6 Common Website Redesigning Mistakes To Avoid In Joomla

Common Problems With Joomla
Common Problems With Joomla

Amid the crowd of different Content Management Systems, Joomla is the second most popular CMS after WordPress with almost 7% state in the market. There are several entrepreneurs who use this robust CMS with because of several reasons.

Creating a Joomla website with great architecture, awesome usability, clean code and optimized images, etc, is not a rocket science. Anyone who has a good command over different programming languages and website building skills can easily make eye-pleasing and professional Joomla websites for personal and professional use.

When a website is used with a business point of view, it demands customization and redesigning from time-to-time to work properly and meet the rapidly growing expectations of its owner or admin.

To redesign a website, you need to have a carefully designed blueprint in advance. It helps you to redesign your Joomla website easily and effortlessly. While redesigning websites, web developers, especially the new ones, make several mistakes.

All these blunders take a toll on Joomla websites in the long run and they don’t perform (in terms of SEO ranking, website traffic, downloading of premium content or other E-products, generation of sales/leads) as per the client’s expectations. Just have a look at top 5 website redesigning mistakes that every web designer must avoid while revamping Joomla websites.

1. Updating Website To the Latest Version

Website update to the latest version of Joomla while keeping the old site in a Backup Folder.

When you upgrade your website to the latest version of Joomla, you also have to update it security features knowingly or unknowingly. While updating websites, almost all developers use a backup of the old website to avoid the sudden loss caused by the human error or technical glitches. There is nothing wrong with it.

There are many individuals who place the backup of the old website on the same server on which new website is hosted. They do this by using a folder called ‘OLD-SITE’. When you take this step, the old version of your website (with several security flaws) remains active on the same server. It exposes your new website to hackers and they can easily hack it using security loopholes.

Solution:

It is a good idea to backup your old website. But, you should store it locally on a computer or third-party storage applications. Never store it on the server you use to run your new website.

2. No Image Optimization At All

Images are widely used on all modern websites. They help visitors to comprehend the text content easily and take the desired action accordingly. The success of E-commerce website depends largely on image optimization. If you use too many unoptimized images on your website, it will become slow. So, visitors will start leaving your website sooner or later, which is a direct setback to your web-based business. One of the biggest disadvantages of Joomla is that it doesn’t offer any feature for image optimization. So, it’s your duty to take do the job.

Solution

So, you must choose the right image format, trim it appropriately with the help of free online tools. Never forget to add relevant ALT attributes to the images used on your website. It allows search engines to understand the meaning of image contents and display them in search results as per user’s demand. If you optimize images successfully, your website becomes fast and lots of business opportunities come in your way. If you are not able to do so, Joomla web development services, offered by different IT companies, can help you in this regard.

3. External & Internal Links are Opening In The Same Window

Almost all website owners use external and internal links on their sites to give readers more useful information about any topic, encourages them to spend more time the site, improve the SEO ranking of websites, Gives your readers other helpful resources besides your blog, Positions you as well-connected and informed about your industry, Creates connections with others in your industry, etc. Successful internal and external linking strategy gives you immense benefits in terms of business opportunities you make.

But all benefits of external and internal linking will go in vain if those links are opening in the same window. Visitors will go away from the homepage of your website and leave it ultimately without giving you any business.

Solution:

Redesign your Joomla website in such a way that all external and internal links should open in a new window,

4. Making Customization on Live Site

I agree that customization makes your site unique and it’s necessary for any type of website. However, that type of thing should only be done in a test site, not a live one. Imagining visiting a website and it has a weird dumb content slider on the homepage – then after some minutes the slider disappears – isn’t that weird and confusing?

Solution

Build a test site and always make changes on test site first to see how is it going to look. Only after the code and customization are good enough for you, put it on live site (if you’re careful, choose the time when there is less traffic so the changes won’t affect too many people).

5. Overwriting Joomla core

Why hack Joomla core? It’s because you’re a mighty developer? Because you a person with full of freedom and can do whatever you want?

Sorry, you can do whatever you want with Joomla, except for hacking Joomla core – which means customize the Joomla core code for your need. Changing Joomla core will cause many conflicts and unexpected problems when you update Joomla versions as well as other third-party Joomla products like Joomla templates and extensions.

Solution

Never hack Joomla core. Never reinvent the wheel. It’s the stupidest thing to do.

If you need any features for your Joomla website, you’d better use a Joomla extension to help you. There are more than 7,000 extensions on JED and I’m sure you’ll have extensions for all of your website’s needs.

For the User Interface and the look of your website, you can safely use a convenient template override, though.

6. Using too many Joomla extensions at once

The more Joomla extensions you use, the more features you have. And it makes your Joomla website look cool, powerful and enormous.

You probably think so, right?

Sadly, using too many Joomla extensions at once just gets your website in trouble of incompatibility issues. Plus, it makes your site loading speed sluggish too.

Solution

Joomla is a very powerful system with many functionalities to run your website, so consider carefully before using any installing any Joomla extension. It’s the best for you to dig into what Joomla can do first.

Final Words:

These are top 5 common website redesigning mistakes that you must avoid while redesigning Joomla.

About The Author:

Marie Thomas is a WordPress developer by profession and Writer hobby. She works for Wordsuccor Ltd., that is one of the best Joomla to WordPress Conversion services based in the USA. If you need to hire a WordPress developer you can contact them on Google+Facebook, and Twitter.