Getting a new website found is increasingly difficult. Competition is fierce. It's a lot like playing pool in that it's more about finesse than brute force.

I don't offer search engine optimization (SEO) as a paid service. It's important for me to be really good at one thing and Joomla is it. HOWEVER! I am pretty good at SEO. My own site comes up #3 out of 11.5 million results if you Google "joomla web design". I will tell you this was no easy task and it took a long time. If you are willing and dedicate the time, effort and a little money, I'll tell you everything I know about how to get your site up in the search results.

A reliable web host is as elusive as the Loch Ness monster. In the six years Montano Designs has been creating web site and had a web site of our own, we've been through 10 COUNT 'EM 10! web hosts. We started out with Go Daddy back when you got one of the owner's sons on the phone if you called tech support. Like so many business that grow too fast, their support suffered and we moved on.

We've tried most of the major web hosts and some little guys. Here's the problem: The big guys offer loads of data storage and bandwidth for a low, low price in a shared environment. They fill up their servers with some legitimate customers and a few rogues. These rogues do nasty things on their sites like spamming, flooding, and all sorts of things that bog down the server. All of the sudden your site gets slow and you don't know why.

I recently found 18 websites who's owners had blatantly plagiarized my site. Most were word-for-word, a few loose derivatives, 3 even copied my “About Us” information for theirs. That boggles the mind. How can you not know enough about yourself that you have to  copy someone else's information?

Last night I got one of those feelings to do something I don't normally do. There's a little voice in the back of your head that says “you should check this out.”  My little voice was saying that I should check to see if anyone has been infringing on my copyrighted text and sure enough I found scads!!!

This article will explain what you can do if this happens to you.

That is the question!  Not necessarily an original title, but it sums up the point I'm about to make. As some of you may have noticed, Montano Designs got a little web botox a couple of weeks ago.  You know the saying about the cobbler's children having no shoes?  Well it's the same with web designers.  If you're any good, you don't have much time to work on your own site.

I've recently been creating a lot of Joomla 1.5 sites and have begun to fall in love with it's features and new website smell.  I was afraid that upgrading my site would be a royal pain so I delayed the inevitable.  I found a great component that I've blogged about here that made the migration really easy.