates often. The demo site is very easy to use, each site comes in several color schemes. They also develop templates for Magento as well, which is a very good engine for ecommerce sites. The extension suite that they offer for sale is of exceptionally high quality. It is a one-stop place for any online business. We can assemble some of the most complicated business models for under $1000 using Joomlart's tempates and extensions.

Recently Joomlart began to offer templates for Wordpress as well.

The prices are very reasonable and probably the best in the web design industry. We love how clean their code it, how scalable it is and how rich with extensions their website templates are. 

If you are interested in finding out more, contact Joomla Bliss via this site or give us a call at 613.231.6308.

Season's Greetings from Joomla Bliss in Ottawa!

The Joomla Development Team has just released Joomla version 3.4.8! Unlike the last few patches which are more urgent, this is mainly a bug-fix patch, so the team agreed that this can wait until after the holidays :) We do recommmended every one to update to 3.4.8 as soon as they can though, just to stay up-to-date.

You can update your site in your Joomla! admin panel or download the packages on the Joomla! site.

If you need any assistances with Joomla design upgrades or need to restore a hacked Joomla website, we at Joomla Bliss are happy to help. Just give us a call!

Hi from Joomla Bliss web design firm in Ottawa,

The Joomla! Development Team has just released version 3.4.7! This is a security patch that, as before, requires immediate attention, but only for a smaller target group. The fix this time follows up on the 3.4.6 fix, and patch a vulnerability on Joomla websites that are running on the older PHP 5.3. It is recommmended every one updates to 3.4.7 though, just to stay up-to-date.

Version 3.4.7 only contains security-related fixes, so in general, it shouldn't affect templates or frontend experience.

If you are using Joomla! 3 (which we recommend all our clients do, as Joomla 1.5 and J2 are no longer supported), you can update your site in your Joomla admin panel, or download the packages on the Joomla! site. Since Joomla 1.5 and Joomla 2 are no longer officially supported, you will have to download the hotfix here, then apply the patch manually.

If you need any assistances with Joomla! upgrades or need to restore a hacked Joomla website, we at Joomla Bliss are ready to help you. Give us a call!

Hi from Ottawa,

Designing websites is always fun, but it is also important to stay abreast web design industry news. The Joomla! Development Team has just released version 3.4.6! Like Joomla 3.4.5, this is a security-only patch. This time around, the vulnerability discovered affects even broader - anyone using Joomla 1.5, 2.X and 3.X for their websites, are at risk of being compromised, and need to update immediately.

Version 3.4.6 only contains security-related fixes, so in general, it shouldn't affect templates or frontend experience.

If you are using Joomla! 3 (which we recommend to all our clients, because J1.5 and J2 are no longer supported), you can update your site in your Joomla! admin panel, or download the packages on the Joomla! site. Since Joomla 1.5 and Joomla 2 are no longer officially supported, you will have to download the hotfix here, then apply the patch manually.

If you need any assistances with Joomla upgrades or need to restore a hacked Joomla site, we at Joomla Bliss are ready to help you. Give us a call!