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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. We recently shared a few easy ways to secure a  Drupal website and this time we want to talk about a few tips to secure your Joomla website.

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.

When it comes to Joomla, we all know that it is not one of the easiest Content Management Systems to work with. But thanks to a large number of Extensions, creating your website with Joomla is much easier now. We went through a large number of available extensions and would like to share with you our list of the top 10. All the extensions mentioned below are free to use except for the Jsitemap. Do remember that the below list is not in any order of ranking and each extension has its own capabilities.

1. Content Builder
This has been considered to be one of the best Content Construction Kit for Joomla today. Very easy to install and get started. The primary role of Content Builder is to structure Joomla content while preserving the Layouts. You could do a lot more with this extension including image galleries, classified ads, contact forms, paid content etc. Content Builder also offers an easy to use form builder which can be linked to any database of your choice.
2. SH404SEF
SH404SEF is the best Search Engine Optimization extension for Joomla. There aren’t too many extensions for SEO building but we think SH404SEF fills this gap. The most important element of this extension is to convert long obscure URLs to keyword rich SEO friendly URLs. Google Analytics support is also included in the extension.
3. K2
Joomla is a great CMS with many advantages but content editing has always been its downfall. But thanks to the K2 extension, article and page creation is now an easier task. Other notable features of K2 are video management, comments, tags, drag and drop media manager etc, which makes it a must have extension for your projects.
4. JCE
This is the Joomla community’s favorite WYSIWYG editor. You don’t need to know complicated coding to edit the pages, thanks to JCE. If you’re very new to the Joomla CMS, then this is a must have extension, for your projects.
5. Jtouch
This extension allows Joomla Website owners to add responsive web design template for mobile devices. It is light weight and compatible with most mobile platforms like Android, iOS, Windows etc. It is extremely easy to get started, thanks to the extensive documentation. So if you are looking to make your website mobile friendly, then this is the extension for you.
6. Akeeba Backup Core
Akeeba has introduced a host of extensions for Joomla, but the one that stands out is the Akeeba Backup Core. Its primary functionality is to take a backup of the site that can be restored on any Joomla capable server. It also supports backing up of the website to popular cloud storage platforms like Dropbox.
7. Component Creator
This Joomla extension was built with a purpose of allowing you to easily develop components. A component is a kind of Joomla extension or you could simply call them mini applications. The Component creator is a builder that allows you to generate a Joomla component in minutes, which is ready to use and fully functional. If you want to save time building those complex components, then this is the right extension.
8. AllVideos
This is an all in one multimedia management solution that you would need when you are using Joomla to build your website. Embedding of videos and even sound clips from some of the popular services like YouTube, SoundCloud, Vimeo etc have become very simple, thanks to this extension. AllVideos also has fully responsive video players, thus making it suitable for the content to be displayed on mobile devices as well.
9. Jsitemap
This extension is a one stop shop for all sitemaps (Video, Image, News and Mobile). You can customize your site maps and once set up; you can automatically make them available to be indexed with popular search engines. It deserves a 5 star rating, for the ease of use and prompt support. This extension is definitely worth your money.
10. Kunena – forum solution for Joomla
If you’re looking for a good forum for you website then, Kunena is the ideal solution for you. Kunena is an open source solution and may not be perfect as other forum extensions like phpBB, but it’s the only one that provides a fully native integration.

There are so many others that are worth a mention, but these 10 extensions truly deserve to be in our top list for the kind of functionality, ease of use, support system and regular updates. If you have not used any of these extensions, then you should definitely try them out and see if it will be handy for your projects.
Do share with us any Joomla extensions that you have tried and deserve a mention here.

For those of which are unfamiliar with what a CMS is, or what it can be used for. A CMS is computer software that is used in organizing and collaborating the creation of content and other documents. CMS is a combination of large database, File System, and other related software modules, which are used to store and retrieve huge amounts of data when required.

These web-publishing systems are different from the databases in the sense that these can index text, audio clips, video clips, or images in a database. So Content Management Systems are one of the most significant ways a company can improve its website effectiveness, and simply being able to edit your own website without any HTML knowledge needed.

Joomla versus WordPress

As I stated previously the two heavy-weights we have decided to review today are 2 of the most notorious CMS systems out there: Joomla vs WordPress. Although, we have vast experience in both each have their benefits and disadvantages.

Joomla

Joomla is open source solution for CMS (content Management System) which helps you to build Web sites and powerful online applications. Joomla is easy to use and good for extensibility, this made Joomla the most popular Web site software available. Best thing is that, Joomla is an open source solution that is freely available to everyone. It is extremely robust and there are a TON of extensions readily available for Joomla at: Joomla Exensions

Web Applications Developed With the Help of Joomla
E-commerce websites or portals
Online publications websites
Corporate website or portals
Small business websites
Government and NGO websites
School and collages websites
Personal websites

Advantages and Disadvantages with using Joomla

Joomla Pros

• Full fledged CMS
• More powerful and robust
• Admin Users and PW protected areas
• Admin much more than just articles
• SEO Friendly, with SEF plugin
• Overall more under the hood

Joomla Cons

• Bigger learning curve
• Not SEO friendly out of the box
• Slower loading times
• Javascript and CSS can get bulky

WordPress Blog

WordPress is most popular open-source and free blogging software. WordPress is written in PHP using MySQL. It has grown to be the largest self-hosted blogging tool in the world, used on hundreds of thousands of sites and seen by tens of millions of people every day. We’ve found that WordPress works MAGIC with blogs, but lacks as a primary CMS (in our eyes) – but they’re getting much closer!

Web Applications Developed With the Help of WordPress

• Free Powerful personal publishing system
• Customize Template driven design
• File/picture uploading
• Differentiated between Categories
• Allowed html tags
• Password protection
• Allow Meta tags

WordPress offers many more features. WordPress is undoubtedly the most popular platform today for content management or blogging. WordPress is a giant of the industry. With the largest plug-in and theme collection of any platform on the market. WordPress is the easiest when it comes to installing in any system and incredibly easy to use and expand.

Advantages and Disadvantages with using WordPress

WordPress Pros

• Excellent blogging software right out of the box
• SEO Friendly right out of the box
• Easier Installation
• Friendlier graphical user interface (GUI)
• Administrate articles, comments, and blogs easier
• Lightweight and easy to use

WordPress Cons

• Articles are more “bloggy” sorted by publich dates
• Limited on components / extensions
• Lightweight / limited on power
• Limited on Administration of other portions

This article has been provided courtesy of designzillas.com

With SpeedHost.in you get access to cPanel which enables you to use Fantastico which is the number one program for 1 click installs to over 51 different scripts like, Blogs, CMS, Classifieds, Chat etc.

To install Joomla using Fantastico, log into your cPanel.

1. Click Fantastico.

2. Click Joomla 1.5 and then click on New Installation.

3. To install on the main domain (e.g www.domain.com) leave the ‘Install on Domain’ as is but if you want to install Joomla to a sub domain, you will have to create a subdomain first and then come back to this page to complete the install. To install in a directory (e.g domain.com/joomla) you can enter the name of the directory in the form and it will create the directory for you.

4. Press the Install Joomla 1.5 button and it will automatically setup up everything for you including creating a database.