New Feature in joomla 3.5.1

The open source project and content management system (CMS) grew rather quickly in its first year alone, boasting over 2.5 million downloads. Today it features over 5,000 commercial and free plug-ins that allow users to use and expand on content.

Along with Drupal, Joomla! is one of the most used and admired CMSs available today, and if your website is not operating by way of it, then chances are some of the places that you visit during your daily surf are. The reason people choose Joomla! Joomla 3.5.1 hosting  for their websites is that it can enhance the positive effects for business. For example: A website always up is a website always working. If you can depend on your Joomla 3.5.1 hosting, then your website will experience very little downtime throughout its life expectancy. What this means for you is that your customers will always have a link to improved service and a satisfactory experience. And the more things change, the one constant in the business world is that a happy customer makes for a successful business.

A Joomla 3.5.1 hosting service that doesn’t break the bank leaves your budget open for other things. The one thing you should always be after as a Joomla!-run website is value. Not only does it save you dollars, but it gets you in the habit of practicing greater fiscal responsibility in other aspects of the business. If value can become habit, then every level of your business will grow.

Safe website is a website that can lay focus where it matters. There are many reasons to be concerned in today’s world. Predators are out there who would like nothing more than to hack your account and turn your website into a breeding ground for identity theft and spam. But you can’t do good business if you take safety matters into your own hands. For starters, most site owners don’t know enough about it to make a difference. That’s why you must depend on your Joomla! Joomla 3.5.1 hosting provider to shield you from the dangers of the World Wide Web. The Internet is a wonderful tool, but it can be a very dangerous one in the wrong hands. Make sure your site stays in the right ones.

Joomla 3.5.1 hosting provider that plays nice with others is one that will always be there for you. Try to ensure that the place where you plant your business is one that stays on the cutting edge of CMS developments. Only by changing with the times can a joomla 3.5.1 hosting company achieve success and pass that along to you through service that you can count on.

New Features in Joomla 3.5.1

• Front end module editing. Module settings that used to be available only under Joomla 3.5.1  hosting administrator backend can now be easily tweaked right from the convenience of your front end.
• Joomla out of the box core components com_weblinks has been decoupled, which makes your system lighter and faster.
• Integration with the dependency management “Composer” tool.
• Extra layer of security via implementing “UploadShield” code to check file uploads integrity.
• Ability to relax minimum stability status of installed Joomla core extensions.
• Integration with Google’s new reCaptcha, which is harder for bots but friendlier for users.

Best Cheap Joomla  Hosting Recommendation That Can Enhance Your Business

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Best Tips to Speed Up a Joomla Site

No one wants to wait for a site to load. And that’s why we need to minimize the loading period when building a website.Today in this article we will introduce you 10 best tips to speed up a Joomla site.

Actually, this is not a new topic but we really hope that it can help. Let’s choose the most suitable ones for yourself. Before apply these tips, let’s check to see the current speed of your site. You can use Google Pagespeed Insights for full details. And here is the most expected part, the tips. Please note that your site should be backed up before changing anything.

• Choose a good hosting
  It’s crucial for you to choose the right host for your site. This is the decisive factor to slow or speed up your site no matter how well you have optimized your Joomla site.
  Therefore, before choosing a hosting, you should find more information in the forum. Let’s find a web hosting that is best suitable with your site demand: web space, monthly traffic, data transfer, backup, database type support, CDN, etc.
  

• Enable Joomla Cache
  If you enable the cache in your site, it will be more responsive. Luckily, Joomla is capable of serving 3 types of cache: Component views, Module views and Page views.
  The first 2 settings are determined by one setting in your Systems > Global Configuration and set it as Conservative. Optionally you can also set the time different than the default of 15 minutes.

If globally, cache is switched on, you can switch it off again for specific modules from the Advanced tab in selected modules. Page views are only cached if you switch on the System - Cache plugin in the Extensions> Plugin. Just set it to Enabled, and leave default parameters.

• Use G-Zip
  In Systems > Global Configuration, on the Server tab, you will find the setting to turn on Gzip:
  By this way, your pages are compressed in a zip-file, sent to the browser on your PC, and unpacked there. Except for really ancient versions of IE, it is supported in all browsers, and should be safe to turn on.
  To use this function, please make sure that your host supports mod_gzip.

