Looking for ways to improve the customer experience of your Joomla website via cookies? Can’t decide which cookie plugin is better than the other? Don’t stress I’ll be here to help you with that.
Cookies are mainly used to store user data on their web browsers to help them show improved searches the next time whenever they visit a similar/same website. They are like a short-term memory of your browser that keeps some track of your activities.
It is only recently that a few laws have been passed that allow asking visitors their consent before storing the cookies, without which no information sharing is possible. Therefore make sure the plugin complies with the EU Cookie Law and GDPR Law.
Given below I have managed to shortlist 6 Cookie plugins/modules that work best with any Joomla website. With any of these, you can easily control and manage your website’s cookie content.
Also Read: How to create a cookie law box on your Joomla website?
Let’s have a look at the list below:
Starting from the best inline, a free cookie plugin in Joomla that blocks all kinds of cookies including that of 3rd party or any cookies set up by JavaScript. It’s one of the most reliable and efficient cookie plugins.
It is fully in compliance with the GDPR & EU Cookie Laws. Blocks all the Joomla, session, language, and even the 3rd party cookies until and unless the user has accepted them.
Some of its key features include:-
Another popular cookie plugin for the Joomla website is GDPR. As the name suggests the plugin is fully in compliance with the GDPR and EU Cookie laws. A strong plugin that blocks all the cookies and resources until they aren’t accepted by the user.
If you are looking to invest in a good plugin that blocks all the cookies then this is just the one for you. It’s a paid plugin that covers all the GDPR requirements and easily integrates with other Joomla plugins or components.
Some of its main features are as follows:-
Next on the list is a Joomla cookie module that displays all the information about the use of cookies. A free extension that blocks almost all types of cookies of a website. It is very mobile-friendly and has a design that supports multi-language websites.
Some of its main features include:-
Another easy-to-use plugin with multiple functions and features is the Cookie policy notification bar plugin that informs users on how to use cookies on that website. The plugin is again in compliance with the policies of EU Cookie Law and the GDPR law, which makes it trustworthy and safe to use.
Though it’s a paid plugin that supports Joomla 4 alpha version compatibility and a lot of other features and parameters. It blocks all the cookies of a website until they are accepted by the user itself.
Some of its key features include the following:
The next addition in the list is a paid module that creates a banner on your Joomla website notifying users about the use of cookies on the website. With this plugin, you can easily create and configure a responsive banner module on the site with all your required information.
This banner is easily customizable and styleable to match the look and feel of your website. Like others, this module is also in compliance with the laws and their policies that eventually make it safe to use.
Some of its highlights are as follows:
Lastly, we have another free module informing users about the site using cookies in an elegant manner. This module is also in compliance with the EU Cookie Law and GDPR law that makes it safe to install and use. Compatible with both Joomla 3 and Joomla 4 beta versions so you can even try it out on your new Joomla 4 websites.With responsive design and easy to install steps the module is very much user-friendly and has easy customization options.
Some of its key features include the following:
Finally, I have now managed to showcase to you a list of both free and paid modules and plugins, by highlighting their main features and how each of them is different in its own ways. So I hope now it becomes a little easier to decide which plugin/module suits your requirements the most. Do let me know in the comments below how helpful the article was.
]]>You can create an amazing interactive Joomla website using different Joomla templates and page builders.
But at the same time, it is very important to make it fully SEO-friendly so you can rank it on search engines for your money-making keywords.
There are lots of things you can do to make your website fully SEO-friendly such as optimizing the website speed, creating fully mobile-friendly websites, and much more.
Here are some of the useful resources which can help you.
Apart from these, there is one more thing. This is called Sitemap. Creating a sitemap for your Joomla website can bring a positive impact on your website. There are two types of sitemaps. One is HTML and another one is the XML sitemap.
In this article, we are talking about XML sitemaps. Using XML sitemaps helps search engine bots to crawl and index your site more easily. Thus, it’ll improve your web pages’ visibility to search engines.
Sitemaps are a list of all the links available on your website. It helps users (in the case of HTML sitemap) as well as search engine bots to find your website pages. When any search engine crawler comes to your website, it just visits your sitemap and sees all the navigation structures.
It helps them to crawl and index your pages fast. This is the reason Sitemaps are more important from the SEO point of view.
