With Christmas around the corner, we thought was a good time to expose the Joomla! extensions that we keep on our list of "nice" ways to really make your web site sing. These tools range from just making repetitive tasks simpler to generating revenue. Read on to find our top picks. The  Joomla Extension Directory (JED) , is the very best source for current Joomla extensions. We go there regularly to help clients find tools and build solutions. With over 7,000 extensions on the date of this post, though, sifting through the possibilities can be tough. So, we're providing a description...

On Tuesday, January 24, 2012, the Joomla development team released Joomla 2.5.0 . This was the release we were waiting for...or so we thought. It has a much more flexible category structure, better out-of-the-box search engine optimization, definable user groups and permissions, easier software upgrades, better administrator interface, and a lot more. We have converted our own 3by400.com site to Joomla 2.5. Joomla 2.5 was the first step in the Joomla team's strategy of a well-planned development roadmap. Joomla 2.5 was a Long Term Support (LTS) release, which will be maintained and supported until the end of 2013. In mid-2013...

If you haven't been a victim of credit-card fraud yet, just wait. You probably will be at some point in your life. About 9 million Americans are victims of identity theft each year. To help protect consumers, the credit card companies (Visa, MasterCard, AmEx and Discover) have joined to form the Payment Card Industry (PCI) working group. They set standards for how credit cards and cardholder informaiton is to be handled. If you accept payments on your website, even through PayPal, you need to adhere to these guidelines to protect your customers' payment information. Now I admit, none of us need more rules and regulations to live under. We have better things to do with our energies than go through a checklist that's been handed to us by some anonymous, faceless cabal. But sometimes it's really in our best interest, and in this case, in everybody's best interest.

For a while now, any website that receives funding from the federal government has had to conform to guidelines that make the website accessibile to the disabled. The buzzword here is Section 508 , after its location in the US legal code. There's a small but lucrative sub-practice of web design that helps site owners pass muster in this area. But the net may be widening. According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal , activists are pushing for a wider interpretation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). They argue that all e-commerce websites have to be...

On February 22, a few members of the 3by400 team took a road trip to Duke University in Durham, NC, for the first JoomlaDay event in the southeastern U.S. JoomlaDays are grass roots events that help old timers and newcomers embrace all that is Joomla, as well as providing a forum to get acquainted with those in the Joomla community. The Atlanta Joomla Users Group (JUG) was well represented, with over 10 members in attendance. There were about 12 individual sessions from which attendees could chose to particpate, with focus ranging from sales and contracts to creating plugins and security. As...