How to Change Your Joomla Favicon

The word "favicon" is short for "favorites icon", and it is the 16x16-pixel icon that is associated with your website and appears in the browser address bar and favorites menu (and in Firefox and Internet Explorer 7, it also appears on the browser tab). For this website, I am using the default Joomla! favicon because this site is a site about Joomla! The image below shows what your browser's address bar should look like when visiting this site.

How to Change Your Joomla Favicon

All Joomla! installations come with that favicon installed, and a common mistake by many webmasters is to ignore the favicon, thereby keeping the default Joomla! icon for their site. Unless your site is about Joomla, you should not be using the default favicon. A good habit to get into when developing sites with Joomla! is to change the favaicon and use something more fitting for your site, like your logo. This article will explain how to create a favicon and then how to replace the default icon with your icon.

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Quick Tip: Buy this book

As you may know, I have been working with JoomlaShack for close to a year now. Before I started working with JoomlaShack, I knew about Barrie North from CompassDesigns.net and JoomlaShack. I knew about him because he has provided loads of free tutorials for the Joomla! community on his website. I learned much of what I know about template development from his Joomla! template tutorial.

Barrie is selling his 100+ page e-book, The Joomla! Admin Manual, at his website for $27. If you're like me, and you know the high quality of the tutorials produced by Barrie, then you know that $27 for a 100+ page e-book written by Barrie is a real bargain. I strongly encourage you to take a look at his site and decide whether or not this book is for you.

How to make your site more secure

I am not a security expert, so I am always on the lookout for information that will help me keep my site more secure. Today, I came across a couple of great tutorials from Joomla-Addons.org that explain ways to make your site more secure. Check them out.

While you're there, check out some of the many extensions that they have created. Thanks for all of your hard work, Joomla-Addons.org!

How to turn on SEF URL's

SEF URL's are just a way to make your URL's look nice. The default SEF URL functionality in Joomla! takes URL's that look like this:

"index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=40&ampitemid=29"

and makes them look like this:

"content/view/40/29/"

This article will show you how to turn on the basic SEF URL functionality built into Joomla!, and it will also provide a list of SEF URL extensions that you can use to gain further control over your URL's. For this article, I am assuming that you are running your website on an Apache web server.

Read more: How to turn on SEF URL's

Joomla! Jargon

Dictionary.com defines jargon like this:

1. jargon: -noun, the language, esp. the vocabulary, peculiar to a particular trade, profession, or group: medical jargon.

It also defines jargon like this:

2. jargon: -noun, unintelligible or meaningless talk or writing; gibberish.

Joomla!'s roots go back a few years, and it definitely has a language all its own. Seasoned veterans are fluent in Joomla! jargon, but for "newbies", that second definition is probably the most appropriate definition for what Joomla! jargon really is. For that reason, I have decided to attempt to compile a list of the most commonly used words and/or phrases in Joomla!, and give them a definition that actually means something to a non-veteran Joomla! user.

Read more: Joomla! Jargon

Joomla! 1.0.11 User Manual

Just in time for Joomla! 1.5, the documentation team has released the Joomla! 1.0.11 User Manual (link to large pdf file). Better late than never, right? I haven't had a chance to read through it yet, but it's 183 pages long, so I'm guessing it's pretty thorough.