There are lots of tools and Joomla sitemap extensions available in the market which can help you to automatically create your sitemap.xml file for you. Some of the services also provide you the feature to submit your sitemap to Google or any other search directories.
JSitemap is one of the best and award-winning Joomla sitemap generator plugging which comes with a complete SEO solution for Joomla. The sitemap plugin currently powers more than 2,00,000+ Joomla websites.
You can create XML and HTML sitemaps with the help of the JSitemap plugin and manage all types of sitemap content on your website. JSitemap ships with the official integration with Google Search Console to submit, resubmit, delete sitemaps, monitor indexing status directly inside your Joomla! backend using a user-friendly interface!
Some of the unique key features of JSitemap
Price: 49.00 EUR
OS Map is another popular Joomla sitemap plugin that helps you to create SEO-friendly HTML and XML sitemaps for your Joomla website. It offers you the easiest way to add sitemaps on your website so you can get better indexing on search engines.
The sitemap generator comes with Free and Pro versions. In the free version, you can only create sitemap links for core Joomla extensions such as Joomla articles, contacts, etc. And with the pro version, you can extend the features and capabilities of this amazing sitemap extension. The pro version supports extensions such as K2, Virtuemart, Kunena, SobiPro, and many others.
Some of the unique key features of OsMap
Price: Free or $49.
Note: You can use Coupon code AMAYZING30 and get a 30% discount. (The coupon code was active at the time of writing this article. We can not guarantee that this coupon will also work in the future.)
JL Sitemap is another best Sitemap builder for Joomla. It is a free sitemap Joomla extension that enables you to create HTML and XML sitemaps that you can submit to Google for faster crawling and indexing of your Joomla website. The plugin builds the sitemaps according to the Joomla router.
The JL Sitemap comes with parallel compatibility of Joomla 3.9.x and Joomla 4 so when there will be a stable Joomla 4 version, you will not have to worry about its compatibility with J4.
It runs XML Sitemap creation by Cron and supports the Russian and English languages.
Some of the unique key features of JL Sitemap
Price: Free for Life
When it comes to sitemap generation tools, Aimy Sitemap is a well-known name. The plugin helps you to create HTML and XML sitemaps for your Joomla website easily. It is a highly customizable sitemap generator and you can control the frequency and priority of the links.
The plugin helps you to improve your site’s SEO usability and as it includes a broken link checker for on-page links and images in the pro version. Apart from this, it also includes the crawler that visits every page of your website, analyzes its content, and queues its URL for inclusion in your sitemap.
The Joomla sitemap plugin is best suitable for small to medium-sized websites with a couple of hundred pages only.
Some of the unique key features of Aimy Sitemap
Price: Free or 28.56€
Note: I have seen a note on their official website which says “Please note that we sell our software to countries of the European Union only.” So I guess, if you do not belong to European Union, you will not be able to get this plugin.
PWT Sitemap is one of its kind Joomla sitemap plugin which helps you to create HTML and XML sitemap on your Joomla website without any complex configurations. This one is a perfect sitemap plugin for the Joomla website that integrates with Joomla menu items and it works perfectly with the existing websites.
You can create XML and Image sitemaps using the PWT Sitemap plugin. It supports most of the third-party extensions such as Kunena, Virtuemart, Zoo, K2, Hikashop, JoomGallery, DJ-Classifieds, and EasyDiscuss and they are increasing the list.
Some of the unique key features of PWT Sitemap
Price: Free to €19
Sitemaps are an important part of any website as it contains all the links of the website which you want to crawl and index. XML sitemaps (as crawlers or bots understand only XML formal) help bots to crawl your website quickly.
So choose any of the Joomla sitemap extensions which suit your need and create your XML sitemap. If I have to choose, I will choose the JSitemap for my personal use as it gives me everything which I need. You can choose them on the basis of your needs.
Share your pick in the comment section.
]]>GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), an important law for website owners. Every site owner, especially those doing business in the European market, is worried about it and making their website compatible with GDPR.
So what the heck is this?
GDPR is a privacy and right to be forgotten law introduced by the European Union to secure the privacy and data of their residents.
According to the law, you can not cullect any Personal Identifiable Information without the consent of users. Also, a user can request you to delete or modify their information at any time. To know more about GDPR, you can watch this detailed video.
