Make mini sites with Joomla CMS

While almost everyone has heard of minisites by now if they know anything about internet marketing, very few people have considered using a free, open source CMS or content management system, like Mambo or Joomla, which is based on the Mambo code, to produce minisites.

What are the advantages of using a CMS like Joomla to quickly create and deploy minisites on the Internet?

1. Joomla is easy to use and you can use thousands of free CSS-based templates that support the latest standards and have a live site in hours, not days.

2. Joomla supports easy wysiwyg or what you see is what you get visual editors that allow you to set up and add content to a site as easily as using a word processor on your desktop computer. What this means is that your site is compatible with the latest web 2.0 standards and you can easily and quickly grow in content without having to redevelop your website from scratch.

3. Joomla has thousands of extensions and you can easily produce websites that rival sites that cost tens of thousands of dollars for nothing. You can easily add membership sites, photo galleries, streaming video, audio, chat, and forums, as well as rich blogs. In short, everything to make your site “sticky” and keep attracting those visitors again and again.

4. Joomla makes changing the look and feel of your site very easy as you can change your template and quickly change the look and feel of your website in just minutes, allowing you to update your site from time to time.

5. Joomla is continuously updated and is now releasing a beta version called 1.5. Most people are still working on 1.03 or so, but it’s nice to know that future updates are available.

6. Joomla is now compatible with many hosting services and can be installed via Fantastico scripts with just one click. There is a user manual and several video packages that show you how to make templates and set up membership sites for profit.

7. Joomla and most of its extensions or plugins are free and open source, so it is cheap to get a very professional web presence on the Internet.

Despite all the advantages, it will take a few weeks to get used to the new methodology of using a CMS to manage and deploy your websites, unless you are used to building websites from your browser. However, once you get the hang of it, you’ll never want to go back to the slow and laborious system of building and uploading desktop websites.

I recommend that you go to one of the sites called Joomlatutorials.com and follow the tutorials right after installing Joomla and before doing any work on your own site. Basically, you start with a template that you get for free from the largest free site template repository called http://www.joomla24.com. They have over 1,500 free templates that you can get started with. Alternatively, you can go with one of the many commercial template companies that offer a variety of paid templates that you can modify and convert on your site.

Once you select the template, you need to change the permissions on your template and the media areas of your template section in Joomla in your public html directory so that you can make changes to the template and the appropriate files.

You can do this within joomla or more often from cpanel using your file manager functions and setting the file permissions to 777 for folders and 666 for files.

You must obtain a login from your hosting company after installation in order to access the administrators section from which you manage and create the site and make changes and add content to the site.

After login, go to templates section in site admin and click new.

You are then presented with a dialog asking you to navigate to your computer and choose the site template which should be in zip format and upload the template to your site. After a few minutes, if it’s successful, and it tells you, and then you click continue. Your site’s template will then be listed with the other default templates. Click the radio button to make the template you installed the default template.

Then you click the radio button to select the default template and then click html to edit the html of the template page. You’ll be looking for the image files on the page.

As you can see you need to study html and I would especially study CSS or tables and cascading style sheets so you know how to place things on the page. In either case, you should find the header graphic and replace it with a header graphic of your logo or a header image for your site.

You need to make sure that the graphic is slightly smaller than the size provided so that the header graphic or logo will display without disturbing the layout of the template or page. You must upload using an ftp program like Transmit or Filezilla the image file you want to use for your logo or header image. Once you find the joomla folder in the public html folder, you need to click on it to find the templates folder. Inside that is an images folder. You should upload your chosen image to that folder. If possible, it should be a .jpg or .gif file in the same format as the one used in the template. Once the image appears in the file, your next job is to change the html in the html file and replace it with the name of the image you uploaded. Then when you raise your [http://www.sitename/joomla] your front page should display your graphic logo or header file.

You then need to unpublish those buttons on the front page that you don’t need. You go to the main menu section and unpublish everything but the home button. You will need to go to the joomla extensions page and go to the menu section and find a menu extension that allows you to use images or other files to configure your menus. Then you’ll have the proper file extension ready when it’s time to link your menus, which is the last step in setting up your website.

One thing you can do now is find out what extensions or extras you will need on your website. You can have a direct mini-site, but you’ll do better in the search engines and in the eyes of your visitors if you have a theme-based content site and not just a sales page. If you add a chat client, forum, and blog to your site, you’ll find that your visitors engage with the site and keep coming back. The more they are on your site, the better the chances that they will buy what you have to offer, whether it be an affiliate offer, an ebook, or a membership.

Go through each section of the extensions. Especially the graphic section where all the advertising extensions of the banners are. You can monetize the site with banner and/or text ads that will bring additional money to the site. It is true that if you use AdSense on your site, your site will appear earlier in search engines. There are several AdSense modules. You will need to add docman or Remository if you are going to set up files for download on your site. Community builder or AEC will serve you well if you are setting up a membership site. You will need one of the wsiwyg content editors in the content and news section so that you can edit your pages easily and quickly. You must set your wysiwyg editor as your default editor for Joomla. Then, when you go to add content, you can quickly and easily edit your pages. You need to go to the Blog section and add X-Blogg to edit your blog offline and download one of the blog programs to easily set up and run a blog from your site. You will need to add one of the payment processors and/or a shopping cart to your site if you are going to sell products from your site. Once you have added all the extensions, be it a component, a module or a mambot, you are ready to move on to the next step.

Next, you’ll start adding the sections you’ll need to your site. You’ll then add categories to sections until you’ve divided your site into one organized entity. Then, you’ll edit the main page using the content editor and the wysiwyg editor that you’ve made the default content editor. You will add images and add articles so that everything is done to your satisfaction. Use polls, banners, and AdSense or other text ads for your affiliate programs on the front page in a rotating banner or rotating ad program. That way, you can keep track of where most of your sales are coming from. Keep adding articles and other sections to your site until it’s done. Don’t forget to add sales pages for each of the affiliate products or opportunities you’re promoting. You will then add a thank you page for any downloads you need to offer, ebooks or software. You will need to configure the extension and add thumbnails or links for which you need to download products.

Once you’re all set up, double check all of your images and the spelling of all of your articles. Check your links and make sure everything is in order. Make sure your shopping cart is working properly by adding sample products and ordering them. Make sure all forms are working properly to add your visitors to your subscription list.

Add your newsletter buttons and configure your shipments. Set up your automatic responses to any order or request for your newsletters. I suggest setting up your newsletters in an archive section on your site so people can download them from the site in case your newsletter is eaten up by your spam filter.

Once everything looks good, publish your pages.

Congratulations, your site is now active. He writes two articles in his area of ​​expertise a day and he will have over 100 articles in a year circulating all over the net earning him money. Simply submit articles to article directories and it will add a signature file mentioning your expertise and your main website. Like I said, if you do this on hundreds of sites, you’ll soon see a flood of traffic to your site and the money will follow! Joomla Greetings for the holidays!