You may be looking for another way to connect with your customers.  Selling online may be the answer.  You can sell services or products.  There are so many ways to get started, here are 3 of them.

• J2Store
• Ecwid
• Shopify

J2Store / j2store.org

J2Store is an e-Commerce extension that leverages Joomla! articles for sale items. With a click, an article that might be used for page content or a blog post can be turned into a salable item. Extended pricing, coupons, discounts, etc. can all be added to products including downloadables.  J2Store works with 75+ payment gateways and 60+ extensions that add features such as subscriptions/memberships, booking/reservations, partial payments/deposits, and more.  Since Joomla articles are used to create your catalog there is no limit to the number of items that can be sold, proper categorization is strongly encouraged.  The J2Store extension has three (3) plans: Free, Professional, and Developers which costs, $0, $49, and $99 respectively.

Whether you want to create a business website or start a blog, the most efficient way to do so is with a Content Management System (CMS). A CMS is ideal for the entrepreneur who does not have HTML or CSS coding skills or cannot access developer talent.

In the last decade, there have been numerous CMS solutions to choose from, one of which is Joomla. Having relied on this CMS for many years, I have put together the 10 reasons why it works for me and why it should be your CMS of choice:

Today marks 13 years of RSJoomla! providing Joomla! extensions.  

RSJoomla! is the maker of RSForm! Pro and RSEvents! Pro (as well as many others) extensions that have appeared in our Favorite Extensions presentation for Joomla! User Group Chicago North (JUGCN).  The functionality, ease of use, continuous innovation, and support puts them on the list time and time again.  One such innovation is the Zoom Video Conferencing integration, which is very timely with the change in how we gather.

This Memorial Day is different than what we're used to but no less important.  Memorial Day became an official holiday in 1968 and was once known as Decoration Day. It is a day to honor the men and women who died while serving in the U.S. Military.

While we may be social distancing, here are a few at-home ways to honor the military:

One of our clients at WebLab42 is a public health and safety organisation in The Netherlands aiming to protect the safety of everyone in the region. Police, fire squad and health and safety institutes work together in this organization. During the Covid-19 situation, we got a phone call from our contact: “Could you help us out? We need a tool to gather data from all kinds of health institutes on a daily basis, and we need this integrated in our website. And it needs to be up and running next Tuesday.”

The client needed to collect information about contamination, need for personal protection and available beds in all the health facilities in the region. How many people have tested positive on the virus in nursing homes, in mental health institutes, at shelters for the homeless? What is the exact situation on personal protection in these facilities? And where can we find extra beds, should the crisis run out of hand?

The team has been working hard to create, edit and post client messages quickly on their websites and social media channels, no matter how many times they change, keeping up with the changing environment.

Aside from working, how are you spending your time?  We thought we would share some of the things we are doing to ... well ... stay sane.  

Springtime is fighting its way through, with the sun shining brightly urging temperatures higher. Spring typically brings with it thoughts of renewing, refreshing and possibly restarting.  This makes it a great time to spring clean your website content.

Using your site analytics report and sitemap, navigate your way through, reading, really reading each page of your site as if it were the first time that you’ve visited (it should not be).  As you read each page, ask yourself three questions:

Keynote Speaker, Brian Mitchell   We are honored to have President-Elect Brian Mitchell as this year's keynote speaker. Brian is the founder and president of interGen web solutions in Milwaukee, WI. Brian is responsible for business operations, strategic direction, business development and everything in between. He has been a Joomla! volunteer for years, ser...

As we look forward to the passing of another year, the ever-changing web industry offers new challenges and problems for web developers. Technology is quickly moving forward with every decade our overall rate of progress doubling, and no signs of slowing down. With the rise of AI and with Elon Musk's Neuralink company ready to implant devices, these giant leaps in technology make it unclear of what the internet will be in just the next decade. For now, there are several things you can do to make sure your Joomla business is vital for the current market.

Are you a Joomler? 

