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your source code

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your source code here.

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Joomla! Total Control

Joomla! Total Control Hosts

Best Joomla! Hosting Providers.

JDay Vegas 2009 will always rank as a great experience in my book. One of the hottest topics in small groups was hosting Joomla!, how, who, what, how much do you pay, how long have you. I had to frown as I mentioned, at that time, that Joomla-Webmasters.com was being hosted on a Shared Apache server. [insert boos and hisses]

Webmaster beware and trod softly! when selecting the perfect hosting solution for your Joomla! websites. I was in total shock at a remark during one conversation where the user stated they had "had it with goDaddy" and were looking for something new. Keeping eyes and ears wide open from that point forwards, I think I have hit upon perhaps something goDaddy didn't anticipate.

GoDaddy's administrative control panel is one of the largest I've come across in 18 years of Site Administration. To state that it is vast, is an understatement. It's control panel heaven and a control freak's dream [and a freshman's nightmare]. If you haven't been there long or don't have 20 years under your belt, their telephone support is the best I've seen, ever. What's there not to love?

A recent telephone conversation with a domain registrar in Las Vegas, sparked the "grrr" button, again. She stated, "Oh, no! I'd have to go to the control panel at goDaddy to do that. This might take me some time to figure out." [Do I insert here that this particular registrar is out of business?]

For hosting Joomla!, especially if you want Dedicated Server Hosting, goDaddy has been nothing but Joomlation. Total control of everything and more that one could ever need to do for a website. The client's sites I've moved to this dedicated server ALL state, "OMG! I can't believe how fast the site is now! It's like having a whole new site again!"

I don't blog about this to garner affiliate ranking, though nice thought ;), I do it because it's the facts. Never in my career as an Internet Professional have I had more enjoyment from whom I'm hosted with. There was a one week learning curve to get a grip on the monstrous control panel over there, vast is good! If you get your own dedicated box and like cpanel/WHM, you will be able to add upgrades such as the reseller package system. And, if that's the case for you, then this little Joomla! module will really make you druel, J-Tinytool.

This week marks the first official notice I've ever had to write to ICANN; being at goDaddy and having all the domains I manage in one spot, one registrar, and one dedicated server [contrary to rummors - which CAN BE managed with root in Unix without their assistance] means I'll never have to go through ICANN again, I did note the .18 cent fee per domain on an invoice recently for ICANN support. Great! Happy to pay for that one!

Here is a list of the 25 top rated web hosts, google is no. 14 on their list.

Joomla! A Click of The Button

Joomla! so easy to install "a caveman could do it!". The top CMS on the planet is featured on most modern cpanels and other server side software packages. If you have these tools available, you can install a full featured Joomla! CMS basic installation in literally the click of a button. You click the button and install one to try out a template, again, to install a build to develop a client's site, you click again and you're working on your own extension development...And the next thing you know you have 10's of Joomla! sites, some live, some in development, some hidden. How do we manage all of them?

I enjoy having a new client with a virgin website build so that I can shape the structure on the server. Many times this is not the case and we have to deal with what's there, in cases, sub-domains instead of sub-folders. In general, I try to create folders and structure on the server that will benefit any SEO that might happen. Keeping that in mind from the start will make the SEO stuff easier later. When you can't get around the sub-domain structure, hone your robots.txt and or .htaccess to reflect the "follow" you are trying to achieve.

Example:
http:/store.mysite.com //sub-domain structure
verses
http://www.mysite.com/store //sub-folder structure

On the server, I do not install joomla on the root
public_html/

I usually put joomla in something like:
public_html/index/
public_html/catalog/
public_html/store/
public_html/forums/

and when making clones for development areas on the server:
public_html/dev_index/
public_html/dev_catalog/
public_html/dev_store/
public_html/dev_forums/

Making life easy locally...
Sites on the server are off the root and are active live sites. Locally, I use FTP on save function in editor du'jour (Dreamweaver, phpDesigner, UltraEdit, etc) and make profile for each site - accurately tested FTP on save link/info. (Do it once and let the application remember where stuff lives).

Local folders for live sites follow this structure:
site_myclients
site_myotherclients
site_mysite

Development areas are also off the root on the server, and are named locally:
dev_myclients
dev_myotherclients
dev_mysite

And at the top of my local root I create a "Masters" folder
_masters with the underscore so it sits at the top of the tree for me.

In the _master folder, I mirror the naming convention per client, project, or job
my client/site_backups/dev_myclient_bak.zip
my client/site_backups/site_myclient_bak.zip
my client/SQL_backups/mysql_myclient_bak.sql
my client/artwork/photoshop masters
my client/artwork/illustrator masters

Why do I use this _masters folder?

...because in 5 months, I might come along and start cleaning the "sites" folder out and I do NOT want to delete any master files that I created to replace any template, logo, or image files. These masters should not be stored on the server and in my opinion, do not belong with the working site files. I also do this so that I can .zip what I'm working on in total, move it to the server via FTP, and then unzip it server side to save on one-file-at-a-time uploading to server.

Yes, it's a bit of a pain to have the master photoshop, fireworks, illustrator files outside from where your site's images and template image files are stored - having to point where to save the file each time, but it's worth it to keep that stuff out of your main working folders. I can come along and delete anything site_ or dev_ without worrying about deleting irreplaceable items because I already stored a .zip copy in my MASTERS folder before I altered, moved or modified anything when I started working.

If you intend to store zip copies of sites or master files on the server, please do so using hidden protected directories and tell your robots.txt files to no-follow those folders.

Okay, now you have your sites all tidy and easy to manage! Let's keep our admin hidden with System - jSecure Authentication which hides your joomla link/administrator/index.php by storing a secret word in your database's SQL. Add a little moovur, some Joomfish if you require multi-lingual, stir with a bit of Joomla! Pack Back up and Restore Component and you'll be managing 100's of Joomla! sites securely in no time.