For over more than a year I'm using Joomla to run this blog. I like it! On one hand it's easy to use, but it's flexible enough for my needs. There are a lot of extensions out there, which are interesting enough to try out. Keeping the site up and running and secure can be a lot of work. Here are my top 3 best practices for maintaining a Joomla site.

1. Backup

The first one is obvious. If you don't regularly backup your site you're not able to get it back up and running as the server crashes. I use Akeeba Backup to backup my site. Akeeba offers a plugin with their backup solution that is called Lazy backup. I let the lazy backup backup my database every night and make a full backup every week.

2. No hacks

A lot of free extensions add a link to your site. To be honest, I think that's absolutely agonizing. At first I changed the extensions and removed the links. That's actually a lot of work. And every update of the extension will undo your work.

I use Mobile Joomla to have a mobile version of my blog. This extension adds a few templates. To keep track of statistics I use Piwik. To let Piwik gather statistics it needs some Javascript on the page. I can change all the extensions, but every time I update Mobile Joomla this will be undone. I tend to forget to change all the templates after updating.

To be able to update extensions without any problems and remove the unwanted links without hacking the extensions I use two extensions: Redaction and ReReplace. Redaction gives you the ability to search for a link and removes the complete div the link is in. ReReplace give you complete control over the output by replacing text with the text you desire. For example I replace the end tags of a page with the javascript of Piwik. This means that every page will have the Javascript.

3. Keeping secure

Keeping Joomla and all the extensions you use up to date is a good way to keep your site safe. If you stop using an extension you must remove it. Even if it's disabled the files are still on your site and if the contain a security problem, this problem still can be exploited.

Beside keeping your site clean the extension Admin Tools will help you to change default installations values and keep your Joomla installation secure.