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December, 2006
Increase sales! Improve efficiency! Decrease customer service costs! Build a successful website for your company!
Joomla Implementation Guide
How to manage a Joomla website implementation project successfully? Whether you are a customer or a webmaster there are some things that need to be done to successfully implement a Joomla website. The Author, Marcin Kierdelewicz, is the owner of a business that offers full processing of Joomla services, at http://www.mamboassistance.com website.
Copyright by Marcin Kierdelewicz, MEGA.COM.PL SA, Poland & Mamboassistance.com
You can copy and distribute this for free, but only if reproduced in full with no changes.
Contents: 1. Is there a place for me on the Internet? The AIM and how to achieve it. 2. Project documentation. 3. Estimations, tasks, and project management. 3.1 Installation and configuration phase. 3.2 Design phase. 3.3 Custom development phase. 3.4 Testing and enhancement phase. 4 Maintenance, future steps, and improvements. 5 ROI. 6 Cooperation, marketing, and PR activities. 7 Consulting services. Appendix ? Rules to minimize Joomla website project risk and achieve success.
1. Is there a place for me on the Internet? The AIM and how to achieve it. Is there a place for me on the Internet? First of all you need to answer this very important question. The Internet is a new and modern place that suites almost every idea, but remember the word ?almost?. There are some ideas that will not achieve success on the Internet. You need to ask yourself if you can find people who are interested in your idea on the Internet. If you think that the Internet is not the right place for you, then ask somebody else, a webmaster or web consultant. After you decide that the Internet is the correct place for you then you need to specify the exact aim of your website. The aim needs to be well defined and achievable in a realistic timescale. You can?t just write ?I want to earn $1 million in 1 month!? How to write the correct aim of your website? Write what you really need. The most common aim is to increase sales, directly on the website or indirectly ? building a community also helps you to increase sales; after you have 1,000,000 people registered and you launch your new product and send marketing e-mails to these people then it is virtually guaranteed that somebody will buy it ? there?s no other way!. How much can you really increase your sales? Look at what you already have and what amount you can realistically achieve. Also look at the size of your company and bottlenecks that can decrease your income - try to find simple solutions to decrease the number of bottlenecks. After this you will be able to estimate correctly. The other most popular aims are to showcase your company and strengthen your trademark. These aims can also be judged on how many people now know more about your company or trademark. How to establish the correct timescale? Remember that the Internet is not the same as TV advertising and the kind of profile of people using the Internet from your industry. Divide your aim into small steps and try to estimate how fast it is possible to do this. After this you can just increase it as many times as the number of steps, but don?t think that your idea is especially innovative and that your growth will be exponential. It is better to be surprised than to overestimate. Write the AIM of your website in big letters! How to achieve your aim?
You have lots of ideas about how to achieve your aim using the Internet. Write them carefully in a list as percentages of your total aim ? 100% is the total of your aim. If you are not sure about it, ask friends who are involved in e-business, or ask consultants.
2. Project documentation. Introduction.
You need to prepare your Joomla website project very carefully. You need to understand that you are the only person who knows your company inside-out. Other people involved in this project may have some experience in your sector, but they will never understand your strengths and ideals. Tell them about your company. Write a few sentences about your company, its mission and advantages. This is the best introduction in project documentation.
After this, write your aims and the list of activities required to achieve them. WebPages.
Now you need to think about how you would like your website to look. Not from a design point of view ? leave that to the graphic designers - but from functionality point of view. Don?t ask anybody about it at the beginning. Remember that your raw thoughts are very important and generally they are worth much more than the standard solutions offered by consultants.
How to write correct ideas on paper: Think about your website users. Usually they will start with your home page. Don?t forget about usability ? your website needs to be functional and simple. Take a piece of paper and draw your homepage in the way you want to introduce your idea to your visitors. Don?t think about design and ergonomics ? share your knowledge. You can build menus and links that will redirect to other websites. Take some more paper and draw the information you want to put there. Number each sheet of paper and mark links to other sheet numbers. After you finish, you will need to prepare an electronic presentation from your notes and insert all your thoughts into an electronic document. You need to build 1 webpage scheme from every piece of paper you have drawn. Every webpage scheme should be carefully described with general information about this screen with a minimum of 2-3 sentences. Every piece of information on the webpage should be described with arrows showing its exact meaning. Don?t forget about special rules and the behavior of your webpage, especially if you have drawn any web-forms, then write what information needs to be filled, what happens if you click somewhere, etc. Remember to describe every piece of each webpage carefully. You can also scan and send it by e-mail to a website consulting company, or just use a fax to send all of the papers. Don?t forget to send the pages containing your aims, the steps required to achieve them, and the introduction to your company. After this you need to talk to somebody about it, if your website is complete. There are some standards and practices that you can?t ignore and only experienced people can help you with these. If you have sent all of your notes and drawings to a consulting company, they will check it and of course fill in all the required information. Software.
