Tips for Running a Large Website Using Joomla
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@bwmarkle
Large Website?
What do you mean?
Lots
Staff
Traffic
How does
Inmotion hosting .com
compare?
google.com
# 1
craigslist.org
# 49
joomla.org
# 431
Inmotion hosting .com
# 1,596
OK, so we're not in the top 100 sites or anything like that....
But we get a good amount of traffic.
Tips for Running a Large Website Using Joomla
Tip 1:
Take Google Analytics to the next level with Custom Variables and Event Tracking
What is a Custom Variable?
Name + Value
Mark Twain
Author Ernest Hemingway
Edgar Allan Poe
Name + Value
John-Paul Briones
Author Jeff Matson
Brad Markle
How to use Custom Variables?
It's just 1 line of javascript
OK. 1 line of code. But how?
… just look at our source
_gaq.push(['_setCustomVar',5,'Author','BradM'
]);
$this->item->author
How do you see Custom Variables in Analytics?
Key or Value?
Custom Variable (Key 5)
Custom Variable (Value 05)______________________
John-Paul
Author Jeff
Brad
Great!
1. Custom Variable is setup
2. We know how to access variable in Analytics
Now what?
Question:
Which author brings in the most traffic?
Start off with traffic ...
… then add your authors
Question:
Which author brings in the most traffic?
This guy!
That's me!
but seriously....
Question:
Which author has the most social shares?
Custom Variables
What is Event Tracking?
_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','chat','launch'
]);
This is our button,“Chat with us”
When someone clicks on it,An event has just occurred.
How do you see Events in Analytics?
_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','chat','launch'
]);
_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','chat','launch'
]);
Explore Analytics
See what you can find, like....
Which pages do users click “chat” on the most?
Custom Variables
Event Tracking
Custom Variables &Event Tracking together?
Custom Variables &Event Tracking together?
With this data you can...
Strike down yourwriters causing the
most chats
Or...
Give praise tothose whose writing
helps people.
Tips for Running a Large Website Using Joomla
Tip 1:
Take Google Analytics to the next level with Custom Variables and Event Tracking
Tips for Running a Large Website Using Joomla
Tip 2:
Don't talk to bad bots, it's a waste of precious resources.
Bot Activity
How much bot activity does your site get?
Bots may crawl your site looking forindex.php?title=something
February 2014
we had how much mediawiki bot traffic?
A: 1,000B: 10,000C: 100,000D: 1,000,000
What were they looking for?
index.php?title=Auto_Insurance_In_Jacksonville_-_This_Month:_Get_Car_Insurance_In_Jacksonville_At_up_to_Half-Price
index.php?title=A_Bit_More_About_Los_Angeles_Car_Insurance
index.php?title=Special:UserLogin&type=signup
100,006 hits / monthto pages that don't exist...
….So what?
100,006 hits * 27 queries each
2,700,162 queries / month
BLOCK THE BOTS
● .htaccess● Php● ModSecurity
Bots.... another example
From our apache logs....
"POST /support/community-support/joomla-25/index.php?option=com_jce&task=plugin&plugin=imgmanager&file=imgmanager&method=form&cid=20&6bc427c8a7981f4fe1f5ac65c1246b5f=cf6dd3cf1923c950586d0dd595c8e20b HTTP/1.1" 400 232 "-" "BOT/0.1 (BOT for JCE)"
Basically... It's a URL for JCE
We don't use JCE, but...
February 2014, we had...
80,975 requests that in the URL had
BOT for JCE or option=com_jce
Tips for Running a Large Website Using Joomla
Tip 2:
Don't talk to bad bots, it's a waste of precious resources.
Tips for Running a Large Website Using Joomla
Tip 2.5:
Check your work.
200404406500666
Tips for Running a Large Website Using Joomla
Tip 2.5:
Check your work.
Tips for Running a Large Website Using Joomla
Tip 3:
If you're not using Joomla's cache because of its pitfalls, find a work around.
Things to Watch When Using Page Caching
● It does not apply to the Administrator. OK● It only applies to guest visitors (not logged in).
OK● Page caching does not work if Debug Site in
Global Configuration is set to Yes. OK● Articles hits will not increase when page
caching is turned on (making any sorting options on hits ineffective). NOT OK
We enabled cache...
We loved it!
… so far so good
Google is seeing our page download almost twice as fast!
The major problem for us...
If Joomla Caching is enabled
Then # hits per article doesn't increase
Hmm...
So how do we
increase page hits
when caching is enabled?
We gotan idea!
First...
We told Joomla to stop increasing page hits.
… we'll take care of it ourselves.
We created a file....
increase_hits.phpThat if sentan article id....
1234
Will add 1 to `hits`
increase_hits.php
Pages served
from cache
Pages served
fresh
Article – ID:1234
Regardless of:
Page = cached
Page = NOT cached
Hits will increase in the database
Great, article hits increase!
But, hits shown is still cached.
166,351 166,352 166,353
increase_hits.php
increase_hits.php
166,351
Regardless of:
Page = cached
Page = NOT cached
Hits will increase on the front end
Tips for Running a Large Website Using Joomla
Tip 3:
If you're not using Joomla's cache because of its pitfalls, find a work around.
Tips for Running a Large Website Using Joomla
Tip 4:
Joomla will not be upset if you don't use a built in component.
● Anchor Text● All vs. Exact● Articles graded higher than Forum
Tips for Running a Large Website Using Joomla
Tip 4:
Joomla will not be upset if you don't use a built in component.
Tips for Running a Large Website Using Joomla
Tip 5:
Template overrides are awesome! Make sure you know about them.
We use template overrides to
quickly
whip up
helpful tools
for our customers...
How to create a “tool” in
2 easy steps...
Step 1
Step 1. Create the Override
/templates/TEMPLATE/html/com_content/article/whois.php
Step 2
Step 2. Create the Article
An den?........
ifthen
But....
Do not use that code in my last slide...
It's not safe
Tips for Running a Large Website Using Joomla
Tip 5:
Template overrides are awesome! Make sure you know about them.
@bwmarkle