There is a default of 20 line items set in many Joomla backend administration menus – including articles, modules, plugins and the extension manager. This ‘lines per page’ can be changed but it’s not stored next time you login. Here’s how to permanently get Joomla to remember how many lines you’d like to see.
Global configuration > Site settings > List Length
This screenshot is for Joomla 1.5:
The configuration screen in Joomla 1.5
Here’s the same setting in Joomla 1.6, 1.7 and beyond. Click to enlarge.
Just a short post today – we came across this very nice WordPress theme the other day.
Nice WordPress Theme
The creators are www.wpshower.com. They have 10 themes on their site and nearly all of them are free, but all are very high quality.
If you’re starting out in WordPress, a pre-built theme is a useful place to start, and can save you both time and money. As your site develops you may need the services of a web designer. A web designer who understand WordPress can take an existing theme and adapt it seamlessly to your vision, or can build a unique theme just for you. Many web designers and developers use 2020Media’s services, so let us know if we can help put you in touch with one.
It’s been a busy week with a Joomla and WordPress usergroup sessions, as well as a meeting with Eurid, the registry for .eu domains.
Joomla Usergroup
The regular monthly meetup of the London Joomla usergroup took place on Tuesday. Phil from SoftForge gave us some insights into the Akeeba Backup tool. Many people already use the extension to make backups of their site. What is not so well know is that the Pro version (a very reasonable $50 or so for unlimited sites) easily adds the ability to copy the backup to offsite storage. Currently DropBox and Amazon Storage are available. Phil also pointed out the security feature of Akeeba to setup a secret key as attackers could trigger your backup repeatedly and cause a Denial of Service (DOS) attack. This setting is in the top right Parameters button. Akeeba Backup is even being used to non-Joomla websites.
2020Media will setup Akeeba for any customer using our hosting competely free of charge. Just ask!
Two talks this week – WordPress SEO and a newbies guide to Custom Post Types. The evening began with a quick roundup of WordPress news (download the podcast).
WordPress 3.3 is almost out. New features include a drag and drop interface for adding images and other media.
Akismet, the anti comment spam service is continuing it’s march towards a paid model
There’s a plugin to check your website for vulnerability to the tomthumb problem.
WP Install Profiles is a Drupal-like idea for developers who want to pre-fill their installs with their favourite plugins and themes.
David Bain, an internet marketing expert who uses WordPress in his work, talked about getting your WordPress website noticed in the search engines. David talked us through his 3 “P”s – Preparation, Publishing and Performance. Lots of great tips and well worth attending if you were able to get to London. His slides and our podcast will be available soon. Download the podcast
Keith Devon gave us a great introduction to Custom Post Types, which was very useful for the new developer or designer. Simply put, setting up Custom Post types allows you to add a new section to the admin menu for a adding content to a specific type of page that you design. For example if you had staff profiles, you can create a page entry that has boxes for their name, position and job description, and then on the front end display this in a particular way. Download the podcast.
The team for the .eu registry were in London to convince the euro-sceptics in the UK that getting a .eu domain is a good idea! Whilst the argument “show you are European” may not be terribly popular at the moment, the EU is still Britains largest overseas trading partner. If you run a business that trades with the European area, a .eu domain is a wise choice to link to your website.
The .eu domain is 5 years old this year and is now considered a well established and trustworthy domain extension. There are over 3 million .eu domains in use, and it’s the 5th most popular extension in the UK (behind .uk, .com, .net and .org). .eu domains are now available from 2020Media with multi-year periods of 1 to 10 years, and were one of the first domain extensions in the world to offer a registry-backed DNSSEC (secure DNS) support.
The .uk country code domain currently offers a single registration period – 2 years.
Starting from May of next year we will be offering the more common registration periods of 1 to 10 years for .co.uk, .org.uk and .me.uk domains. The allows users of .uk domains to have the same protection that they have in .com, .net and other top level domains.
.uk market
A recent report shows that .uk registrations grew by 10.5% over the past 12 months, bringing the total number of domains to 9.7 million by the end of September 2011. .uk also maintains its position as the world’s second largest country code registry after Germany’s .de.
The report also shows that the global market for domain names is healthy and growing with an increase of 9.5% this year, taking the total number of domains globally to 218 million, an increase of 19 million. Generic Top Level Domains now make up 60% of the market while 39% are country code Top Level Domains.
Google adverts and many others set cookies in your browser that allow them to track you across the web. Google (as an example), uses this information to display adverts that it thinks you are more likely to click on, based on the kind of sites you’ve visited in the past. Here’s how the world’s 3rd biggest search engine Yahoo! describe it:
“To make our ads more relevant and useful for you, we make educated guesses about your interests based on your activity on Yahoo!’s sites and services.”
Quite apart from the privacy concerns this raises, it can make SEO (search engine optimisation) of your website harder to do. If you are checking keywords in search engines, how do you know if you are seeing the same results as an ordinary user who’s never heard of you before?
Fortunately you can opt out of these networks (well most of them).
Because the default behaviour is opt-IN, these methods set a cookie that tells the advertiser to stop tracking. If you clear all your cookies, this preference it lost and you will have to revisit these pages again to opt-out again.
Location information is also commonly being captured by search engines so it’s important to clear this as well when you are doing research on your website’s search engine ranking. Google call it location-based customization.
2020Media can help
SEO Panel
Use the links above to check your browser’s current settings – if you use more than one browser you will need to use each in turn.
2020Media are beta-testing a new free service to all customers – SEO Panel. This is a complete open source seo control panel for managing search engine optimization of your websites and works independently of your browser settings. If you’d like to be in the trial, let us know.
Customers can update their communication preferences with 2020Media by logging in to the customer portal, clicking My Profile and editing the Bulletins tab.
2020Media takes privacy matters extremely seriously. We have a privacy statement on our website. This describes the policy that is in place to protect your personal information.
When changes are requested to your services, website or email, expect us to be robust in challenging the person making the request to prove they are authorised to do so, especially when the change requested could affect the availability of that service. 2020Media prides itself on being “small enough to care, large enough to cope”; so our staff attempt to speak to each and every contact during the service. This helps improve security as well as emphasises that we are not just a faceless supplier – we’re trusted partners in your internet presence.
News, tips and reviews from one of Britain's leading web hosting companies
The regular monthly meetup of the London Joomla 
David Bain, an internet marketing expert who uses WordPress in his work, talked about getting your WordPress website noticed in the search engines. David talked us through his 
Keith Devon gave us a great introduction to Custom Post Types, which was very useful for the new developer or designer. Simply put, setting up Custom Post types allows you to add a new section to the admin menu for a adding content to a specific type of page that you design. For example if you had staff profiles, you can create a page entry that has boxes for their name, position and job description, and then on the front end display this in a particular way. 