Joomla took this very seriously and with the introduction of Joomla 3.9, they have released a The Privacy Suite Toul that allows you to make your Joomla website compatible with GDPR without any third-party extensions.
No doubt, there are many advanced 3rd party Joomla GDPR extensions available in the market but we will not discuss them here. Here we will focus on Joomla’s built-in features.
The new privacy suite is not just to display a cookie law or privacy pulicy box on the Joomla website. But they have added a lot of new features and options to make it easy for the administrators to handle the privacy of their customers or visitors.
Joomla has created a brand new component or you can say a dashboard to manage all the features related to GDPR and Privacy. To access the dashboard, navigate to Users > Privacy.
From here you can manage the user consents, manage data requests from users and have extra information for 3rd party extensions.
It provides different plugins for different purposes. And further, in this article, we will look into those.
According to the GDPR, before storing any personally identifiable information on your website, you need to take the full consent of users. For this purpose, Joomla has a new "System - Privacy Consent" plugin to make it easier to get this consent.
To work with it, fullow the steps.
The plugin allows you to add a short privacy pulicy and also you can link to an existing article where you have explained your privacy pulicies in detail.
Simply click on the plugin and it will take you to the new screen where you can add all these details.
Next is the Expiration tab. It allows you to contrul checks for consent expiration. This tab has 3 options other than the Enable/Disable feature.
Once you are done with these configurations, you will see a checkbox on the Joomla registration page or on the Joomla Contact Form.
With the privacy suite, Joomla offers you three new menu types under privacy which can be used to manage the data requests.
You can find the menu items when you create a new menu under Privacy.
To manage the request, again navigate to Users > Privacy. On the dashboard, you will see the pending request.
Joomla sends an email to the user after they submit a request. Users will have to click a confirmation link.
This feature is restricted to authenticated users. This might change in the future. However, the GDPR is less important to anonymous visitors, and a form like this could also become a spam target.
If you are an extension developer, Joomla's privacy feature can act as a framework for you to integrate your extensions with the Privacy suite. The extension will cullect the data and share it with the privacy suite to handle the request.
Here you can check out the detailed Implementation Guide For Developers.
Privacy Touls Suite is a very useful feature in Joomla 3.9 and can help you to make your Joomla site compatible with GDPR and Privacy laws.
Hope you have enjoyed the article. Share your views in the comment section.
]]>Do you want to add live chat to interact with your visitors in real-time on your Joomla website?
Today, more than 41% of users expect to chat online with the service providers so they can get instant answers to their queries and close the deal. They don’t want to waste their time waiting for email replies.
Therefore, if you are not using a live chat on your website, you are ignoring your customers. And indirectly, you are sending them to your competitors.
If you are using live chat on your website, it will also help you to convenience your customers to make a purchase by solving their queries instantly. As instant responses can help them to make decisions faster.
Today, in this article, we are going to learn how to add live chat on your Joomla website for FREE. Yes, we will discuss the free method which I have tested and currently using on our official website Joomdev.com
Companies that are using live chat on their website to interact with their visitors or potential customers can see a surge in their sales, customer satisfaction, and services.
But,
The live chat solutions are either costlier or provide very limited features in their free version. But for the last few months, I have been using Tawk.to on our official website JoomDev to communicate with our customers. It’s a completely free solution that gives you no limitation in their free version. You just can’t remove their link from the chat widget.
So in this tutorial, I will use Tawk.to to implement live chat on the Joomla website.
To get started, head over to Tawk.to the official website to create a new account.
Next, click on Sign Up Free to create your free account.
This will take you to the new page where you have to provide the basic information such as Name, Email, and Password.
Click on the Signup for free button and it will take you to the next page where you just have to follow the wizard.
In the first step, you have to select the language. Select the language and click on the Next: Create Property button.
In the next step, you will have to add the property details such as Property Name, Website URL, and Widget name.
Once all the information is updated, click on the Next: Team Members button.
In the next step, you can add your support staff. Here you can set the access level as well. You can add as many co-workers as you want.
Once done, click on the Next: Install Widget button and move to the next step. Once you click on the button, you will reach the next step. Here it will generate a script for you. Simply copy that code and place that code before the </body> tag on every page of your website.
