Today was the second day of the JoomlaDays 2011 in the Netherlands (also available is our report of the first day). What follows is a short report of the presentation that was given by ThemePartner, presentations that were visited, and the second day of the event in general.

Help, I have stupid customers by Paul Delbar

In this both sarcastic and educational show (I wouldn't call it a presentation), Paul told us about the so called 'Homo stupidus custumeritus'. In a fun act using and egg and a guitar, he tried to tell us that customers usually aren't inheritally stupid. Often a lack of communication or understanding between the developer and the customer is what causing the thought that the 'customer is stupid'. Ending with a great sing along, Paul received a well-deserved applause.

SEO Myths Busted by Theo van der Zee

My own presentation about myths that are haunting the SEO world. With quite a great turnout of about 60 people (especially considering I was presenting in the same time slot as Johan 'Nooku' Janssens and Peter Martin), I've tried to bust several myths such as the alleged enormous value of PageRank and the usage of suffixes in URLs. I personally loved giving this presentation and would like to thank my audience for showing up and asking critical questions. I also really super-appreciate the compliments that were giving to me at lunch time or while doing drinks. Thanks everyone!

Joomla Security 101 by Nicholas Dionysopoulos

The guy with the last name not even he tries to pronounce anymore as it appeared in this presentation. Nicholas taught us in an example-driven fashion how we could improve the security of a Joomla! website. Often with small fixes (such as in the .htaccess file), important security leaks can be closed and sometimes even improved. By using these safer settings, you can greatly reduce the risk of being hacked or at the very least protect you against most attacks by script kiddies.

Lunch

Today, a lot was happening at lunch. While eating some pieces of bread that were clearly not baked this morning (eating the bread caused a crumble fest, which was a shame compared to the overall quality of the food and drinks) we had a discussion with Babs Gösgens about the Construct Framework. At the same time I was afraid of having boiling soup poured over my bright white shirt because everybody was walking past me carrying way too much food and drinks in their hands, including bowls of bright red tomato soup. Added to that I was thinking about the retarded concept of standing in line for a buffet. I suppose a 'free for all' approach will probably result in chaos with lesser educated groups, but with civilized people 'having to wait in line behind the guy that spends three minutes grabbing a piece of bacon' just feels stupid. Ending this paragraph in a positive fasion, I'd like to say that I really enjoyed the yoghurt and pineapple that was served today!

Creating templates using the Construct Framework by Babs Gösgens

In this presentation Babs has shown us why she thinks the Construct Framework is great and why people who are developing Joomla templates should be using it. At some points slightly obstructed by a chaotic mind or computer (of course not a lack of preparation or an abundance of alcohol in her system from the night before ;) she pointed out some of the key features that Construct has to offer us. Aside from the technical difficulties this was a great presentation, we'll certainly be looking more into Construct later.

How to deploy a website using GIT by The Nooku Team

I wish there was some kind of 'word per minute' counter for Johan's talk! In the presentation (which it appeared had no PowerPoint sheets at all, as the expected turnout of 'about 5 or 10 people' was in fact about 50 people) Johan improvised himself a way around explaining us how to use version control for our code. Using his characteristic style, he and his surprisingly obedient sidekick (just kidding Tom ;) behind the computer explained us how to use Atlassian software to manage and versionize your source code. At some point in the presentation Johan even started using slides from somebody else's presentation he found on SlideShare! Such improvisation talent marks a great speaker, my compliments to you for this presentation Johan!

Joomla & Google by Marc Boers

Marc told us in this presentation about the basics that should be covered in order to get your Joomla! website crawled, indexed and ranking high in the search engine Google. By using the SEO manual [pdf] that is presented on the Google website and by logging into Google Webmaster Central you can start optimizing your website and keep track of any changes or problems.

How safe are Joomla extensions by Ray Bogman

In this short and speedy talk, Ray educated us on the security of Joomla! extensions. As an example he used the recent hack of the Xmap component and how we can protect ourself the best way possible against malicious code in Joomla! extensions.

The future of Joomla by Ryan Ozimek

A true power talk and great key note speech. Ryan (who hadn't slept much lately due visiting both the Joomladay New England and the Joomladay Holland in one weekend) presented like he was on a triple espresso rush. However, his enthousiasm combined with his obvious great experience in speaking created a great talk in which he spoke about the future of Joomla. Using 132 slides (in 40 mins, I'll leave it to you to calculate the average slides/min) Ryan explained the relations between Open Source Matters (of which he is the president), the Production Leadership Team and the Community Leadership Team. He also spoke about how Joomla is what both Wordpress and Drupal are moving to in terms of a focus on usability vs. being a framework. An important part of his talk was that Ryan discussed the distributed leadership within Joomla: it is us, the community, who are the driving force behind Joomla. Let's make it even better!

Drinks

After the final session it was once again off to the terrace to grab some (free!) beers and discuss the happenings of the day.

Via this blog I'd like to thank the entire Joomladays 2011 NL team once more for their effort in organising this great event!

See you in 5 weeks at J! and Beyond?