My name is Brad Markle, and I help manage the InMotion Hosting Support Center - http://www.inmotionhosting.com/support. Our Support Center has run Joomla for the last ~3 years, and in 2013 we made the migration from Joomla 1.5 to Joomla 3.0. At the time of this writing, we have over 7,000 pages published and are getting more than 90,000 hits from search engines each week. In this presentation I will talk about some of the problems we've faced running such a large website and some of the solutions we've come up with.

1. @bwmarkle

2. Large Website?
What do you mean?

3. Lots
Staff
Traffic

4. How does
Inmotion hosting .com
compare?

6. google.com

7. # 1

9. craigslist.org

10. # 49

12. joomla.org

13. # 431

15. Inmotion hosting .com

16. # 1,596

18. OK, so we're not
in the top 100
sites or anything
like that....
But we get a good
amount of traffic.

19. Tips for Running a Large Website
Using Joomla
Tip 1:
Take Google Analytics to the next level with
Custom Variables and Event Tracking

20. What is a Custom Variable?

21. Name + Value
Mark Twain
Author Ernest Hemingway
Edgar Allan Poe

22. Name + Value
John-Paul Briones
Author Jeff Matson
Brad Markle

23. How to use Custom Variables?

24. It's just 1 line of javascript

26. OK. 1 line of code. But how?
… just look at our source

28. _gaq.push(['_setCustomVar',5,
'Author',
'BradM'
]);
$this->item->author

29. How do you see Custom
Variables in Analytics?

31. Key or Value?
Custom Variable (Key 5)
Custom Variable (Value 05)
______________________
John-Paul
Author Jeff
Brad

32. Great!
1. Custom Variable is setup
2. We know how to access variable in Analytics
Now what?

33. Question:
Which author brings in the most
traffic?

34. Start off with traffic ...

36. … then add your authors

39. Question:
Which author brings in the most traffic?

40. This guy!
That's me!

41. but seriously....

45. Question:
Which author has the most social
shares?

47. Custom Variables

48. What is Event Tracking?

49. _gaq.push([
'_trackEvent',
'chat',
'launch'
]);
This is our button,
“Chat with us”
When someone clicks on it,
An event has just occurred.

50. How do you see Events in
Analytics?

53. _gaq.push([
'_trackEvent',
'chat',
'launch'
]);

54. _gaq.push([
'_trackEvent',
'chat',
'launch'
]);

55. Explore Analytics
See what you can find, like....

56. Which pages do users click “chat”
on the most?

58. Custom Variables
Event Tracking
Custom Variables &
Event Tracking together?

59. Custom Variables &
Event Tracking together?

61. With this data you can...

62. Strike down your
writers causing the
most chats

63. Or...

64. Give praise to
those whose writing
helps people.

65. Tips for Running a Large Website
Using Joomla
Tip 1:
Take Google Analytics to the next level with
Custom Variables and Event Tracking

66. Tips for Running a Large Website
Using Joomla
Tip 2:
Don't talk to bad bots, it's a waste of precious
resources.

67. Bot Activity
How much bot activity does your site get?

72. Bots may crawl your site looking for
index.php?title=something

73. February 2014
we had how much mediawiki bot traffic?
A: 1,000
B: 10,000
C: 100,000
D: 1,000,000

74. What were they looking for?

75. index.php?
title=Auto_Insurance_In_Jacksonville_-
_This_Month:_Get_Car_Insurance_In_Jacksonvill
e_At_up_to_Half-Price
index.php?
title=A_Bit_More_About_Los_Angeles_Car_Insur
ance
index.php?title=Special:UserLogin&type=signup

76. 100,006 hits / month
to pages that don't exist...
….So what?

77. 100,006 hits * 27 queries each
2,700,162 queries / month

78. BLOCK THE BOTS
● .htaccess
● Php
● ModSecurity

79. Bots.... another example

80. From our apache logs....
"POST /support/community-support/joomla-
25/index.php?
option=com_jce&task=plugin&plugin=imgmanage
r&file=imgmanager&method=form&cid=20&6bc4
27c8a7981f4fe1f5ac65c1246b5f=cf6dd3cf1923c9
50586d0dd595c8e20b HTTP/1.1" 400 232 "-"
"BOT/0.1 (BOT for JCE)"

81. Basically... It's a URL for JCE

83. We don't use JCE, but...
February 2014, we had...
80,975 requests that in the URL had
BOT for JCE or option=com_jce

84. Tips for Running a Large Website
Using Joomla
Tip 2:
Don't talk to bad bots, it's a waste of precious
resources.

85. Tips for Running a Large Website
Using Joomla
Tip 2.5:
Check your work.

86. 200
404
406
500
666

88. Tips for Running a Large Website
Using Joomla
Tip 2.5:
Check your work.

89. Tips for Running a Large Website
Using Joomla
Tip 3:
If you're not using Joomla's cache because of
its pitfalls, find a work around.

90. Things to Watch When Using Page
Caching
● It does not apply to the Administrator. OK
● It only applies to guest visitors (not logged in).
OK
● Page caching does not work if Debug Site in
Global Configuration is set to Yes. OK
● Articles hits will not increase when page
caching is turned on (making any sorting
options on hits ineffective). NOT OK

91. We enabled cache...

93. We loved it!
… so far so good

95. Google is seeing our page download
almost twice as fast!

96. The major problem for us...

97. If Joomla Caching is enabled
Then # hits per article doesn't increase

98. Hmm...
So how do we
increase page hits
when caching is
enabled?

99. We got
an idea!

100. First...
We told Joomla to stop
increasing page hits.
… we'll take care of it
ourselves.

101. We created a file....
increase_hits.php
That if sent
an article id....
1234
Will add 1 to `hits`

102. increase_hits.php
Pages served
from cache
Pages served
fresh
Article – ID:1234

103. Regardless of:
Page = cached
Page = NOT cached
Hits will increase in the database

104. Great, article hits increase!
But, hits shown is still cached.

105. 166,351 166,352 166,353
increase_hits.php

106. increase_hits.php
166,351

107. Regardless of:
Page = cached
Page = NOT cached
Hits will increase on the front end

108. Tips for Running a Large Website
Using Joomla
Tip 3:
If you're not using Joomla's cache because of
its pitfalls, find a work around.

109. Tips for Running a Large Website
Using Joomla
Tip 4:
Joomla will not be upset if you don't use a built
in component.

115. ● Anchor Text
● All vs. Exact
● Articles graded higher than Forum

117. Tips for Running a Large Website
Using Joomla
Tip 4:
Joomla will not be upset if you don't use a built
in component.

118. Tips for Running a Large Website
Using Joomla
Tip 5:
Template overrides are awesome! Make sure
you know about them.

119. We use template overrides to
quickly
whip up
helpful tools
for our customers...

122. How to create a “tool” in
2 easy steps...

123. Step 1

124. Step 1. Create the Override
/templates/TEMPLATE/html/com_content/article/whois.php

125. Step 2

126. Step 2. Create the Article

127. An den?........

128. if
then

129. But....
Do not use that code in my last slide...

130. It's not
safe

131. Tips for Running a Large Website
Using Joomla
Tip 5:
Template overrides are awesome! Make sure
you know about them.

132. @bwmarkle