If you are a Joomla user, you are a Joomler, but are you promoting yourself as a Joomler? Sander Potijer started the Joomler community page in 2014, and currently, there are less than 2,000 registered Joomlers. For me, it was an undeniable choice, but resulted in something not so obvious - Job Offers! In just one month I had four people contacting me about hiring me for some freelance projects. Showing the world, you are a Joomler by creating a Joomler profile page is simple - Get started today: https://volunteers.joomla.org/joomlers

Boy oh boy, when I started outlining this blog, I never thought the world would look the way it is today with all of us, literally everyone in the world, adjusting to life during a pandemic. This post is probably the most personal post ever written. Mourning  Unfortunately, during the time that things were starting to happen with self-quarantines and border closi...

In the Winter quarter, I teach a course at DePaul University on Designing for Content Management Systems. I enjoy teaching this course as it keeps me on my development toes. In the last class, I opened it up to questions. Students could ask questions about the class project, Joomla! or Danico. I was impressed with the questions that were asked (I've got some really in...

We are seven months away from JoomlaDay Chicago set for October 17th at DePaul University, Loop Campus. The Sponsors we have so far are: Gold Sponsor: Yellow Web MonkeySilver Sponsor: The Turn Group Silver Sponsor: Joomlastars Community Sponsor: Bhavesh Khatri The Speakers we have so far are: Robert Jacobi, RobertJacobi.comOlivier Buisard, SimplifyYourWebKendall Cabe,...

11 Episode 2 - SD Williams at Danico Enterprises - Watchful Blog Recently, I had the opportunity to chat with the team over at Watchful, a website manager for Joomla! and WordPress. Watchful is one of our "go-to" tools for managing our client sites. We especially like the uptime monitor that runs 24/7 so that we are aware of issues and can fix them quickly, often before ou...

 When I talk with clients about their websites, one topic that seems to give them pause is blogging. Whether it is the fear of not having anything to say, inability to type or not seeing the point, it always is a conversation they seem to want to avoid. I get it. Sometimes when I think about blogging for Danico, I (momentarily) have some of those same fears. I'm not s...

We are eight months away from JoomlaDay Chicago set for October 17th at DePaul University, Loop Campus.  The Sponsors we have so far are: ​Silver Sponsor: The Turn GroupSilver Sponsor: JoomlastarsCommunity Sponsor: Bhavesh Khatri​​ The Speakers we have so far are: Laura Gordon, Rytech Sites/Rutgers UniversityDonata Kalnenaite, Termageddon, LLC​​ New thi...

Joomla 3.9.15 is now available. This is a security release for the 3.x series of Joomla which addresses three low security vulnerabilities and contains over 20 bug fixes and improvements.

What's in 3.9.15?

Joomla 3.9.15 includes three security vulnerability fixes and addresses several bugs, including:

The 2nd Wednesday of each month, is the JUGCN or Joomla! User Group Chicago North meeting. These meetings are hosting by me for the local Joomla! community. Last Wednesday was the first for 2020.  The topic was rather fitting as it was, Web Trends for 2020.  Additionally, I covered implementing SEO for Joomla! sites.    2020 Web Design Tr...

 It is this time of the year! The Joomla Project will apply to Google to participate in this year's Google Summer of Code™ (GSoC) program.  Now, we need help from our community and beyond! We are looking for talented individuals who are willing to work with students and guide them. Participating in GSoC is a great opportunity for the Joomla Community. It allows t...

image credit: rsjoomla.com

One of our favorite extensions is RSForm!Pro from RSJoomla.  A versatile form builder, we are excited about the newest update, the ability to do a group of conditionals.   What is RSForm!Pro? RSForm!Pro is a form builder for Joomla!  It has undergone a major update in recent updates adding in a drag-and-drop grid, which makes it easier to create and layout w...

Joomla 3.9.14 is now available. This is a security fix release for the 3.x series of Joomla which addresses two security vulnerabilities and contains over 35 bug fixes and improvements.

What's in 3.9.14?

Joomla 3.9.14 includes two security vulnerability fixes and several bugs and improvements, including:

Wishing you a wonderful holiday with your family and friends. Our office is closed Thursday, November 28th and Friday, November 29th.  

 You may recall that back in July we shared the news that the Joomla World Conference was not moving forward.  JoomlaShack, a leading provider of free and commercial Joomla templates, extensions and Joomla training, stepped in and created the JoomlaShack Conference.  This 3-day conference will include presentations from around the world.  The conference...

