There's nothing worse than realizing you just clicked the wrong button... Whoose, your web site suddenly doesn't load, a blank page, a 404 error, or lots of strange programming code.

No problems, you have a backup right? Not all ISPs are the same -- for example, as of August 24, 2009, HostPapa does not provide backups of your web site. Did you know that? They backup their servers, so if there is a catastropic failure your data won't be lost -- but it has to be their catastropic failure, not yours. Meaning if you just deleted your web site, and you don't have backups -- too bad!

That's not cool in the least. If your host provides you with cPanel, then you have a very simple way to create backups of your web site. But of course, you need to know how to do it -- and I bet your ISP didn't share this information with you.

So, for our Joomla clients (who all have access to cPanel) and for all those that don't host with us, but feel it is a good idea to have a backup of their web site, I offer this short tutorial on how to do a full backup of your entire web account (including email accounts, databases, and your web site).

With our hosting packages, you have access to Fantastico, which will automatically update Joomla to the latest production version of Joomla. This is the only way we provide a means for clients to upgrade Joomla.

However, there are other 3rd party tools that will also provide update services for Joomla. One such tool is called Joomla Updater (authored by Rahman Haghparast). I must confess, we've never used this product for our clients, but evidently some Joomla developers are including this product to help their clients keep Joomla up-to-date.

Alas, as of June 2009, we've been having reports that this component has been recommending that you upgrade your web site to Version 1.6. Joomla version 1.6 is only in alpha and is not available for download for production web sites, so you sure as heck should not be upgrading your site to this version of Joomla.

Using Joomla Updater to upgrade your site to Joomla Version 1.6 will bring your web site to a crashing-halt, and unless you're good with cPanel and FTP you'll find yourself in for an uphill battle to restore your site to working order.

I suppose if you've found this article, you're probably in this boat -- if you need help, please contact us and we'll be able to help you recover from an accidental upgrade to Jooma 1.6.

Have you ever written an article in Joomla, and then later updated it, and clicked saved, and realized that in fact, you need the old verison back?

Until recently, there has been no way to do this -- as soon as you click Save or Apply, your previous web page content was lost forever.

At MarketAccess, we're constantly scanning the web for new Joomla extensions. Joomla extensions allow you to add all sorts of great features to your web site -- such as  shopping carts, auto-generated site maps, extended user details, online surveys -- the list goes on!

Recently, we uncovered a great new extension that allows you to keep every version of any web page on your web site -- and it happens automatically each time you save an article.

When you add new content to your web site, how do your customers learn about it? By chance?

RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, is an effective way for your customers to stay informed about updates on your web site. RSS isn't email. Instead, people subscribe through your web site, and receive a notification in their RSS Reader when you post new content. Latest generation web browers like IE 7 and FireFox support RSS feeds -- so this is probably the most common way people will access feeds from your site.

A few months ago, we wrote an article about SEO, and due to overwhelming interest, we thought we'd revisit this topic again and share additional ideas to help improve your search engine ranking.

So, here are 9 tips you can do yourself to optimize your web site for search engines. If you don't feel comfortable doing these yourself, you can contact us and we'll be happy to review your web site.