How To Edit Images On Joomla
I just wanted to make some notes about editing images for the web. A few users have had trouble with it. And I often take what I know for granted, because I deal with these things on a daily bases. So it may be basic for some of you, but hopefully someone finds it useful.
Joomla!’s media manager doesn’t do much in the way of image editing, none in fact. It’s not facebook. You’re expected to upload images at the correct width and height. And its up to you to control the file size of the image. Even if it did manipulate images for us, its still good to know a little about the different image types, especially if you’re maintaining a website.
A few of our users have been uploading 500Kb PNG images for articles. That’s about half a MB or the size of a small Youtube clip. Not ideal for an article. Years ago when internet speeds were slower, Gerben Hoekstra was recommending that file sizes shouldn’t exceed 25Kb http://www.weballey.net/html/plaatjes.html He has some practical advise for beginners and is responsible for getting me into HTML before XHTML came out. He also said you should only use JPG or GIF file types, because not all browsers supported PNG. This was because Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 6 (IE 6) couldn’t support the transparency of the PNG (when all other browsers could). PNG can actually be a great file type, when used for the right graphic. I might get into that in another article though. And at the time of Gerben writing that I think IE6 was at its peak usage. Thankfully things are changing, last month its use was down to 7% on the w3schools site http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp (also a great learning place).
File Size
So Internet speeds have increased, but its important to remember not everyone is on a high speed connection. And in some countries (including NZ) some home users don’t understand the point for broadband. So we’re dealing with a range of internet speeds. And as I’m sure Gerben would agree, even on high speed connections, page load is still important. Not only is it the users page load we’re concerned about but also server strain. If your site suddenly gets a burst of traffic you don’t want the server to crash, and stop the free publicity you’re receiving. And with services like Facebook, Digg, Twitter, Stumbleupon, any site can potentially experience these peaks. So you want to be prepared.
You can check the size of a file on Windows, Ubuntu (I assume Mac as well) by right clicking on the file, and select the properties option at the very bottom. A pop up appears with seemingly useless info. There are three major uses I have for this.
- Is the Size value, indicating how much space the file/image takes up on the computer. And in the web world indicates how long its going to take to transfer from the server to the users browser.
- The Created value, lets you know when the file/image was made.
- And “Type of file” lets you know if the image is JPEG (the web short hands this to JPG), PNG or GIF.
You should also be able to right click on an image in your browser, and similar options should come up. This will differ depending on the browser you use.
Number Of Images On A Page
Yes the obvious one is the more images on one page, the more data there is to transfer, making the page load slower. But its not just the combined image file size we’re worried about. The amount of images does matter, because modern bowers limit themselves in the number of requests the can make to one server at one time. That might be a mouthful to take in, but think of it like you can only carry 10 bricks at one time, after you’ve dealt with those heavy bricks you can then start to think about the next 10. With 30 images on a page, the browser can only think about the first 10 before thinking about next 10. For a standard article, I’d try and keep image usage to around 5 (if I’m lucky to have 5 images on the topic). There are exceptions. Either the page is an image gallery of some kind, in which case the user should be aware they’re going to an image gallery, and hopfully prepared to wait. Or it’s a long instructional article where 30+ images are required to illustrate how to do something, again the user shouldn’t mind waiting for this.
There are advanced techniques for those of you who want it. Lazy loading images seems to be all the rage at the moment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazy_loading If you Google Lazy Load you should find some Javascript libraries that do this for you. Lazy loading loads the images when the screen space of the image appears on the users screen. So the browser doesn’t have to worry about the images at the bottom of the page unless the user scrolls that far.
I think this article is getting too long to go into file types here. So I’ll wrap up. If you have the commercial software Photoshop, great. The short cut to export for web is Shift + Ctrl + Alt + S you’ll then be able to select your file type and see the file size before you save. If you don’t have Photoshop but want to get into making you page load more efficient, and become a better web publisher, then use Gimp! I found it a little harder to learn than Photoshop, but that may be because I’m used to using Photoshop. Its free open source like Joomla! compatible on most operating systems http://www.gimp.org/ There is enough documentation to publish a small book, and translated into many languages http://www.gimp.org/docs/ And these days it capabilities are phenomenal, it can do 90% of what Photoshop can do.
If you can learn to effectively save images you might help SEO your site as Google will be soon (if not all ready) be factoring the page load of a sites into the influencing factors.
I hope that was useful. There is quite a bit in the way of images. I might continue on in another post 
Setting Up Search Engine Friendly URL’s in Joomla (SEF URL’s)
Setting up Search Engine Friendly URL’s in Joomla is an absolute must if you want to get the most out of your Joomla site. It’s one of the first things I do when setting up any new site and will help you get more visitors from search engines and improve the likelihood that people will link back to your articles – simply because the link looks a lot more attractive, is shorter and less cumbersome.
