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My name is Brad Markle, and I help manage the InMotion Hosting Support Center - http://www.inmotionhosting.com/support. Our Support Center has run Joomla for the last ~3 years, and in 2013 we made the migration from Joomla 1.5 to Joomla 3.0. At the time of this writing, we have over 7,000 pages published and are getting more than 90,000 hits from search engines each week. In this presentation I will talk about some of the problems we've faced running such a large website and some of the solutions we've come up with.
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@bwmarkle
Large Website?
What do you mean?
Lots
Staff
Traffic
How does
Inmotion hosting .com
compare?
google.com
# 1
craigslist.org
# 49
joomla.org
# 431
Inmotion hosting .com
# 1,596
OK, so we're not in the top 100 sites or anything like that....
But we get a good amount of traffic.
Tips for Running a Large Website Using Joomla
Tip 1:
Take Google Analytics to the next level with Custom Variables and Event Tracking
What is a Custom Variable?
Name + Value
Mark Twain
Author Ernest Hemingway
Edgar Allan Poe
Name + Value
John-Paul Briones
Author Jeff Matson
Brad Markle
How to use Custom Variables?
It's just 1 line of javascript
OK. 1 line of code. But how?
… just look at our source
_gaq.push(['_setCustomVar',5,'Author','BradM'
]);
$this->item->author
How do you see Custom Variables in Analytics?
Key or Value?
Custom Variable (Key 5)
Custom Variable (Value 05)______________________
John-Paul
Author Jeff
Brad
Great!
1. Custom Variable is setup
2. We know how to access variable in Analytics
Now what?
Question:
Which author brings in the most traffic?
Start off with traffic ...
… then add your authors
Question:
Which author brings in the most traffic?
This guy!
That's me!
but seriously....
Question:
Which author has the most social shares?
Custom Variables
What is Event Tracking?
_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','chat','launch'
]);
This is our button,“Chat with us”
When someone clicks on it,An event has just occurred.
How do you see Events in Analytics?
_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','chat','launch'
]);
_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','chat','launch'
]);
Explore Analytics
See what you can find, like....
Which pages do users click “chat” on the most?
Custom Variables
Event Tracking
Custom Variables &Event Tracking together?
Custom Variables &Event Tracking together?
With this data you can...
Strike down yourwriters causing the
most chats
Or...
Give praise tothose whose writing
helps people.
Tips for Running a Large Website Using Joomla
Tip 1:
Take Google Analytics to the next level with Custom Variables and Event Tracking
Tips for Running a Large Website Using Joomla
Tip 2:
Don't talk to bad bots, it's a waste of precious resources.
Bot Activity
How much bot activity does your site get?
Bots may crawl your site looking forindex.php?title=something
February 2014
we had how much mediawiki bot traffic?
A: 1,000B: 10,000C: 100,000D: 1,000,000
What were they looking for?
index.php?title=Auto_Insurance_In_Jacksonville_-_This_Month:_Get_Car_Insurance_In_Jacksonville_At_up_to_Half-Price
index.php?title=A_Bit_More_About_Los_Angeles_Car_Insurance
index.php?title=Special:UserLogin&type=signup
100,006 hits / monthto pages that don't exist...
….So what?
100,006 hits * 27 queries each
2,700,162 queries / month
BLOCK THE BOTS
● .htaccess● Php● ModSecurity
Bots.... another example
From our apache logs....
"POST /support/community-support/joomla-25/index.php?option=com_jce&task=plugin&plugin=imgmanager&file=imgmanager&method=form&cid=20&6bc427c8a7981f4fe1f5ac65c1246b5f=cf6dd3cf1923c950586d0dd595c8e20b HTTP/1.1" 400 232 "-" "BOT/0.1 (BOT for JCE)"
Basically... It's a URL for JCE
We don't use JCE, but...
February 2014, we had...
80,975 requests that in the URL had
BOT for JCE or option=com_jce
Tips for Running a Large Website Using Joomla
Tip 2:
Don't talk to bad bots, it's a waste of precious resources.
Tips for Running a Large Website Using Joomla
Tip 2.5:
Check your work.
200404406500666
Tips for Running a Large Website Using Joomla
Tip 2.5:
Check your work.
Tips for Running a Large Website Using Joomla
Tip 3:
If you're not using Joomla's cache because of its pitfalls, find a work around.
Things to Watch When Using Page Caching
● It does not apply to the Administrator. OK● It only applies to guest visitors (not logged in).
OK● Page caching does not work if Debug Site in
Global Configuration is set to Yes. OK● Articles hits will not increase when page
caching is turned on (making any sorting options on hits ineffective). NOT OK
We enabled cache...
We loved it!
… so far so good
Google is seeing our page download almost twice as fast!
The major problem for us...
If Joomla Caching is enabled
Then # hits per article doesn't increase
Hmm...
So how do we
increase page hits
when caching is enabled?
We gotan idea!
First...
We told Joomla to stop increasing page hits.
… we'll take care of it ourselves.
We created a file....
increase_hits.phpThat if sentan article id....
1234
Will add 1 to `hits`
increase_hits.php
Pages served
from cache
Pages served
fresh
Article – ID:1234
Regardless of:
Page = cached
Page = NOT cached
Hits will increase in the database
Great, article hits increase!
But, hits shown is still cached.
166,351 166,352 166,353
increase_hits.php
increase_hits.php
166,351
Regardless of:
Page = cached
Page = NOT cached
Hits will increase on the front end
Tips for Running a Large Website Using Joomla
Tip 3:
If you're not using Joomla's cache because of its pitfalls, find a work around.
Tips for Running a Large Website Using Joomla
Tip 4:
Joomla will not be upset if you don't use a built in component.
● Anchor Text● All vs. Exact● Articles graded higher than Forum
Tips for Running a Large Website Using Joomla
Tip 4:
Joomla will not be upset if you don't use a built in component.
Tips for Running a Large Website Using Joomla
Tip 5:
Template overrides are awesome! Make sure you know about them.
We use template overrides to
quickly
whip up
helpful tools
for our customers...
How to create a “tool” in
2 easy steps...
Step 1
Step 1. Create the Override
/templates/TEMPLATE/html/com_content/article/whois.php
Step 2
Step 2. Create the Article
An den?........
ifthen
But....
Do not use that code in my last slide...
It's not safe
Tips for Running a Large Website Using Joomla
Tip 5:
Template overrides are awesome! Make sure you know about them.
@bwmarkle
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