Ten Things to do after a new Joomla installation

Here are Ten Things that I do after a fresh Joomla installation, If you haven’t done this to your installation, you can always correct it !
Just kidding, its more like one of my Joomla best practice things…

1. Change the admin login name
2. Secure the Administration directory
3. Install SEF Patch
4. Install OpenSEF (or other SEF component)
5. Install Joomap component
6. Install JoomlaXplorer component
7. Create sitemap.xml
8. Disable statistics except search
9. Set Configuration file SEO on and place htaccess file and Fill Metatag Data
10. Change Configuration content basics and Close IT down!!

And I even through in a - Bonus installation Tip

1. First login to you back-end and go to user management, then choose the newly created admin and change the user name to your liking, but remember it !!
Click save , logout and login with the new user name, done.

2. Securing you administrator directory can mostly be done via you web hosting cpanel. And involves a user name and password, make it different than your login.
Read more on securing-your-administrator-directory-using-.htaccess-files

3. Installing the SEF patch of http://www.joomlatwork.com/ is just an upload of unzip files via FTP, but these files do wonders on your SEO efforts, still hoping this one gets into the core files.

4. Installing an SEF component is critical for you success in my opinion, but there are others who think the basic SEO option for Joomla 1.0.x is enough.
My favorite still if OpenSEF but there are others out there that can do a nice job for you, but please use one…

5. Joomap is a sitemap component, one of the best.
Configuration is kept simple, just set the order of the menu’s to appear and make a link to it in one of your menu’s.
Very user and Search Engine Friendly….

6. JoomlaXplorer is a great tool is you need to do some file handling on-line.
You can use it to edit almost any file if you need to, and if you have the rights to do so..

7. Using the sitemap.xml file for Google and Yahoo, Live is lagging behind on this one.
It is a file in which you list all your content for a Search Engine robot to read.
You can create one, with a simple editor like notepad, just open it, and save the file under the name sitemap.xml and upload it to your domain root.
Set the security to 707 (read and write access) and a component like OpenSef or Joomap to fill it…in both cases change the configuration to point to your sitemap.xml file.
OpenSEF does give nice clean URLs in the file.

8. Now this might just seem a but strange, but I do some things in the global configuration.:-)
First one is to disable some statistics functions, on the Tab Statistics you find three options, You will only need the one “Log search strings” set to Yes, both others go to No.
This will reduce your loading time of th site, because you don’t have to write all that stuff to the database. Use external counter like http://www.statcounter.com/ instead.

9. Af course you need to make sure the SEO tab is set, use both options and make sure you have the right .htaccess file to match your SEF Component !!
Dynamic titles you really need set to ON, otherwise all you Page titles are the same!
Fill the Metatags option and set the values to ON. (Use the SEF patch as well!!)

10. The best part to change is the content tab:
These settings are largely depending on how you are going to create and present the content of you website.
I like having “Linked Titles” set to yes for SEO purpose.
The PDF is always set to Off, because you don’t want Google to index the PDF created pages. They are dead ends if it comes to reading the site, just try a PDF created page and see what I mean..
Once your done, save it can change the permissions to 604 (Apache read write and Public read)

Joomla Global configuration Items

Now you are ready to Build you site, fill it with meaning full content Make it Beautiful with an SEO Optimized template and use the Sitemap component to tell Google and Yahoo when you think you have enough to get crawled….

Bonus Tip: You could give the Joomla Plugin JoomlaFCK a try, doesn’t cost anything except a short time to install, but it brings great editing power for your content creation….

You are welcome to share other best practices you can think off, I always like to learn more about Joomla!

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