Yes...we really do hear that from time to time. No disrespect to the nephew's best friends who really are professional web designers, but let's face it...most of you are not. So why do people keep doing it? Why would they entrust one of their most important business assets to a novice? Sometimes one who has not even graduated from high school? Here's what we've learned...

If your business handles credit card payments, you need to be concerned about the rules and regulations of safeguarding the sensitive cardholder data. I was reminded of this the other day when a charge for $9.95 showed up on my debit card from a website I've never visited. Since 2007 any business that accepts credit card payment--this probably means you--has been subject to the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS). If you're a huge business that processes a million or more credit card transactions per year, you have to hire an outside professional to audit your processes. If you're smaller than that, you can do it yourself by means of the Self-Assessment Questionnaire, or SAQ. The SAQ comes in four flavors, depending upon...

Years ago, customer information was kept on rolodex cards or ledger sheets. Today the web-based equivalent is the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. They're still about as exciting and visually appealing as a rolodex card, but just as invaluable. For instance, in our business, all our customers contact information is in our CRM, as well as their website information: who the name registrar is, what Joomla components they have installed, which software licenses they've paid for, etc. This enables any of our team members to gain access to this critical information wherever they are.

1. Open the respective article and click the image manager button. 2. Within the image manager, create a directory. (ex: myphotos) 3. Click on the new directory and upload your images. (For proper viewing, ensure they are no larger than 900px wide or 900px tall before uploading) 4. Once all photos are uploaded, close the image manager. 5. Within the article add for example {gallery}myphotos{/gallery} and press apply. 6. View the article from the front end of the website. All images existing in the directory: "myphotos", will be automatically presented as an image gallery.  ***Pre-sizing images to one standard size (ex:...

After a lot of work by the Joomla Development Team and the Joomla Bug squad, Joomla 1.6 has hit Release Candidate 1 status. The developers are hoping this will be the only Release Candidate. If no major bugs are found, it will undergo a final security audit and be officially released on January 10th. We have it installed and our team's learning their way around it. You can see how it looks straight 'out of the box' at http://j16.3by400.com.

What's new in Joomla 1.6? Several major things.