TDG BlogStream

Joomla - 30 Million Strong and Growing

When you do one thing day in and day out (building kick ass websites, in my case) you can sometimes loose some perspective. Of course when that perspective involves the Internet it’s pretty easy to lose. 

In April, the folks at Joomla (IMHO the worlds best website platform and the software we use at TDG) laid down some statistics that stopped me in my tracks. Joomla runs 2.7% of ALL WEBSITES ON THE INTERNET. That translates into over 1.6 million websites worldwide. The software has been downloaded 30 million times. 9,500 extension or plugins have been written for Joomla to give it added super powers. Not bad for a software project that’s less than 7 years old and has a name that’s hard to spell.

Why?

Without getting too nerdy, Joomla allows a web geek like me to build any kind of website I can think of. It’s the “Swiss Army Knife” of content management system websites. Flexible, powerful and easy to use. That’s why 99.9% of all websites TDG builds now are built using Joomla. 

Another key factor in Joomla’s growth is that a significant number of government agencies are turning to Joomla for their websites, blogs and intranets. The new Joomla 2.5 allows us to affordably build out large, content driven websites without killing their budgets. 

With Joomla running 2.7% of the Internet with everything from small personal blogs to uber-large enterprise websites, here are some companies and organizations that rely on Joomla. 

• Citibank
• eBay
• General Electric 
• Harvard University
• Ikea
• McDonald’s
• Sony
• MTV
• Mexico City
• Government of Greece
• Barnes & Noble
• U.K. Ministry of Defense
• High Court of Australia
• Pizza Hut
• United Nations
• European Union
• Holiday Inn
• Kelloggs
• Linux.com
• Orange
• Jaguar

- Jack

Internet Explorer 6 Use in the US Finally Dips Below 1%

Why is this a big deal? A browser is a browser right?

WRONG.

IE6 is 10 years old. That’s a lifetime on the Internet. Microsoft even created an initiative to kill it called Internet Explorer 6 Countdown. Why? A lot has happened on the World Wide Web in the last 10 years.

Modern web browsers

• load web pages faster
• display webpages as they were designed
• offer more interactivity
• more secure.

If you have a PC that still has IE6 installed please consider upgrading it to IE8 or IE9 or better yet install Google Chrome and Firefox. Chrome and Firefox are built using different software codebases, so if you are having problems with a website while running Firefox try using Chrome or vise-versa.

Regarding IE8 vs IE9: if you are running Windows Vista or Windows 7 you should upgrade to IE9. If you are still using Windows XP you should upgrade to IE8 or look at buying a Mac :-).

Why mainstream organizations are buying .XXX URLs

General availability of the new top level domain (TLD) .XXX started earlier this month. This was created as an industry-specific TLD for pornographic websites. However this virtual “land grab” has some important ramifications for non-pornographic related websites, their owners and their brand managers. Many of these websites are defensively buying up .xxx versions of their existing domain names in order to keep them off the market and avoiding some embarrassing and inappropriate situations. Imagine a legitimate organization such as boystown.org facing a porno site with the domain name of boystown.xxx. No matter how annoying or offensive, buying that domain and pulling it off the market is probably the right move for that organization.

You don’t have to be boystown.org to be concerned. If you own a website and are NOT in the pornography industry, you might think about defensively registering your .xxx domain name to take it off the market. You can register the .xxx domain with your existing domain registrar (such as GoDaddy or Network Solutions). The cost is $99.99 per year per domain.

This is quite a bit more expensive than typical domain registration, and a lot of people in the industry are upset about the whole idea of the .XXX domain. There are a lot of faults in the system, but if the idea of paying $100 to keep your brand name from falling into XXX hands makes you angry, just imagine how angry you’ll be if a domain squatter tries to extort money from you. The other option is to take legal action if your brand or website domain is trademarked, which is yet another expensive proposition.

The rise of the smartphone-toting teen

It’s a slam dunk to say that teens are the dominate age demographic in mobile texting (or sms). However, a new study by Nielsen shows that the average data usage by teens nearly tripled. The study shows that average monthly data usage among teens is now at 321 MB. So what are they doing? Surfing the internet, social networking, emailing, and downloading & using apps. Actually using a mobile phone for voice calling continues to decline for this demo. Texting is seen by teens as faster and easier to use.

This is another great example of mobile’s growing importance in digital marketing. We all know teens are internet-centric; now it’s time for us to throw mobile into the mix when trying to reach this audience.

(Source: Mashable)