• Remove unnecessary extensions | It’s true that any Joomla site needs extensions. However it’s really important for us to choose the good ones. Some extensions need additional Javascripts, connect to the remote network, or take time to be loaded can surely slow you down terribly. Also, any unneeded extensions should be removed even they are not in use
  

• Browser caching in .htaccess | After renaming your htaccess.txt file into .htaccess, you can add some code to prevent browser to request specific image types from the server if they are already present on your PC. By this way, you can reduce the loading time.
  

• Optimize your images | We can’t deny the important role of the images in a website. However, images account for for more KB's than the rest of your web page and that’s why they need optimizing. Firstly, you should use the image with correct size. Secondly, you can use the compression tools to further reduce the size by stripping the unnecessary data.

• Use a CDN | CND or Content Delivery Network is the one that can serve your static files from the global network of the CND provider. By this way, the user far from the server can receive the files faster from the nearest location. This tip is not only good for sites operating globally, but also specially for sites in large countries.

• Optimize CSS + Javascript | Most Joomla sites now have many CSS and Javascript files which will all add up in size AND number of HTTP-requests. Also they will take lots of time for loading the site while they are executing. Luckily, you can over this issue by:

1. Compressing these files.
2. Combining multiple files into one.
3. Using a defer or a sync attribute in the scripts to execution.

If you’re an amateur, you can use the extension for this optimization.

• Use speed optimization extensions | One of the easiest ways to optimize your site is to use the speed up extensions. Just after installation and some configuration steps, your site will be significantly speeded up! JCH-Optimize and JBetolo are ones of them.
  

• Optimize for mobile devices |  “Mobile device” is one essential point that decides the rank of your site on search engine. Your site may not perform well on mobile device even though it works great on desktops. Therefore, we need to optimize the site for mobile devices too. The key here is to load only what is really needed in the site. You can use user-agent detection to check if you are on a mobile device, not just on a resized browser window and then you can then selectively disable module positions.
  

7 tips to optimize Joomla! security

Joomla! is a great CMS that is used worldwide. For this reason, hackers often try to find a way to hack a Joomla! website. Here are 7 tips to optimize your Joomla! security, preventing your Joomla! website getting hacked.
Always remember to make a regular backup of your website and database. If you still get hacked, you can always get back to an older version of your website. Make sure you find out which extension caused the vulnerability and un-install it.

Change the default database prefix (jos_)

Most SQL injections that are written to hack a Joomla! website, try to retrieve data from the jos_users table. This way, they can retrieve the username and password from the super administrator of the website. Changing the default prefix into something random, will prevent (most / all) SQL injections.
You can set the database prefix when installing your Joomla! website. If you've already installed Joomla! and want to change your prefix, do the following:

• Log on to your Joomla! back-end.
• Go to your global configuration and search for the database
• Change your database prefix (Example: fdasqw_) and press Save.
• Go to phpMyAdmin to access your database.
• Go to export, leave all default values and press Start. Exporting the database can take a while.
• When done, select all code and copy it to notepad (or any other text editor)
• In phpMyAdmin, select all tables and delete them
• In notepad, do a Search & replace (Ctrl + H). Set the searchterm to jos_ and change it into your new prefix (Example: fdasqw_). Press "Replace all".
• Select everything in your notepad file and copy it. In phpMyAdmin, go to SQL, paste the queries and press Start.

Remove version number / name of extensions

Most vulnerabilities only occur in a specific release of a specific extension. Showing MyExtension version 2.14 is a really bad thing. You can modify this message to only the name of the extension by doing the following:

• Retrieve all files of the extension from your server.
• Open up Dreamweaver.
• Load any file from the extension that you just downloaded to your local machine.
• Use the Search function and set the search to Search through specified folder. Navigate to the folder where you downloaded the exploit to.
• Set the search term to "MyExtension version 2.14" and press OK.
• When found the correct file, remove the version number.
• Upload the changed file to your server and check if the changes are made.

Use a SEF component

Most hackers use the Google inurl: command to search for a vulnerable exploit. Use Artio, SH404SEF or another SEF component to re-write your URL's and prevent hackers from finding the exploits.
Additionally, you'll get a higher rank in Google when using search engine friendly URL's.

Keep Joomla! and extensions up to date

This one is pretty obvious. Always check for the latest versions of Joomla! and the extensions you're using. Many vulnerabilities are resolved most of the times in later versions.

