The other night at the Atlanta Joomla Meetup, one of the topics was how to prepare Joomla and your server for the wave of traffic for an upcoming Groupon Deal.

There were several good suggestions and great discusion about the business case for Groupon.  However, we did not get around to summarizing what technical changes should be done to your Joomla site to prepare for the wave of Groupon traffic.  

I thought I would put some of my thoughts together from the evening.

Like most Joomla Users I was very excited to see that Joomla 1.6 has been released.  Contgratulations to the entire Joomla 1.6 volunteer team.

 So after the holidays I started to put together and play with my first Joomla 1.6 site and I found that many of my favorite extensions were not available yet.

 This post wil be a place where I keep tabs on the status of the standard extensions I use on Joomla sites.  Some of them you may use and some you may not.  If you would like and extension added to the list contact me and  I will see what I can do.

Extensions I use on most of my Joomla sites as a base install.

I got tired of trying to remember all the different Joomla places I would go, so I put them all into this blog post.

See something that should be added?  Let me know.

With Google Reader working very well on my iPhone, it was time to get my Joomla news feeds just right.

Here are some of the Best Joomla Blogs and Resources that I subscribe to:

If you work with Joomla sites long enough you have the need to add a module position or two to get the functionality required. Adding a new module position can seem complicated but it is actually pretty simple.  Only two template files are modified in the process.

The more html and css you know the better the process will be. 

Paper Shredder Reviews has completed a double upgrade.  Intown Web Design took the site from Joomla 1.0 and jReviews 1.2 to Joomla 1.5 and jReviews 2.0.  We have seen big improvements in features traffic and conversions.

Are there more paid extensions than free extensions for Joomla?
Do you have to spend money on extensions to get a good Joomla site? 

This topic come up a few times recently.

There are many more paid extensions than before. There are also many more Joomla extensions than before. Is having more paid extension options a bad thing?

Intown Web Design has teamed up with JoomlaTraining to create a Joomla SEO classand learning experience on Friday, June 19, 2009.

This full day class is a mixture of round table discussions where your web site is the focus and SEO talks with real world examples. 

We are always looking for the best, most efficient way to manage Joomla. Recently we researched the methods to manage meta data in Joomla 1.5. We found two main options: sh404 meta management and the SEF Patch from Joomla to work.

Following in the theme of our favorite Joomla extensions is RSForm Pro from RSJoomla. RSForm is a form creation component that will fit almost any set of requirements. We use RSForm Pro on both personal and client websites. In fact it is our default go to form extension.

Ever need to display the content of a module in an article? I have, and Joomla provides this functionality. Just add or what ever module position you want to display directly to your article. The article now displays with the embedded module information. I have recently found a plugin that does an even better job: Modules in Content.

Intown Web Design is pleased to announce:

iPhone Speaker Reviews http://www.iphonespeakerreviews.com

I have built and continue to build lots of Joomla sites.  Experience and a need for efficiency, have lead me to develop a system that allows me to quickly create new Joomla web sites with all my favorite extensions pre-configured.

This systems uses a Joomla install as a base or a seed site.  All standard components are added and configured here.  Then JoomlaPack is used to back up and restore the site to a new location.  The seed site is then kept up to date with security fixes and code updates.

The other day I stumbled upon several extensions that I had hoped for but did not know they existed, comparison chart and table creation extensions.  These extensions alow your to set up and create grids of information. 

I found three  options:  JE Comparison Charts, Elearning Force Comparison Charts, and Event Table Edit.  They all to a pretty good job, none of them cover all the requirements I was hoping for, but could be a huge time saver from many.

I recently received some good questions about jReviews and earning money from web advertising. I have posted the reply so that others could learn.