Tips for Running a Large Website Using Joomla

@bwmarkle

Large Website?

What do you mean?

Lots

Staff

Traffic

How does

Inmotion hosting .com

compare?

google.com

craigslist.org

joomla.org

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'

]);

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

Give praise tothose whose writing

helps people.


Tip 1:

Take Google Analytics to the next level with Custom Variables and Event Tracking


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


Tip 2:

Don't talk to bad bots, it's a waste of precious resources.


Tip 2.5:

Check your work.

200404406500666


Tip 2.5:

Check your work.


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


Tip 3:

If you're not using Joomla's cache because of its pitfalls, find a work around.


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


Tip 4:

Joomla will not be upset if you don't use a built in component.


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


Tip 5:

Template overrides are awesome! Make sure you know about them.

@bwmarkle

Tips for Running a Large Website Using Joomla

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