Use the correct CHMOD for each folder and file

Setting files or folders to a CHMOD of 777 or 707 is only necessary when a script needs to write to that file or directory. All other files should have the following configuration:

• PHP files: 644
• Config files: 666
• Other folders: 755

Delete leftover files

When you installed an extension that you didn't like, don't set the extension to unbublished. If you do, the vulnerable files will still be on your website. So simply use the un-install function to totally get rid of the extension.

Change your .htaccess file

Add the following lines to your .htaccess file to block out some common exploits.

########## Begin - Rewrite rules to block out some common exploits
#
# Block out any script trying to set a mosConfig value through the URL
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} mosConfig_[a-zA-Z_]{1,21}(=|%3D) [OR]
# Block out any script trying to base64_encode crap to send via URL
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} base64_encode.*(.*) [OR]
# Block out any script that includes a < script> tag in URL
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} (<|%3C).*script.*(>|%3E) [NC,OR]
# Block out any script trying to set a PHP GLOBALS variable via URL
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} GLOBALS(=|[|%[0-9A-Z]{0,2}) [OR]
# Block out any script trying to modify a _REQUEST variable via URL
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} _REQUEST(=|[|%[0-9A-Z]{0,2}) [OR]
# Block out any script that tries to set CONFIG_EXT (com_extcal2 issue)
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} CONFIG_EXT([|%20|%5B).*= [NC,OR]
# Block out any script that tries to set sbp or sb_authorname via URL (simpleboard)
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} sbp(=|%20|%3D) [OR]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} sb_authorname(=|%20|%3D)
# Send all blocked request to homepage with 403 Forbidden error!
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php [F,L]
#
########## End - Rewrite rules to block out some common exploits

I Hope this article helpful for you. Happy coding

Recently we’ve published results of the study, where we provide data on the use of Joomla! CMS. As it turned out, more than a half of the top sites are still using Joomla! 1.5 versions. We have already mentioned that it carries security risks. In this post, we have decided to offer some tips that can help improve the security of your site, if you still run old Joomla! for some reasons.

10 Steps to Improve Security on Old Joomla! Site

• Many of the sites which we have analyzed not only use Joomla 1.5 line, but more than that are not updated to the latest minor version 1.5.26, and still running 1.5.12 or even 1.5.3. If you are among them, you should immediately update your site.
• Joomla.org has closed access to 1.5.x downloads, so for those who have not yet decided to migrate to 2.5.x or 3.x, we offer our link for Joomla 1.5.26 package.
• If you are still using an old version of Joomla, then perhaps your site is already under attack. Check your site for known malware with this free service: Sucuri SiteCheck.
• One of the serious security holes, which was closed since Joomla 1.6 and higher - default database prefix (jos_). Thus, the attacker always knows how tables are called in your database. In addition if one of the installed on your site components has a flaw that allows an SQL injection you will be hacked. To prevent this, change the jos_ prefix to any other. Do not forget to make changes in configuration.php file after you changed the prefix too.
• After you have made changes to the configuration.php, it is not superfluous to impose restrictions on access to the file. This can be done by putting permissions to 444.
• Another security lack of Joomla 1.5 version is impossibility to change default super admin username and id. Therefore, you have to do it manually. Create another super admin (be sure to set username that is not so simple to guess – administrator, root, etc. are bad examples; password should be strong too – we recommend to use password generator to create a strong password. Login with your new super admin and block/delete super admin with ‘admin’ username.
• Another step that should be done to protect the access to the admin panel of Joomla! is change the path to the panel, or block access using .htaccess file. A positive side effect here is that an attacker will not find out which CMS you have on your site, as admin panel did not respond from its usual place.
• Another flag, which can help hackers identify what Joomla version is used on your site is meta tag "generator". If an attacker can determine CMS installed on your site and its version, it is not a hard task to find a ready-made exploit, simply by asking Google. For security reasons do not promote that your website is built on Joomla! and its version.
• On previous steps we have mentioned the use of .htaccess file. This file is part of the standard package of Joomla! All you have to do is to rename htaccess.txt to .htaccess. But please note you should avoid using .htaccess files completely if you have access to httpd main server config file. Using .htaccess files slows down your Apache http server. Any directive that you can include in a .htaccess file is better set in a Directory block, as it will have the same effect with better performance.
• Joomla! community has produced advanced master .htaccess file that can help prevent unauthorized activity on your site. However, be sure that you know what you do as some extensions that use non-standard entry points can stop working. Make sure you have read documentation carefully.
• In our practice, when we restore hacked site, we often see that malware scripts have been hidden among long list of files, expecting that it is harder to find them. Therefore, it is a must that you track useless files on your server and delete them. It is also true for Joomla! extensions that you do not use anymore. If you do not update your extensions periodically, there is high chance that hackers will use security flaws that has become publically known and fixed in the latest versions.