Alternatively, you can download the Tawk.to plugin and install it on your Joomla website. You can find a step-by-step guide to install the Joomla plugin and module.
Once the code is placed, click on the Done button and check your website live. You will see a live chat widget floating right bottom of the screen.
You can change the whole look and feel of the chat window to match your website theme. To make these changes, log in to your tawk.to account and navigate to Administration (you will see a gear icon at the left bottom of the window) > Chat Widget under the Channel.
You will see other settings as well here. Start playing with the options and start interacting with your customers in real-time.
So this is how you can set up a free live chat on your Joomla website and communicate with your customer in real-time.
]]>Contact us page is an integral part of your website. It is a not-to-miss page as if someone wants to get in touch with you or wants to give their feedback, they will look for the contact us page.
So your contact us page should have the following ingredients:
There are lots of Joomla form extensions available in the market that you can use to create a contact form for the contact us page. But in this article, we will discuss how to create contact us pages without using any third-party extensions. We will just use the native Joomla features only.
As I have explained above, I will not use any third-party form builder in order to create the contact us page and will use the only native built-in Joomla features. So follow the steps and get your contact us page done in a few moments.
The very first step you need to create a contact in Joomla Contact Component. To do this, navigate to Components > Contacts > Contacts and click on the New button from the top left.
When you click on the New button, you will be redirected to a new page where you have to fill in other important information which you want to display on the contact us page.
As mentioned in the Contact Us page ingredients, you have to add key person information whom the user can contact directly. So this is the place where you have to add that person’s information.
On this page, you will have 5 tabs.
Once you are done with all these, save the page and move to the next step.
Now, you have to link that contact item to the menu item.
Navigate to Menus > Main Menu > Click on the New button.
Select Menu Item Type Single Contact from Contacts. Select Contact which you have created and want to display on this menu item.
At last hit the save button and check on the front end. You will have your contact us page ready to use.
The default form will have only standard fields such as Name, Email, Subject Line, and Message. But you can add more fields utilizing the custom fields. I have created a separate article on how to use custom fields on the Joomla Contact component.
Feel free to comment below if you have any suggestions on feedback regarding this article. Keep sharing and supporting the Joomla CMS
]]>Content management can be difficult when you are new to a CMS because there are a lot of options with which you can manage it. But without knowing those options it looks a bit tedious.
Joomla too has a lot of options for managing and displaying the content be it categories, tags, filters, articles and so much more. One of the easiest and most helpful of all of them is using Joomla Tags.
This article will explain to you how versatile Joomla tags are and one of the ways to display all the Joomla articles for a specific tag. Same tags can be applied to a lot of other content within Joomla and content can have any number of tags to it. Let's now look at the process of how useful these are with Joomla articles.
The most flexible way of managing content in Joomla is via Joomla Tags. You can use any number of tags for almost any type of content be it articles, contacts, fields, categories, newsfeeds, etc. Once the content is tagged it can be viewed using the tag link, that displays all the content under it.
Creating Joomla Tags is possible in two ways, that are as follows:
So now you have an idea of how versatile tags are and how smoothly they can be created in Joomla. The next question is how one can display the content of a specific tag?
Let’s take an example of Joomla articles type content here and see how to display all the articles within a specific tag. Before starting make sure you have added the tags to the articles.
This way you will now start seeing the list of all the articles for that specific tag. Similarly, you can create modules to display different content within a specific tag. Let me know in the comments below how helpful was the hack for you to manage the content of your Joomla website.
]]>Do you own a Joomla website? Or are you an admin or a Joomla website? And you may be very cautious about the security of your website and this can be the reason you want to hide or remove “Forget Username” and “Forget Password” links from your Joomla login page.
There can be many other reasons as well. So in this article, we are going to learn how to modify the login page and remove the “Forget Username” and “Forget Password” links.
Note: To remove these links from the login page, you need to edit the template files. And if you have accidentally removed anything else, your website can stop functioning. So it is highly recommended to take a full backup of your website before making any changes in the files.
The very first step you need to do is to remove the links from Com_Users. To do this, navigate to Extensions > Templates > Templates.
Look for the default template you are using on your website. It will be named like Your_Template_Name Details and Files. Click on it.
