About a week ago, I received an email from an anonymous hacker. He had sent the same email to around 350 people in the Joomla community. They were all registered in the same affiliate system for a well-known software developer, and attached to the email was an Excel sheet with all of their contact info and user names. The hacker said he had extracted the info from an insecure system and offered "security services" to protect from similar hacks.

Apparently, people had been talking about this for a couple of days already on Twitter. Still, I wanted to check a little more what this guy was after.

Every month, each of the major Joomla template clubs release a new template.

In this post, I take another look at the premium business Joomla templates released. This time for the month of August 2012.

There are templates from Yootheme, RocketTheme, Joomla Bamboo, JoomlArt, JoomlaShack, JoomlaXTC and Shape5 on display this month. Enjoy!

The speed at which your site loads is very important. Firstly, a fast loading site will have your readers stick around longer. If they are served content fast, it is more tempting to click on another link to read more. Nobody wants to wait for a slow site.

Secondly, speed has become a major issue when it comes to SEO. Search engines, and particularly Google, now take the loading speed of a page into consideration when ranking the page for result pages. In particular, slow loading sites will be pushed down in the search results. The reason is that Google wants to serve its users with the most relevant content available, and in the shortest time possible. Giving people links to slow sites is not a good idea, so fast-loading sites will now appear higher in the search engine result pages.

There are several things you can do to optimize your site for speed. One way is to limit the use of installed extensions. In this post, you’ll learn some more ways to improve the loading speed of your blog.

As you know, one of the strengths of Joomla lies in its extensibility. There are an incredible number of extensions and templates out there for you to chose from. You can find something for almost any purpose, and the number of extensions and solutions for Joomla increases every day.

From all of these, there are things you can add to the blog that will add value for your readers. Commenting, social media integration and RSS feeds are some of the things you can make use of. In the following chapter, I will discuss how you can find useful, value-adding features for your blog.

Every month, each of the major Joomla template clubs release a new template.

In this post, I take another look at the premium business Joomla templates released. This time for the month of March 2012.

There are templates from Yootheme, RocketTheme, Joomla Bamboo, JoomlArt, JoomlaShack, JoomlaXTC and Shape5 on display this month. Enjoy!

At the moment, I'm working on a directory site based on Joomla and Sobi Pro. On this site, I would like to display news stories related to the topic the directory is about.

On one of the site's pages, I've used a new Javascript from the guys at Joomlaworks to pull in news stories from websites that talk about the same subject matter. However, sometimes the general news media also writes about it. That's not so easy to pick up. Of course, I could set up an automatic Google Reader feed and have it show all the results from that feed. However, that's too generic and will sometimes display undesired, irrelevant or, at worst, inappropriate content on my site.

The recent upgrade of Joomla to version 2.5 has made me think about the extensions and template providers I use. Whenever I choose a new type of extension for my clients, I take a look at the company's trackrecord. I ask myself some questions to determine if this is a developer I would like to bet my client's money on.

How long have they been around? What does users write online about their products? What do my friends in the Joomla community think about the product? How do they respond to support requests? What is their release cycle? How quickly are they supporting new, major versions of Joomla?

Every month, each of the major Joomla template clubs release a new template.

In this post, I take another look at the premium business Joomla templates released. This time for the month of February 2012.

There are templates from Youtheme, RocketTheme, Joomla Bamboo, JoomlArt, JoomlaShack, JoomlaXTC and Shape5 on display this month. Enjoy!

On more than one occasion I have heard people compare our web design industry with architecture.

It's an easy comparison to make. Websites are a lot like custom designed buildings. The client, for a web site or a building, will approach a designer with a specific set of needs and objectives he or she needs to incorporate into the design. Both may have difficult problems that need to be addressed in an elegant, efficient, and flowing manner. Both need to editorialize and often fit less rather than more. The parallels between the two industries are many.

I recently got the question: "What is the risk of not migrating my Joomla 1.5 site to a newer version?".

That's a really good question, as the task of migrating to Joomla 2.5 can seem like a daunting one. Nonetheless, there are several compelling reasons to migrate your site from 1.5 when it reaches end-of-life in April 2012.