FOLLOW BEST PRACTICES

Many Joomla! developers and administrators are not aware that Joomla! has its own constantly updated Security Checklist. There you will find the most relevant information from community regarding development, testing and administration of Joomla! site. And this site for sure should be placed in your bookmarks.
If your site have been hacked or defaced, the first thing you should do is to check action list. And after that use our support service to get help ;)

INSTEAD OF A CONCLUSION

However, all of mentioned steps are only temporary measures, by which you will get some extra time in battle with hackers. Make a good use of time you win - get ready to migrate your site to the latest Joomla! version.

The above recommendations for the security of your site together with useful links for each step are published in our Successful Joomla! Site Checklist. In addition, you will find there information that will help you make your website faster, improve accessibility and attract more users.
Finally, please, do not underestimate the importance of the above security steps. We already had to deal with several severe hacker attacks due to failing to follow some of those tips.

Tips on Speeding up Your Joomla Site Efficiently

As Google keeps on updating its algorithms, most of the Joomla website owners show a lot of concern towards boosting up the loads of their sites. These changes have a great impact on the page rank if a website loads slowly. Most of the Joomla site owners consider speeding up as a secondary issue; however, it now holds a lot of importance. Therefore, you have to speed up the performance of your Joomla website if you want to improve the page ranks.
As Joomla is a good option for hosting a website and many people are looking for the methods to speed up Joomla sites, we worked out the following easy-to-follw article to help you get to know about the best ways which will help you to speed up Joomla in an efficient way.

Ways to Speed up Joomla sites

Here are some most effective ways which help you in enhancing the performance of your Joomla website:

7 Tips for Joomla

Optimization of Templates

Templates might be the most prominent reason of the speed loss of your site. You may have a good looking site but its slower performance may act as a hurdle in your way of getting a good page rank. There are thousands of templates which are created for Joomla every day. However, there are many templates which do not work out efficiently. Most of these templates utilize 70+ images in a day. The bad thing is that these images are not at all optimized and they make the working of your website slower. So, you have to work on it.

Optimization of your website

You can use a lot of techniques for optimization of your website. These tactics include websites which are based on Joomla. The best thing which could be done is that you have to ensure that you are encoding your website pages with Gzip. This is going to speed up Joomla site for you. Other tactics include the use of PHP and CSS. You have to remove white space from the files of templates. Also, remove the commands of CSS, which are considered important. These tactics are surely going to work out for you.

Joomla Upgrade

You must use the upgraded version of Joomla for the security of you websites. Each update has small changes in it, which speed up the time of loading of Joomla to a great extent. This is also true for extensions of Joomla that you are utilizing. There are a lot of other problems which are related with the use of Joomla websites becuase of the use of certain extensions added in the site. You have to be careful regarding the use of updated and recently upgraded versions of Joomla extensions and updates.

Joomla Updates

There are many Joomla extensions which can do dish washing for you. Many of these extensions are not considered efficient and they can become a major cause of slow down of your sites. In order to remove this issue, you need to install a component of page caching. However, do not enable it. In this way, you will be able to see the time of loading for each of your URL. Find all those URLs which are showing a slow performance. All of the sites showing slow load times will have a common component in them which won’t be present in the fast sites

Search Engine Friendly URL

The foremost thing which is done by most of the webmasters is that they make their website’s URL user-friendly and search engine friendly. This is also done by Joomla core in an automatic way. There are some webmasters that want a lot of more control and they believe that this could be done by incorporating an extra component. The issue is that most of these components do not work out efficiently. Therefore, it is suggested that webmasters must focus on the creation of such URLs which are user-friendly and search engine friendly.