Now, you have to create an override for the login file. So now navigate to the Create Overrides tab and find Com_Users under the Component section and click on login.
This will generate a set of files in .templates/your-template-name/html/com_users/login/. Now, navigate to the Editor tab and choose the file located in /html/com_users/login/default_login.php.
Click on it to edit the file. Find below the given code and remove it from the file. This code can be different depending upon your template. I am using Astroid Template One for this example.
<ul class="list-group mt-3"<
<ul class="list-group mt-3">
<li class="list-group-item">
<a href="https://www.joomlabeginner.com/<?php echo JRoute::_('index.php?option=com_users&view=reset'); ?a>">
<?php echo JText::_('COM_USERS_LOGIN_RESET'); ?a></a>
</lia>
<li class="list-group-item">
<a href="https://www.joomlabeginner.com/<?php echo JRoute::_('index.php?option=com_users&view=remind'); ?a>">
<?php echo JText::_('COM_USERS_LOGIN_REMIND'); ?></a>
</li>
</ul>
Once done, save it.
Now you have to remove the code from the module files. To do this, again navigate to Extensions > Templates > Templates > Select the template. In our previous step, we have created an override for Com_Users. Now we will create overrides for mod_login. So navigate to Create overrides > Modules > mod_login.
Click on it and it will generate a set of files in .templates/your-template-name/html/mod_login/
Now, go to Editor tab and find default.php file under mod_login
Find below the given code and remove it from the file. This code can be different depending upon your template. I am using Astroid Template One for this example.
<div class="form-check form-group d-flex justify-content-end">
<a class="forget-password-link" href="https://www.joomlabeginner.com/<?php echo JRoute::_('index.php?option=com_users&view=reset'); ?>"><?php echo JText::_('MOD_LOGIN_FORGOT_YOUR_PASSWORD'); ?></a>
</div>
And
<li>
<a class="login-help-link" href="https://www.joomlabeginner.com/<?php echo JRoute::_('index.php?option=com_users&view=remind'); ?>">
<?php echo JText::_('MOD_LOGIN_FORGOT_YOUR_USERNAME'); ?></a>
</li>
Once done, hit the Save button.
Note: To make it easy to find the code, look for the MOD_LOGIN_FORGOT_YOUR_PASSWORD
and MOD_LOGIN_FORGOT_YOUR_USERNAME
and remove the code starting with div or li.
At last, refresh the login page and you will see that these links are no longer there.
This is how you can remove the Forget Username and Forget Password links from your Joomla login page.
]]>Joomla 4 is around the corners and as the beta updates are getting better each time, our scope for exploring Joomla is also expanding. There are some good features in Joomla 3 that have been carried forward to Joomla 4 as well and one such being the option of adding custom fields in Contact Forms.
The main purpose of adding custom fields in the form is that it gives us more possibilities and options to customize the contact form in Joomla without having to install a special extension for it. So if you wish to make a lightweight Joomla website that has a contact form, then these fields will help you do just that.
Adding custom fields to a contact page is easy if you follow the steps mentioned in this post.
The first step here is to create a Contact page in Joomla 4.
The very first step is to create a Contact page on your Joomla website with the help of the Contacts component.
Navigate to Components > Contact > New. Once you will click on the New button from the top left, you will be redirected to a contact form page where you have to enter the title for the form along with other important details.
Here you will find 5 different tabs.
Once you are done with all these, save the page and move to the next step.
In the next step, we will assign the contact page to the menu item.
Now, navigate to Menus > Select Menu > New. Select Menu Item Type Single Contact from Contacts. Select contact which you have created and want to display on this menu item.
Once done, click on the Save button, and you are done with creating a contact us page without using any third-party contact form extensions.
Now, you can open the menu from the frontend to check how it is looking.
The default Joomla contact form gives you 4 default fields only. But you want to collect more information from the users such as gender or budget or anything else.
To achieve this, you have to use the custom fields. So, let’s check out how to add a custom field in the Joomla contact form.
In order to add a custom field to your Joomla contact form, you first need to create the field group. So navigate to Components > Contacts > Field Groups. You will see a dropdown on the left side and select Mail from there.
Now, click on the New button from the top and add the field group.
Once done, save it and move to create the custom field.
To create a custom field, again navigate to Components > Contacts > Fields.