To prepare a full list of necessary software you need to ask your consulting company for assistance with this part of project documentation. You know that you need fresh Joomla installation, but they should give you advice on what additional software you should use in your project. They will include some free open source add-ons and maybe some commercial add-ons. Commercial add-ons in the open source world don?t cost much, are more stable, and you can expect support from the software vendor. Consulting companies will also tell you what part of your website needs to be developed with software development company assistance. You need to know that not 100% of your ideas have already been developed and published for free in the open source world. Ask the consulting company to describe any custom development very carefully concerning its functionality and other software packages and Joomla extensions that it might need to work with.
Ask the consulting company about best practices ? they should share their experience and tell you about Internet visitor habits and the most commonly used solutions. We also recommend that you establish a Google Analytical account for your website and ask the consulting company to add a Google Analytical module to your list, and don?t forget about SEO (Search Engine Optimalization) solutions. You will have prepared a full list of software that is already available and that which needs to be developed to match your needs ? add this to your project description.
Resources and roles.
You need to know that you can?t build a successful website by yourself. You will need help from other people - specialists who will assist you with building the website. You can also outsource all of the work, but read this text and follow these steps to decrease the risks and increase the popularity of your site .
Now is the best time to find an experienced Joomla project management company, a hosting company which will host your website, a design company which will prepare the graphic design and build templates, and a software development company to develop the custom extensions and software needed for your website. You can ask your consulting company for assistance of course. There are also companies that offer the full process, from consulting and project management through hosting and design to software development. Remember that the most important aspects when choosing such a company are high quality, warranty, and a good contract.
3. Estimations, tasks, and project management. There are 4 phases during the building of a website project: installation and configuration, design, custom development, and testing and enhancement. If you follow these phases then you shouldn?t have a lot of unpleasant surprises. It is useful to use project management software to manage your project. Many consulting companies already offer web based project management software.
3.1 Installation and configuration phase. You need to run a project website. It is very important to run it on the same web server on which your website will be hosted in the future. By doing this you will avoid problems with migrations, different sever configurations, and remote access problems. Ask your project management company to install a fresh Joomla installation with all the necessary free and commercial software. Ask them to write in the project documentation file what release of software they installed with the exact date and time of installation. This will help you with future upgrades. After this ask them to configure all the features that need to be configured, and ask them to write every configuration change in the project documentation file. For them it is easier to insert screenshots from configuration pages into your file ? of course this is good enough for you too. Now you have already installed and configured Joomla software. Ask your project management company about setting up a regular backup. Remember that you need to backup all files with their permissions and database to another server situated in other location. For your safety you need one backup every month from the last 12 months, weekly backup from the last month, and daily backup from the last week.
3.2 Design phase. After a successful installation and configuration phase you can send your project description to a web design company who will estimate the cost and time for design and template building. Ask for both services because you need to be sure that their design is suitable for Joomla websites so that you know who to call if you have any problems with your website layout. Ask for a template with some technical requirements, like having been tested with 95% of the most popular web browsers, being scalable, having no TABLE tags (100% div based), having no frames or iframes, and being compatible with XHTML standard. You can also ask the design company for estimations concerning changing the view for all extensions that you will use in your Joomla project (free and commercial) that are listed on your software list in the project documentation file. After you agree to them, ask your project management company to install the template and all necessary changes to other software.