Costs

Joomla is regarded to be a feature packed content management system. Most of the web developers select it for bridging with other programs for enhancing the working. When both programs are used together, they complement one another. This is not usually worth doing. This is becuase both the programs have independent functioning and the core of the programs will need to be loaded. This will create a hit to the performance of your website becuase two pages need to be loaded at the same time. The functionality needs to be improved.

Joomla Tools

You are allowed to install a large number of tools and plugins within a few seconds using Joomla. All of these tools have been created with different practices of coding. All of them require different frameworks for their functionality. This is a massive bloat of codes, which actually brings you server to the knee. It makes you site perform quite slowly. If you want to prevent yourself from further headaches, then you must load very small amounts of Java Scripts. Keep yourself confined to a limited usage of plugins and extensions if you want to speed up Joomla.

How to secure your Joomla site from Hackers ?

Here we will take you through the steps you need to know so that your Joomla website is as safe and secure as possible online!

Consider a Joomla security audit

Consider having a Joomla security website full audit and you will have taken the first step on the road to online security. A security audit will result in a list of potential security issues being created. The highlighted issues can then be resolved. Sometimes it is the simple things that are missed such as setting file permissions correctly, implementationof strong secure passwords and SSL certificates with data encryption.

Sometimes more complicated issues will be highlighted. For such issues you may be better off if you do have web development skills, if in any doubt though we would recommend that you appoint a professional web developer to avoid potential mistakes!

Secure Joomla hosting

Your website should be hosted on a secure server, so make sure that your hosting provider has implemented a strong security policy into their hosting servers. If they do not then you must move your website to a more secure Joomla hosting provider, this is very important.
The task of securing a website that has been developed using the Joomla development platform can be a tricky job. However, most professional website hosting companies would normally be pleased to help you move your site from one hosting provider to another.
Check they offer the following:

• Automatic Joomla Updates
• Multiple layers of Server-side Security Filters
• Firewall
• Antivirus
• Malware detection
• IP Address blocking where necessary
• Fast Response to Zero-day Mass Attacks
• Insistyour Joomla installation and extensions are kept up-to-date

Always keep your Joomla installation updated to the latest version, this helps to make life difficult for both new and old exploits to be utilised by online hackers. Fixes for security issues are included with most Joomla releases.

Many attacks utilise security issues in Joomla extensions than the Joomla 3 core files.

Implement use of Strong passwords/ User names

This may seem obvious but ‘password’ is not a good password and an admin login named ‘admin’ is not a good login name! But you would be amazed how many times these are used! Try to implement the use of logins like £R5UU9(!SSw#88 and passwords like $4FfOq0&b””#k9hh, we are sure you get the idea!

Correctly set your File Permissions

Make sure that you do set the right permissions for your Joomla files and their folders. We would suggest the following permissions settings, in general:

1. Set Joomla folders permission to 755
2. Set Joomla Files permission to 644
3. Never ever set 777 permission – this would allow anyone access!
4. Set configuration.php file permission to 444

Restrict access to your Admin Page

• Restrict access to your admin page. Password protect the /administrator folder for your installation.
• Once done, an additional password will be required for any user to gain access to the admin login form.
  

Use Joomla security extensions

Joomla security extensions are available such as OSE Secure, JHackGuard and RSFirewall.

Always Back-up your Joomla Site

Ensure that you back-up your full Joomla installation often. Test that your backups are always available and perform periodic test restores to make sure that the process works!
You must ensure that you have a reliable backup and restore recovery procedure should there be the need to back out the current version of your website and/or database etc.

11 tips to speed up your Joomla website

Why having a fast loading website is so important? Page load time affects two important factors that may have influence on the success of your site: seo rank and conversion rate.  Lets take a look on what you can do to improve performance of your Joomla website.

1.Choose a good web hosting

Web hosting is the most important thing. All other performance tips may be useless, if you do not have a good and fast web hosting. I suggest you to read some reviews and forums to find the one that will be perfect for your site and needs. I think that I do not need to mention that you should avoid free hosts. That should be obvious.

2.Keep Joomla and extensions up-to-date

Beside security reasons, having the latest version of Joomla core, extensions and templates is very important for your website performance. Usually the new version achieves some code improvements and work better than the old version.