Before clicking on the New button, make sure you have selected the Mail (See attached screenshot) and then click on the New button.
For this demonstration, I am creating a custom field to ask for the gender. So I will need a radio-type field.
Give a Title to the field and then select the Type Radio from the dropdown. You can add other settings here such as what will be the label, description, or mark it as required.
Under the Radio Values, add your values. According to my example, my values will be Male and Female.
From the right sidebar, select the Field Group and Category on which you want to save this field.
Now, navigate to the Permission tab. Change Edit Custom Field Value to Allowed so the public user of the site can select the checkbox values.
Once done and reload the contact us page on your website. You will be able to see the newly added custom field on the contact form.
This is how you can use custom fields in Joomla 4 Contact form. Feel free to comment if you have any suggestions to improve this article or have any questions.
]]>Sliding content makes your website appealing.
So looking for a Joomla slider plugin? Tired of testing different types of slider extensions?
I can understand your pain as there are lots of Joomla slider extensions available in the market and selecting the best one is really tricky work.
So today in this article, I am going to share Smart Slider 3’s review. At the end of this article, we will know about its features, pricing, and why it is the best one in the industry.
Smart Slider 3 is one of the best and powerful, easy-to-use Joomla slider extensions that lets you create highly responsive and creative sliders on your Joomla website. It is developed by the Nextend team from Hungary. The plugin is available for Joomla as well as for WordPress. So if you are looking for WordPress, you can also use it.
The plugin is available in the freemium version that means if you don't want to invest your money in the pro version, you can still use its free version and design the creative sliders on your website. It gives you way more features in the free version in comparison to other slider extensions in the market.
It's not like that I am telling you to use Smart Slider 3 and you should. It is because it gives you valid reasons why you should use Smart Slider 3 over other available slider plugins.
Smart Slider 3 comes with an easy-to-use drag and drop interface. You don't need to be highly skilled to use or design a block, slider, or carousel with Smart Slider 3.
With the help of its drag and drop interface, you can create or customize the sliders easily just like you create pages or sections in page builders.
The best thing is that if you want to extensively customize the appearance of your slider, you can enable Expert mode. This will show up with advanced customization options.
Designing a slider from the scratch can be a tedious and time-consuming job. So why do you have to waste your time reinventing the wheel when you can invest that time in growing your business or doing anything else that is much more important.
And here the slider template library comes in the actions.
Smart Slider 3 gives you 180+ slider templates which include sliders, blocks, pages, and carousels. You can simply pick any of the templates from the ever-growing library as per your need and start using it after replacing the content.
You will be done with creating a highly responsive slider in minutes.
Animations and Effects make a design more appealing and creative. Users get attracted when they say flying and animated content.
The Smart Slider 3 comes with unique and creative In & Out animations and effects. You can set different animations on the different layers. Every layer animation appears on a visual timeline, where the delay and duration can be changed.
The Smart Slider is built for versatility. The slider plugin is not only useful for creating the sliders only, but you can also create anything from simple images to complex full-page slideshows, video, and even animated layer sliders.
So now you just have to think about what you have to create, and you will be able to design literally anything with this slider plugin and decorate that with cool effects and animations.
Smart Slider 3 is the best slider plugin for Joomla and WordPress. It is the best one because of its features and capabilities.
It is not limited to the static text and images only, but you can use it to create completely custom layouts with dynamic data by loading content from different sources such as Joomla articles, eCommerce Products from VirtueMart, Eshop, MijoShop or HikaShop, Facebook, Twitter, RSS, Galleries, Event Calendars, and many others.
You can even load videos from YouTube as well.
Like any page builder, there are widgets or addons or elements, same in the Smart Slider 3, they have layers.
They have 24 different layers and you can use those to build your sliders, blocks, and pages. Each layer offers advanced customizations so you can achieve your desired layout.
Speed is not only important for the user experience but it is also one of the search engine ranking signals. So it is important to have a fast-loading website but when you are using lots of images on the sliders, it can slow down your website speed.
But not in the case of Smart Slider 3.
The Joomla slider plugin gives you the ability to optimize your slider to boost your website loading speed. With its image optimization feature, you can Squeeze out every last unnecessary byte, no matter how big your background image.