Most importantly search engines tend to rank content with a search engine friendly URL more highly due to the keywords that are contained in the URL. If you look at the URL of this very page you will see:
blog.joomlabear.com/setting-up-search-engine-friendly-urls-joomla-sef/
This URL tells Google, and other search engines, that the page is most likely about a number of things, such as; Search Engine Friendly URL’s, SEF and Joomla. This reinforces the other primary on-page factors Google looks at, the page title tag and content.
Another very nice side-effect of a SEF URL is that when somebody copies and pastes your link into a blog or forum they give you a link back with keywords in the URL. This is a big bonus, and something that will be explored again in a future blog post.
In this video I show you as quickly as possible how to setup basic SEF within Joomla (yeah I can’t help rambling about little details – It is a long video again, and I’ve got a slight cold, sorry!)
If you want to skip straight to the quick SEF URL checklist and resource list this is under the video.
Quick check list to get SEF URLS working in Joomla
- Access htaccess.txt in your root directory and rename it to .htaccess
- Visit your Joomla Global Configuration and in SEO settings set all options to ‘yes’ and save.
To access your root directory you can either use FTP or your web host’s file manager, as I have done in the video demonstration.
FTP access is something I consider essential for anyone serious about running a Joomla site, or any website for that matter – it still surprises me how many Joomla users I meet who have no idea what this is or how easy it is to setup. With FTP you can access your Joomla installation and manipulate files directly – you can upload and download files, rename, change permissions, etc.
If you want to access your site with FTP then here are a couple of quick tools I recommend:
Firefox – A free web browser – from our web stats I know that more than 50% of people visiting Joomlabear already have Firefox – this message is for the other 50% – Get Firefox here!
FireFTP is a free plugin for Firefox that lets you FTP into your website directory from within your web browser, as seen on TV in the video above. Get FireFTP here (Install Firefox first, then add this plugin).
To access your site with FTP you only need the following:
- your FTP address, usually ftp.your-domain-name.com
- A username, your hosting account login usually works
- A password, your hosting account password usually works.
If in doubt contact your web host for these details.
If you prefer the file manager option, Blue Host offer very affordable and reliable hosting and cPanel can save you a lot of time with many different admin tasks. You can also get a free Joomlabear template membership with any new Blue Host account – more details on this offer and Joomla hosting with Blue Host here.
Santa’s Search Tips – A Christmas Present From Google!
Yes it’s arrived! Hot in my Gmail right now is a message from our friends at Google with a Christmas gift!
I’m sure I’m not going to get in trouble for sharing this so here goes – it’s a delightful little flash based Santa game that gives you a little tip for optimizing your website each time you open a present – 15 tips in all!
You can play “Santa’s Search Tips” right here.
There is a full list of all the tips below, especially for those of you like me who feel they may have missed one or two – there are some good ones that not even I was aware of, in spite of having been a web designer/developer/webmaster for some 10 years now.
For example: I did not know I could change my Sitelinks (Tip #4 below) simply by accessing Web Master Tools!
Sitelinks are the links shown under our main Joomlabear listing on Google, as shown in the pic below (or see a live example here.)
And here is the full list of Santa’s Search Tips
Tip #1 If you’re unsure…
if all your pages are being seen by Google, search for your site’s address after the command “site”, ie site:yourwebsite.com. When you see your pages in the results, check your snippet content and page titles. Include information that matches the product or category of products on a particular page. If anything is missing or you want more details, you can also use the Content Analysis Tool in Webmaster Tools.
Tip #2 Did you know?
if you upload new products faster then Google crawls your site, you should submit a Google Sitemap to include a refresh rate.
Tip #3 Remember to…
label your images appropriately. Don’t miss out on potential customers because of [001.jpg] instead of [NintendoWii.jpg] Images Search is one of the largest search properties out there, so take advantage of it.
Tip #4 Make sure you…
manage your Sitelinks. Your most valuable links may not be the ones that Google chooses as Sitelinks, so remember to remove any that you don’t think will benefit your users.
Tip #5 Don’t forget to…
check for error and keyword traffic in Webmaster Tools. See our diagnostics checklist.
Tip #6 It’s important to…
serve accurate HTTP status codes. If you’re permanently out of a product, serve a 404. I you have permanently moved a product to a new page, serve a 301. The more we know about your old pages, the better.
Tip #7 Consistency is key…
if your website directs customers to a brick and mortar store, make sure you double check you business listing in Google Local.
Tip #8 Take a few minutes…
to test the usability of your checkout process. Ask yourself if a user can get from product page to checkout without assistance? Is your checkout button easy to find?
Tip #9 There’s no doubt about it…
users and search engines like fresh content. We recommend original product descriptions or a product review section on your site.
Tip #10 Have you thought of?
reading our recently released SEO Starter Guide?
Tip #11 Would you like an overview of our top tips?
Watch our Tutorials for Webmasters.
Tip #12 You can always…
find out what information Google has about your website in Webmaster Tools.
Tip #13 For even more tips…
get the latest updates from the Webmaster Central Blog.
Tip #14 You can always…
answer your other questions in our Webmaster Help Center.
Tip #15 It’s never too late to…
ask your last-minute questions in the Webmaster Help.
Thanks to Pingable for compiling the list.
