You will be able to keep using your template, extension or training for as long as you wish.
After expiration, you will not receive any more updates, so you will not get new features or bug-fixes. You'll also lose access to Joomlashack support.
The two pieces to the puzzle to be successful with your membership website are expert help and guidance, and a powerful platform.
Keep reading and I'll tell you how you can get both, a world renowned expert who will teach you, and a complete powerful turnkey membership website, and you'll get the site free for life!
There are a few people whose every word I follow and try to incorporate into my business, and Brian Clark of CopyBlogger.com and Teaching Sells is one of them.
In 2008, Brian launched his Teaching Sells course. A complete guide to setting up and running and online paid membership websites. It was insanely popular, I joined up right when his doors opened, and so did people like Aaron Wall (of SEO Book).
After 2 rounds of students, Brian closed his doors and has been busy improving it, until now, when he has opened them up again. He only has 500 spots, and I reckon this course will soon be full and you'll have missed your chance. His last round sold out the 300 spots at $997 a pop in about 48 hours!
A group of Joomlaheads led by Alex Red has set out to answers these any many other questions about the size, depth, and characteristics of the Joomlaverse. Their site is www.joomla.me
Joomla.me is a directory of Joomla-powered websites. The team analyzes and makes some interesting claims using data from the directory, including:
So you want a website, and you have heard some of the buzz about open source.
Joomla, Drupal and Wordpress have all been mentioned, but you are lost and confused.
No problem, this guide is an easy 10 step process to getting started with building a website with Joomla and some insider tricks and tips to make sure you are making best use of it.
We are going to look at the following things:
Why do you need a website, and why use Joomla?
What actually is Joomla?
How do I install Joomla?
How should I set up my site?
Picking a Template
Organizing Content
Creating Navigation
How can I add features to my site?
How can I make Joomla better for SEO?
How do I keep my site updated, and what lies ahead (Joomla 1.6)
You think you need a website... but why?
Unless you have clear goals, your website will not have any focus, and not contribute to your organization's goals.
A restaurant might want to increase onsite foot traffic
A non-profit might want to increase donations
A consultant might want to increase sales leads
A school might want to communicate better with parents
But unless you identify your goals, you are building your site blindfolded!
But what shall I use?
Joomla, Drupal or Wordpress?
Joking aside, Joomla is an excellent solution that lies in the middle of Wordpress's ease of use and the flexibility of Drupal.
Joomla is an open source content management system.
So what does that mean?
Open Source means that anyone can contribute to the code, improve it, or distribute it. This means the platform is a living project being created and improved by a community of developers all over the world.
A content management system uses a database to place content into designated places on the web page. Its dynamic and in real time.
Let's look at a forum as an example
Joomla works the same way, the template creates "buckets" or "placeholders" for content, and then the CMS pours content into them as needed.
Here, the articles are being dynamically generated as well as the bottom lists of links.
Joomla is
Easy
Powerful
Cheap (not free!)
Barrie North's 80/20 rule
80% of what you want to do will take 20% of the effort
You don’t really know what your site visitors want
One of the hardest parts to Joomla is setting up the site. To start, there are so many options it an be overwhelming.
The three elements of a Joomla site are:
Template (the look and feel)
Content (the "beef")
Modules (the gravy round the outside)
Joomla comes with three templates:
Milky Way
Beez
Purity
To get started, just use one of these, then you can graduate to a 3rd party template of which there are thousands. You can get free ones or professional ones ranging from $25-$70
One of the challenges of open source is keeping up to date with the more frequent patches and security fixes. Someone on your team will have to know how to do these.
Joomla.org releases patches which are a bunch of files that need to be applied/ftp'ed onto your server.
Major releases come around every year or so with many new features. The current version is 1.5 and 1.6 will be released in the next 12 months.
There are some extensions and services that will keep you site updated for you.
This week we take another step in improving ourselves to better meet our customers needs.
We have launched our Uservoice feedback forum for the Joomlashack community. We want you to tell us what you'd like to see from Joomlashack, and we'll do our best to make it happen.
There are lots of email marketing services: iContact, Mailchimp, Aweber etc etc.
But I don't think there has been a scientific test and review of how well they deliver, all of them give their deliverability rates, but how can we compare them?
I need your help to do this very test and compare these services, here's how...
Last week the Joomla Project team released Joomla 1.5.12, codename "Wojmamni Ama Woi." No explanation for the Swahili meaning was given, but this version's various security and bug fixes are easily explained by checking out the project's 1.5.12 release.
The notes on Joomla.org points out that the version of the WYSIWYG editor TinyMCE received an important upgrade in this release, which reminded us to remind you that if you aren't using WYSIWYGPro, you're mising out on the best editor available for Joomla 1.5.
Nonetheless, be sure to do your updates early and often, as there are likely bad people out there trying to hack your Joomla site. You can also check out SecureJoomla, which will add another layer of protection on top of the great work by the Joomla Project guys.
