nodwell.net is pleased to announce our latest template for Joomla! 1.5: Cherry Blossom.

This template features a lush, dark cherry color scheme and beautiful drawn cherry blossoms in the back ground.

This template has the following module locations: breadcrumbs, search, logo, top, left, right, content_top1, content_top2, bottom, user1, user2, user3, user4, and syndicate, and modules can be styled as _menu, color, dark, light, or none.

There is a lovely extension out there for adding attachments to an article. It lets you upload/download files from an article. You install the component and a plugin, and the plugin displays the list of attachments at the base of the article content. You can find that extension here.

There are quite a few tutorials on how to write a Joomla! extension of the HelloWorld variety. I thought it would be amusing to write one with a practical application, for a change. I want the list of downloadable attachments to appear in a module location rather than in the article content.

If you are logged in to this site, you can download the module we will be writing in this article.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an organic process. Though you can affect your search rankings with pay services, you can and should make every effort to have your site rank well in the natural order of search engines.  Organic SEO is the art of getting a web site to rank optimally well with Google, Yahoo, MSN, and other search engines without attempting to manipulate the system through paid placement services.

You don't have to pay a penny to get ranked. The major search engines clearly detail the technical requirements to fare well in their search rankings. By following their guidelines and structuring your site with SEO in mind from the beginning, you should be able to achieve good rank results.

Be very wary  of SEO companies who promise you placement or guarantee you rankings, say they have priority submissions to a search engine, or indicate they have any sort of special relationship with the search engines. No one can guarantee page rankings, priority submissions do not exist, and google (nor the others) do not develop special relationships with any companies that have any affect on any rankings.

Matt Cutts, Google guru, has been quoted as saying, "Someone walked up to me and pretended like he wanted to bribe me: $500,000 for a 1st place ranking. I turned him down, because no one can guarantee a #1 ranking — not even me.”

Is Your Site Safe?

You have chosen the best content management system on the free-market, now protect your investment with a maintenance contract. Our complete site protection service includes weekly backups (using joomlapack) of all site content and database content stored on cd-rom/dvd and application of all Joomla! patches released by joomla.org as well as weekly inspection of server logs (when available) to alert you to any potential issues with how your site is running.

Weekly backups keep you protected if there is a disaster at your hosting company. Your investment in time and programming costs are protected by a complete backup, stored on physical media in our data center. In the event that your host server is disrupted, you need to change hosts, or you need a copy of your files and data, you're covered. Patches keep your site running optimally and securely.

When we patch your site, we take a complete backup. If you have a development/test server which matches your production server environment, we replicate your site on the development/test server and apply the patches there first to test that they do not disrupt function within your environment. Once tested on the development server, or if no development server is available, we apply the patches to the production server. Once patched, we verify all functionality is consistant with functionality prior to patching. If the patch "breaks" something, we restore the site from the complete backup and alert you to the issues caused by the patching.