3.3 Custom development phase. You already have some part of your website installed. With the previously developed extensions installed and a ready template you can ask your experienced software development company for an estimation of custom development costs. At this stage of the project you can explain all your needs to the software development company and minimize the risk of any misunderstandings or unnecessary programming, which also increases your project costs. Choose a vendor which delivers open source code (not compressed) and agrees to have their code changed by other people in the future. Without this you will not be able to extend anything with their code in the future. Ask the software development company for a reasonable offer and warranty. They need to guarantee that they will fix all bugs in their software for a few months after they finish programming for you. By doing this you can be sure that you will have no problems in the future with your website. To decrease costs you can ask for changes in already developed open source software. With this software, the development company doesn?t need to build everything from scratch. Ask about recommendations for chosen software and ask for a warranty for all of the code. Developed software needs to work with the search engine optimalization solutions that you chose for your website. Always ask for installation instructions for the software you receive. If you plan to extend your website in the future and you have budgeted for this then you can also ask for functional and programming documentation too. Ask the software development company for installation services for the developed software and a filled out documentation project with detailed information about what they have delivered and how they have configured it.
3.4 Testing and enhancement phase. You almost have a complete website, and the project is almost finished. Now you need to test whole website following the steps and notes that you wrote in the prepared documentation at the beginning. Test that all your functionality works with no problems, and report any problems to whoever is responsible with as much detail as possible. Write down the web address where the problem occurred, what you did, what happened, and what you expected to happen. Ask whoever is responsible about the time needed to fix the bug. During testing you can write any possible improvements that you see in your website. Some of them will not cost much, so ask for them. By doing this you can improve the quality of your website. Remember that you need to test your website in different web browsers and different screen resolutions. If you are not experienced with this you can ask someone else to do it. You need to polish your website so that you are completely satisfied with it, and believe that you can achieve your aims with your website.
4. Maintenance, future steps, and improvements. Now you have your website. You should ask the consulting company about maintenance. You can be sure that you will constantly need to make minor changes to your website. Ask about the possibility of them using free hours in the future. You should already know what to do now. You described the steps to achieve your aim and you need to follow them. You also wrote notes on how to improve your website and how to achieve it. But this is not everything. You need to inform potential Internet visitors about your website. Ask the consulting company to register your web address in search engines and web catalogs. Publish content regularly on your website and on other websites that allow subscriber news and are in your sector. Cooperate with other website owners from your sector.
5. ROI. You should be able to calculate when you will get a return on your website investment. Divide it into small steps so you can check if it all goes as planned. If not, then ask the consulting company for assistance. Together you can find solutions to get a good return on your investment and achieve your aims.
6. Cooperation, marketing and PR activities. Write your web address on all marketing materials, business cards and e-mail signatures. Prepare all your marketing texts carefully. Remember that you can use other websites from your sector to publish your content. It is also good to take part in groups and forum discussions from your sector. If you are seen as an expert then people will trust you and they will visit your website. Cooperate with other website owners from your sector. Sometimes there are websites that have content complementary to yours, and information from your website will extend their portals.
7. Consulting services. After every phase it is good to ask experienced people about their thoughts and ideas. You know your company best. Your website is for you, not for them, but remember that consulting companies are based on experience from other projects, they know all the Internet standards, and they have knowledge about simple solutions for many Internet problems. Ask your consulting company about anything that you are not sure of.
Appendix ? Rules to minimize Joomla website project risk and achieve success.
1. Book double the time for your project that you estimate at the beginning. 2. Sign contracts with every 3rd party vendor with a ?to do? list, delivery date, and payment terms. Ask for open source code, tested with different web browsers and screen resolutions. Ensure the possibility of changing the code and free bug fixing in the future. 3. Teach yourself how to use and manage the software that you have installed or have had developed. 4. Set up 2 different web addresses for 2 project websites: one for the project and the other for you. After every phase of installation and configuration try to install and configure the same part on the other installation by yourself, or ask your webmaster to do this. 5. Prepare good quality written materials and remember that there is never too much written in the project description - it is very important that people who read your text can understand your thoughts in the same way as you. 6. Prepare a ?welcome to? text on the home page to clarify in 2-3 sentences the purpose of the website. 7. Publish a lot of information on your website regularly. 8. Give your visitors something that will make them come back again. 9. If you want to increase sales with your website, place a contact link and 1 module with F.A.Q., explanations, or ?see also? links on every webpage. 10. Prepare a monthly newsletter about new ideas, your experience, and shared knowledge. You don?t need to send it via e-mail; you can simply publish it on your website. 11. Pay close attention to search engine results for your website.
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