3.Remove unused extensions

Each extension installed on Joomla is taking some system and database resources. Usually there are also some additional CSS and JS files loaded into the head section of your template which may increase the overall size of the whole website. A good practice is to keep only those extensions which are currently used on your site. If you often test new extensions, remember to uninstall them if you do not use them.

4.Enable Joomla caching

If caching is disabled, when a user visits a page, all data needs to be loaded on each page request. As you can imagine, such process takes some time. By enabling Joomla caching, if someone will visit your site for the first time, all data will be cached and stored as lighter and faster content that will be loaded for all the next visitors.
There are two main settings related to caching in Joomla.

Cache setting in Global Configuration

To enable Joomla caching go to System → Global Configuration → System and choose the caching method:
Available methods of caching:

• conservative – the same cached content is loaded for all visitors
• progressive – content is cached separately for each visitor

It is recommended to use the conservative method. The progressive method can be counterproductive if you have a lot of content and a lot of visitors.
Please note that Joomla caching can produce some issues related to extensions. There is additional setting available for each module that allows to turn off the caching. To disable Joomla caching for selected module, go to Extensions → Module Manager and choose a module. On the Advanced tab in the module parameters you can disable caching of the module content:
Another way to speed up your site directly from Joomla settings is compression. When compression is enabled, your site pages are downloaded as zip file and unpacked by browser. This way it is possible to reduce the content size over 50-70%.
To enable this option, go to System → Global Configuration → Server and choose Yes for the Gzip Page Compression

6. Optimize images

Usually, images take the biggest part of the overall website size and this is the main reason why they should be optimized. Take a look on the most important tips regarding image optimization:

• avoid using large images on your site
• do not scale images using HTML or CSS
• remember to add the width and height attributes for each image so browser will know their dimensions before downloading them
• do not put too many images on a single page
• use lossless or lossy compression to reduce the size of your images. Usually if you save images using Adobe Photoshop or Gimp, the image size can be still reduced without losing quality. Always remember that images from your camera should be resized and optimized before putting them on your site.

7. Optimize .htaccess

Another way to increase your site speed is tweaking the .htaccess file. Before you start, you need to make sure that you have renamed the htaccess.txt file to .htaccess and enabled the url rewriting in System → Global Configuration → Site

8. Optimize CSS, JS and HTML

Each template and extension load CSS and JS files that may block the content rendering since the browser must process all the files for the current page first. They also produce a number of HTTP requests. If you are using EF4 Framework you can easily compress and optimize CSS/JS files as well as the HTML output. How does it work?

• it merges all CSS and JS files so the number of requests will descrease
• it removes all unnecessary spaces, line breaks and comments to reduce file size

9. Tools to optimize Joomla website

In Joomla Extensions Directory you will find a number of optimize extensions. You may be interested in the following ones:

JCH Optimize

Probably the best optimize extension for Joomla. It allows to:

• combine CSS and JS files into one
• minify the combined files
• combine background images into a sprite
• minify the HTML output
• CDN support (pro version)
• load JS asynchronously (pro version)
• include CSS styles and JS from inline declaration blocks (pro version)
• and lot more

JBetolo

This is an alternative to JCH Optimize extension. It provides very similar features but it has some advantages over JCH Optimize, for example it provides CDN support in free version where JCH Optimize provides this option in paid version only.

ScriptMerge

Another solution that is worth to mention. It allows to compress CSS, JS and HTML code. There are also many other features that you may want to test on your site.

10. Use a Content Delivery Network

CDN is a large network of servers deployed in multiple data centers across the Internet. Using CDN you can serve all the static content (such as scripts, images, videos, music) to your visitors from the server which is in the nearest location to theirs.
CDN can be configured using the JCH Optimize and JBetolo extensions mentioned in the previous tip. There is also a lot more extensions for CDN available in Joomla Extensions Directory.

11. Mobile friendly optimization

It has been almost two months since Google launched a new mobile algorithm. It means that mobile friendly websites get a higher rank in the search results on mobile devices. That is not a surprise since over 50% of online traffic comes from mobile and tablet devices.

5 Tips to secure your Joomla website

Website security has become the talk of the internet. With security loopholes discovered almost every other day, we know you’re concerned about your website.
and this time we want to talk about a few tips to secure your Joomla website.

