Most Joomla developers will want to remove the title tag from the home page text where it shows up as an H1 tag on the top of the body/article area. Removing this from the home page will not affect the actual title tag, which is one of the most important items used in search engine optimization, but it will clean up the home page as H1 tags can be very large and can easily distract site visitors from the content of your site.

Many people feel that having H1 tags on individual pages can help with search engine optimization, but recently, representatives of some of the large search engines have been down-playing this by saying that the H1 tags no longer carry the weight they once did. It's up to you whether or not to keep the tags, but if you would like to remove them, I will explain how to do so.

I'm going to assume that you have a recent version of Joomla installed and understand how to access the administration area and are familiar enough with it to make changes to the site.

One of the possible vulnerabilities of a Joomla website is the ability for a hacker to gain access to the administrator directory. A good way to help protect your site from getting hacked is to add username and password protection to your administrator directory. By adding this layer of security you will be prompted for a username and password TWICE when you try to access your admin area. The first prompt will be from the server requesting permission to access the administrator directory, and the second prompt will be from Joomla itself when you try and access the admin area directly. NOTE: The method described here will only work on a Unix/Linux server running Apache software. If you do not know what this means, contact your IT department or your internet service provider.

Before we go on, I am assuming that you already have a copy of Joomla installed and know how to access the administrator area and are familiar with it. Additionally, you should be familiar with cPanel and know how to access it as well.

When new users register at a Joomla website, they can be classified as a specific type of user depending upon how the site administrators originally set up user registration. Joomla offers four different public front-end settings, they are: Registered, Author, Editor and Publisher. Additionally, there are three different levels of back end settings: Manager, Administrator and Super Administrator.

Here is an explanation of the front-end user settings:

"Registered" users can see content that non-registered users cannot, but they do not have the ability to edit anything. Users registered as "Author" can create articles and edit the ones they created, but they cannot edit anything else, including other Authors. "Editors" are virtually the same as Authors, but they can edit all Author articles, not just their own. And finally "Publishers" are the same as Editors, but they can also determine whether articles can be published, unpublished or deleted.

There are who-knows-how-many thousands of free Joomla extensions you can use for just about any personal or commercial project. Of all the many great Joomla components, tips, tricks and modules out there, only a few ever earn that special place on a "top 10" list. Naturally, there are some great commercial add-ons, but we're talking here about extensions you can use under the terms of the GNU General Public License.

Don't be upset if your favorite isn't listed, and be advised that it is best to wait a few months for open source code to get thoroughly tested, vetted, tweaked and improved. In other words, you won't find the Joomla extension you just read about today listed here, as the ones on this list (in no particular order) are tools that are safer to recommend based on their having been smacked around a bit. They are "net tested" and as guaranteed as any freebie ever could be.