It also offers you the lazy load feature as well which helps you to load only those images which are requested. This will reduce the requests on the network and ultimately other resources will get more bandwidth. As a result, your website will load faster.
Creating a responsive website is a must nowadays. More than 51% of users use smartphones to browse something online. So if your website is not mobile-ready, you are not giving a good user experience, as a result, they will leave your website.
To eliminate this issue, Smart Slider gives you full responsive controls. Smart Slider sites are responsive by default, so they display and perform beautifully on every device. It also offers you Custom breakpoints so you can add new breakpoints, to adapt your websites to specific devices.
You can even hide a specific layer, slider, or even the full slider from a specific device.
As I mentioned above, it is really very simple and easy to use a slider extension for Joomla as well as for WordPress. Apart from the installation part, it works the same for both of the CMS and you really don’t need any hi-fi skills to use this.
Everything you can achieve by playing with the available options and drag and drop the layers.
So here is how it works
Once you have installed it on your Joomla website, navigate to the Smart Slider dashboard to create a new slider.
Once you will click on the New Project, you will get a popup that will ask you,
Once you have started, start creating or customizing the slides with visual drag and drop builder. Customize its appearance, size, color, and all other things as per your requirements.
Once you are done, publish it in the desired position.
Smart Slider 3 has very extensive documentation for each and every feature including how-to guides. They release how to step for each slider template. They also have a YouTube channel where they cover all the Smart Slider related tutorials.
When it comes to customer support, they only provide ticket support. BTW, they also have a Facebook community. You can also take help from fellow community members as well.
Now, let's have a look at its pricing.
As shown in the above screenshot, they have 3 plans and all the plans come with a one-time payment. It means that you have to pay only once and you will get lifetime updates and support.
Now, I will end this review with my final words.
All I will say that if you are looking for something extraordinary at the cheapest price, Smart Slider 3 is the best Joomla slider plugin, you can have.
Do let me know if you have used it before. Share your experience in the comment section.
]]>According to HTTPArchive, images are the most requested asset type on the website and it takes more bandwidth than the other type of resources.
So it becomes essential to optimize the images so they should take less bandwidth and load only when they are needed.
And for this, Lazy Load comes into action.
Lazy Loading defers the loading of an image that is not needed on the page immediately. An image, not visible to the user when the page loads, is loaded later when the user scrolls and the image actually become visible. If the user never scrolls, an image that is not visible to the user never gets loaded.
So in short if the lazy load is enabled, an image will be loaded only when it will be on the visible screen otherwise it will not be loaded. As a result, your website will load faster.
As mentioned above, if LazyLoad is enabled on any website, the images will only be requested and loaded when they are needed. Otherwise, no request has been sent to the server.
So it benefits you with:
Performance matters a lot for administrators as well as the end-users. If your site is not loading fast, users will not stay on your website and they might go to your competitor.
If you are enabling the lazy load on your website, you are reducing the images that need to load initially. So other important assets will load faster as there will be no or very few requests on your network. Lesser resource requests mean lesser bytes to download and lesser competition for the limited network bandwidth available to the user.
So if you enable the Lazy Load, the page becomes ready to use sooner as compared to without lazy load.
As mentioned, that it reduces the resource requests, it will automatically reduce the delivery cost. Every asset request is charged on the basis of the number of bytes transferred.
So once there will be fewer requests, there will be fewer byte transfers and less delivery cost from your delivery network.
PS: Nowadays, modern browsers are also offering lazy loading for the images.
Joomla Project is going to release its revolutionary release for Joomla 4. This release not only enhances the existing CMS but also adds new features as well.
And Lazy load is such a feature that comes built-in within Joomla 4. You don’t need to install any third-party plugin in order to lazy load images. You just need to enable a few options and you are done.
Let’s have a look at how to use Joomla 4 native lazy load feature.
In order to enable Lazy load, log in to your Joomla 4 site’s administrator. Now navigate to System → Manage → Plugins.
Now, search for the Lazy Load Plugin. And here you will have to enable the Content - Lazy Loading Images plugin and you are done.
Now, the plugin will set the 'loading=lazy' attribute for all images. Let me tell you that the plugin does not give you any flexibility to control where to apply this feature and where not. Once enabled, it will be applied to the overall website.
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