1. Updates: Your Joomla website and the supporting extensions should always be updated. Updates add more features or a security patch which is essential for your website in order to block any possible loop holes. These updates are generally very easy to install and won’t take much of your time. Think about this, it’s easy to update your website and it’s components than to figure what caused your website to crash and rebuild it again. Remember to take a backup before you apply the updates.
2. Delete unwanted extensions: Keep only those extensions that are required for your website, the rest need to be deleted. Many beginners tend to try a lot of extensions to see how it will help them with their website. Only a few extensions end up actually giving value to the website, the rest are just lying there with absolutely no additional benefit to the website. They simply take up your hosting space and can also become a potential threat to your website if they are not regularly maintained (updated).
3. Use strong login details: We are all aware that we need to set up strong passwords to secure the login page but we also need to setup an equally strong user name. The default usernames are generally ‘admin’ or ’administrator’ which are vulnerable to brute force attacks. Think of usernames as passwords and make it strong and not easy to guess. This way you’re adding another barrier for an attack on your website’s login gateway.
4. Setup right permissions: A very important tip to secure a Joomla website is setting up correct permissions for your website’s files and folders. We recommend setting the permissions of the folders to 755 and the files to 644. If you’re not aware on how to make changes to the permissions then you can check out this blog post.  Never use 777 for either your files or folders as this gives read, write and execute rights to everyone.
5. Security extensions: If you need an easy solution to take care of your website’s security then you can utilize one of the many security extensions available. You can try jSecure security extension, which covers a lot of security features that you will need to secure your Joomla website.

These tips should be good enough to give you a head start in securing your website. We would love to know of any security tips that have worked like a charm for you. Don’t forget to share them by leaving a comment below.

Tips To Speed Up Joomla Websites within 5 minutes

Whether you are running your personal blog or a enterprise level of Joomla eCommerce store, your heartiest exception sticks with highest pick of traffic and record breaking conversion, right?
To turn your dream into reality, there are plenty of technical aspects need to kick in along fresh and professional site contents. Without going to describe them all mediocrely, I am going to share proven tactics to speed up Joomla websites, which is considered one of the most significant ranking factors according to Google. Are thinking why speed is important?

Choose a reliable Web Host

Taking right decision while selecting best Joomla hosting is considered the key for adding lightning bolt speed in Joomla website. Thinking why? The files of your website are virtually hosted on a remote server. When a end user hits for your site URL in the browser address bar, and If it takes time to retrieve data from server to your end clients, definitely your site loading time is going to be increased and your are going to lose a significant amount of traffic. So what would be the best solution? To cover the question, we prepared a wonderful guide to select best Joomla hosting. I be your find them amazing, enjoy the reading.

Use updated Joomla and its extensions

Latest technologies includes new opportunity to keep your websites away from numerous limitations of past and add finest smoothness in the overall site performance. Whereas Joomla is growing everyday for open-source contribution, so the consequence presents us the frequent update of Joomla with possibilities of site speed, because each updated version comes with multiple code improvements. Same happens for 3rd party plugins, keep them updated to consolidated with your need.

Use must-have and remove unused extensions

The plugin based model for feature extension sometime loads unnecessary features and bloated codes in maximum CMS. Nothing different for Joomla. With several years of Joomla template development, I used many of tremendous Joomla extensions comes with awesome features. But your site may required to use single features, but other remain unused and become reason for poor site speed and conflict. So, remove the unnecessary plugins and install lightweight and need specific Joomla extensions.

Enable Joomla Caching

When you look for a website or its content in the browser, Browser sends request to the server to serve requested contents back. If you are using Joomla website, on the every page load or request browser retrieves associated plugins, components, modules, images and other more. It’s really a weightlifting work for site database. Suppose you have a website visited by 1000 visitors at a time, I bet your site loading get down to 5 to 10 seconds. What’s the solution to comprehend this issue?
The answer is - enable joomla caching. Caching allows to present pre-generated contents to the end users without annoying server all the time. In a cache enabled websites a saved “view” is offer to brower. If any content is changed or updated by site owners, users momentarily get older version of cached information, but after a defined interval, cache version gets update automatically.  Want to enable Joomla caching, just follow the beneath tutorial

To enable the Joomla caching, first head the System from Global Configuration, select ON - Conservative caching option from cache dropdown field, and select Save button.
To ensure Joomla caching system starts working correctly, you have to check whether core Joomla 3 plugin System - Cache is published or not. To check status of the plugin, head to the Plugin Manager from Extensions menu. search for System - Cache. If the plugin is enabled that would great, but not publish it on your own. Have a look in the following image.
Congratulation, Now Joomla caching system is running successfully.