With today being a chocolate holiday (one of my favorites), I thought it might be fun to get you to help me with this year's compilation of favorite Joomla! extensions.  Each year, I compile a list of Joomla! extensions that are my favorites covering forms, calendars, social sharing, galleries, and such.  Except for 2018, where the focus was on calendar...

Joomla! is one of the most widely-used content management systems (CMS) on the web. It runs nearly 2 million active websites, accounting for over 3 percent of the entire web. Its popularity makes it a good choice for building a website because it's kept up-to-date and secure, with plenty of add-on features available. Let's look at how you can add lead generation to your Jo...

This past Saturday Danico hosted Joomla Pizza Bugs and Fun (PBF). It was a worldwide event to help advance Joomla!4. This event was a great way to be apart of the Joomla community. The organizers prepared lots of documentation, videos and more to help the local organizers assist their participants. What is Joomla Joomla! is a free and open-source content management system ...

Oh my gosh!  Can you believe that JoomlaDay Chicago is done! 

Back in August we announced that we would be hosting Joomla! Pizza, Bugs & Fun or PBF.  A worldwide event to bring the Joomla! community together to work on the next release, Joomla! 4.  PBF is here!  This Saturday at 9 am the fun begins.   What is Joomla!  Joomla! is a free, open-source content management system (CMS) that is used to publish w...

cmscritic.com

The 2019 People's Choice Winners of the Critics' Choice CMS Awards have been announced.Joomla!, our favorite CMS, was named the Best Free CMS (YAY!) What is CMS Critic? CMS Critic, founded by Mike Johnston, has been around since 2008 as an unbiased, honest reviews for resources on the web.  The cmscritic.com website is source for information, advice and the "late...

Joomla 3.9.12 is now available. This is a security fix release for the 3.x series of Joomla which addresses one security vulnerability and contains over 30 bug fixes and improvements.

What's in 3.9.12?

Joomla 3.9.12 includes one security vulnerability fix and several bugs and improvements, including:

 A few days ago, we announced our hosting of Pizza, Bugs and Fun on October 19th with Joomla User Group Chicago North (JUGCN).  This is a worldwide event to help Joomla! to be the best Content Management System (CMS).   This Saturday Sept 21st at 8am AND 7pm UTC,  Benjamin Trenkle and Mike Brandner will give an introductory training for P...

Starting September 16, 2019, API key restrictions will be enforced for the Places API. Any calls to the Places Library using API keys which don’t have the Places API in their list of authorized APIs will begin to receive errors.

API keys are the primary way we authenticate access to Google Maps Platform APIs and SDKs. Here's a rundown on the key restrictions available, best practices, and a video tutorial on how to restrict your keys. 

Something a little different. Today Hasbro announced the release of Ms. Monopoly.  A new version of the beloved Monopoly game.  In this game, female players start off with Monopoly money than their male counterparts, and even are awarded more when passing, 'Go'.  Another change is that instead of collecting properties, you collect inventions made by women. &...

​Every second Wednesday is the Joomla User Group Chicago North (JUGCN) meeting.  This Wednesday, Sept 11th we will be giving an overview of EasyBlog, a blogging extension from StackIdeas.   To be clear, blogging can be done in Joomla! by creating articles.  With the latest enhancements to categories, tags and custom fields you can do all of your blogging wit...

The JoomlaDay Chicago Joomla Certification Exam is now available for purchase!

Here's how to register:

We are pleased to announce that we are hosting Pizza, Bugs and Fun on Saturday, October 19th.  This is worldwide event that brings together the Joomla! community to document and test future versions of our favorite content management system (CMS).   You may be thinking that this event is not for you because you're not a hard core developer, but WAI...

Joomla 3.9.11 is now available. This is a security fix release for the 3.x series of Joomla which addresses one security vulnerability and contains over 25 bug fixes and improvements.

What's in 3.9.11?

Joomla 3.9.11 includes one security vulnerability fix and several bugs and improvements, including:

image credit: SEJ

This article, Google Ads Close Variants to Include Words With the Same Meaning, posted on Search Engine Journal, discusses the Google Ads is expanding close variants to include words that have the same meaning as the original keyword. This change, will be rolling out in the coming weeks, impacting broad match modifier and phrase match keywords.