Due to be released in January 2012 is the new version of Joomla called 2.5. Some of the new features included will be update notification, new search functionality, and multi-database support.

Making the jump from Joomla 1.7 to 2.5 is made easy with a single click upgrade. The nice thing about Joomla 2.5 is that it will be able to run most of the extensions from Joomla 1.7.

The new update notification takes out the guesswork by telling you it's time to update Joomla. Site administrators will know exactly when to update right after they log-in. The best thing about this feature is that it allows the site to be easily updated with just a one-click process. 

Joomla 2.5 has a new search functionality that boasts a feature with stemming and auto-completion. With stemming, it will allow you to run a search using a root word to find and local matches.

The new Joomla 2.5 is also more flexible with the ability to support new databases. MySQL is the database that Joomla has traditionally worked with in the past. If you were using a MS SQL database, making updates with Joomla could be a difficult process. The new Joomla 2.5 will work with MS SQL with a list of additional databases soon to follow.

These are just a few of the many great upgrades offered in Joomla 2.5. The awesome thing about Joomla is the amazing growing community that makes all of these new features possible.

How do you go about determining a budget for your company website? The whole process should start by establishing a realistic marketing budget. Most experts will agree that a marketing budget will vary depending on your industry. A general rule is that the budget should be between 2% - 12% of gross sales. If you're a million dollar company, you should set up a budget between $20,000 - $120,000. If you're a $100,000 company you should set aside a budget between $2,000 - $12,000 to market and promote your brand.

A custom website can be a powerful way to promote your business and help you reach new customers. Many business owners must realize that they are building a brand and not just designing a website. Of course a website is not a stand-alone marketing tool. In many cases a website is your customers first impression of your brand. Making a great impression is crucial to the conversion process.

The price of a custom website can vary greatly by the needs of your business. It should be tailor made to fit each individual company and it can be compared to adding options on a car. The more options you add to it, the greater the price.

Just like a car, a website will also need to be maintained. Who will update the content? Who will add new pages to the site. Who will add more products to the online store. Who will be there to fix the site if it goes down? These are all additional costs that needed to be added into your marketing budget.

Another important part of website that gets overlooked is SEO or Search Engine Optimization. This is very important to how your website gets ranked in the major search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo.

There are definitely some costs to having a great online presence. The key is to understand those costs and plan for them because it is the key to a successful future.

Your welcome. That is all I have to type.

First, I will talk about the state of design today. I can start off by saying that there is a handful of great designers that have all of the right principles in mind that do some unbelievable work. They are out there. Sadly, most companies don't use them.

Sometimes it's their nephew or friend who is "great with computers" or someone who attended college a while back for multimedia, but in a whole smaller businesses get results that are less than what they deserve when it comes to their website work and design.

Here are some important design factors for 2012

Design for mobile:

Your website may look beautiful on a 19" monitor, but what about a 4" phone? More and more people are using their mobile devices as their way of getting on the internet. It truly is becoming the "personal computer", replacing that thing you blow off with the air can once in a while and plug into the power surge. You can tackle designing for mobile in different ways. Usually, you can create an entirely different site, throw it on a subdomain, such as m.yoursite.com, and redirect mobile traffic to it. To take that a step further, certain sites can be designed for specific phones, such as the iPhone and Droid. You can also do it a bit simpler on a content management system, where you don't have to create the information twice. Just create mobile templates to route the traffic to.

Implementing Social Media

Facebook usage pretty much has passed email usage by now. Think about that. That is astounding. Really, more people are apt to check their Facebook than their email. Since social media is so important, why not tie it in so users can have their lives at their fingertips at all times?

Designing for social media could easily have it's own book, let alone blog post, so I will just mention a few implementations that can be used for a better experience

• Facebook fanbox widget
• "Like" this page
• Recommendations
• Site specific comment box
• Live twitter feeds, styled to your site
• more

QR. Link a graphic to your website

What a cool way to sync your business card with your website. Or anything in print for that matter, using a QR code easily lets users with smartphones access any URL. If you look around, all of the large corporations seem to get this concept. Yet, this concept seems to fall on deaf ears with the small to mid sized companies.

Although the concept isn't brand new, the idea for a small business to use QR codes still seems to be new. This makes using QR codes an important step for any small business looking to stay ahead of the competition with technology.

Joomla is definitely a winner and just keeps getting better. Joomla won the 2011 Pack Publishing award for being the top open source CMS.

The Packt Open Source award is considered a great honor for an open source project. Joomla won the award based on the voting results from a panel of judges with a combination of public voting.

Joomla is no stranger to awards. Now Joomla has won a Packt Open Source Award three times since 2006.