Enable Gzip Compression

Gzip is the popular tool for file compression. It lessen the file size and helps to shrink server response time.
Yahoo says "Gzip is the most popular and effective compression method currently available and generally reduces the response size by about 70%. Approximately 90% of today's Internet traffic travels through browsers that claim to support gzip,"
To enable Gzip in Joomla! CMS, head over to Global configuration > server and click on option 'Yes' for Gzip compression.

Leverag speed using CDN

Content delivery network (CDN) is an incredibly simple way to supercharge your Joomla website. A CDN is an interconnected system of cache servers that use geographical proximity as a criteria for delivering Web content. If you enable a Content Delivery Network, your static files will not be served from the location of your web host, but from the global network of servers of your CDN provider.
In a CDN, multiple copy of your web contents strategically exists on disseminating servers, allow you to serve the same content to many requesting clients computing devices with high availability and high performance - even when bandwidth is limited or there are sudden spikes in demand. CDNs are especially well suited for delivering web objects (text, graphics and scripts), downloadable objects (media files, software, documents), applications (e-commerce, portals), live streaming media, on-demand streaming media, and social networks.
If you want to know which CDN provider is best suited for your Joomla website, read this detailed guide.

Summary

Speed up Joomla websites is the key to boost up conversion and sales simultaneously. I’ve discussed only the techniques worked for me precisely. If you think, I missed any of them, let me know in the comment below, I will add your recommendation to the above tips.

The Key Reasons Why Joomla is One of the Most Sought After CMSs

Joomla is a popular open-source content management system (CMS) used by millions around the world to build powerful websites and online applications. It is an award-winning solution, well-known for its user-friendly features. Joomla has been designed for easy set-up and simple kick-start, even for new users. Since it is easy-to-use, it can be used to quickly build dynamic websites. In this post, you will discover the reasons why businesses prefer Joomla CMS for their website development.

• It is open-source and is free to use under General Public License (GPL). It is a user-friendly and easily understandable CMS.
• Joomla is very popular and is used by worlds biggest and most well-known companies like Pizza Hut, Kelloggs, Sony and Ikea to list a few.
• It has a wide range of plugins and extensions for developers to build customized robust Joomla sites.
• Joomla websites are easier to maintain, allowing users to systematically manage the content, pages, images and more through a secured admin system.
• Joomla can easily be integrated with WordPress, which is one of the best blogging tools of the recent times.
• Joomla is an excellent platform to build responsive websites, giving users an enhanced experience across all the platforms.The sites built on Joomla are easily navigable. They can be properly organized and their layout can be made attractive for users.
• You can even start your online business through your Joomla site as it has several eCommerce components that can help you to efficiently manage your products, their images & description, shipping, payment gateways and more.
• Joomla is easy to install; it hardly takes a few minutes to get downloaded from internet. Once the installation is over, you can easily start using it.
• The framework behind Joomla is well organized and uses Model View Controller standard (MVC), thus ensuring robustness in the website.
• Joomla provides a variety of in-built SEO features to help your website get higher ranks in the major search-engines, thus driving more traffic to your site.
• It has a variety of attractive themes and templates, helping you to design impeccable website to entice visitors.
• Joomla is a secure platform to build websites with features like reCAPTCHA and UploadShield Code to prevent your site from malicious uploads and spam.
• Joomla is widely used by organizations of all sizes, different businesses and private as well as Government organizations. It can be used to build websites for small ventures to enterprise-level businesses.
• Joomla helps designing multi-lingual websites, thus helping you reach a broad range of audience.
  
• It is backed by large online user communities from where developers can easily get advice and tips. There are online tutorials also available, thus providing solutions to your queries quickly.

Joomla is thus one of the best CMSs available for businesses to build highly-intuitive and feature-rich websites. It also allows customization to a great extent, allowing you to have a website that caters to your precise business needs!
Semaphore Software is a world-class Joomla Development Company, with extensive experience in delivering high-quality Joomla websites.
Contact us through [email protected]. to get our comprehensive Joomla development services including Joomla website development and Joomla themes, extensions and plugins development!