Extensions used for Joomla-SEO.net
So, what are the extensions used to build the Joomla-SEO.net site? Obviously, when creating a website about Joomla SEO, I would use an actual Joomla site, and use the same extensions I refer to in the articles. So, let's shortly discuss the website's setup.
Firstly, the site is built with Joomla, version 3.1.1 at the time of writing. The template used is the Publisher theme from GavickPro. Some template clubs use quite heavy frameworks to build their templates, so I checked how well it performs, but there is no issue here, performance is perfect, achieving a PageSpeed grade of 97, loading in less then a second.
For optimizing SEO parameters, including meta-descriptions and titles, SH404SEF was used, which is also much referred to in the SEO-checklist articles. It takes some getting used to, but it servers it's purpose well. Some might say the extension is a bit bloated, as it also contains a lot of features regarding social buttons ans security, but these features have been unpublished, and don't seem to affect performance much. Social buttons may be usefull of course, but as they often connect to the social networks frameworks, they can be bad for performance, so they are not used.
For the security features Akeeba Admin Tools is used, together with Akeeba Backup of course, which no Joomla site should go without.
For enhancing performance, basically all option's discussed in the checklist have been activated, like caching, G-Zip, etc. Then finally, JCH-optimize was installed and activated. This extension doies a very good job of combining CSS and Javascript files. This extension can have a major positive effect in your website's speed, up to 50%!
Then there are some extensions that are not SEO or performance related, but that are helpfull in organizing the site: the JCE Editor, and some NoNumber extensions. You may have noticed: no front-end extensions, all of the installed extensions are for back-end use.
Hosting
Then finally, hosting: You may have optimized your website in the extremes, but a bad host will blow all this away. This site is hosted with Siteground, and they have optimized their servers and security matters quite well, out of the box. For advanced users, they have some solutions that can further speed up your site. These have also been activated. This may be the subject for a future blog-post.