With over 110 million Joomla! downloads and nearly 2.4 million sites running Joomla! worldwide this makes Joomla! The second largest CMS with approximately 5.7% of the CMS. For more detail and stats you can review at BuiltWith.com
Running a Joomla! Site comes with the same complexities and challenges as any CMS and requires attention to security, updates and management tasks.
With most web hosts offering a Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP (LAMP) stack it is a simple process to get your Joomla! site running juts about anywhere. The challenging bit has always been how to secure Joomla! and or manage your Joomla! Instance or instances.
The managing of a single Joomla! Site can be time consuming and running multiple Joomla! Sites can add an extra layer of complexity and additional time resource both of which costs money.
To manage Joomla! easier, the good people from Plesk have come up with a Plesk Extension called Joomla! Toolkit. As the name suggests it’s a web Toolkit that takes out the time consuming complexities of managing your Joomla! Sites.
The following are a few key features that the Joomla! Toolkit gives you and your Joomla! hosting.
I make note that not all web hosts provide the Joomla! Toolkit and if you are running your own Plesk VPS you will need to buy the license however I am sure that when you see the benefit of the Joomla! Toolkit, you will either want to change to a Web Host who does support the Joomla! Toolkit or purchase the Joomla! Toolkit Plesk Extension.
Joomla! Toolkit – Mission Control
The Joomla! Toolkit provides you with what Plesk terms as its Mission Control. This gives you a single overview of all your Joomla! Instances on your server and the ability to manage all of them from this single view.
You can quickly see if there are any updates required, your backup status and the health of your Joomla! Instances.
With the Joomla! Toolkit you can use the one click installer which does everything from start to finish. It downloads the latest version of Joomla! And automatically installs it to your hosting environment. It also creates and manages the database and with its automatic configuration and hardening of instances you can quickly spin up a secure ready to use instance of Joomla!.
In most instances you generally already have a Joomla! Site and are migrating from one host to another so there is no requirement to do a fresh install, this is ok as the Joomla! Toolkit has the ability to scan your server for any new instances of Joomla! And it automatically adds it to the toolkit ready for you to manage.
Once you have your Joomla! Instances running on your server the 1-Click hardening feature allows you to scan all Joomla! Instances with the security scanner to identify and protect your core installations. You then can choose what you wish to harden and secure.
As we all know keeping your Joomla! Up to date with the latest security releases is essential. With millions of bots scouring the Internet looking for vulnerabilities having an up to date website is key. The hackers are not specifically targeting you; they are simply looking for an out of date system that they can use to exploit other sites or launch other malicious activity like DDOS attacks. Remember you have to get your security right every time the hacker only needs to get it right once.
With the Joomla! Toolkit you can set up the automatic update system that will update your Joomla! Instance when a new release for core, components, module or plugin is released. It will also update your template if available. This setting is fully controlled by you and can be disabled or set for updating Bug Fixes only or feature releases and bug fixes.
Prior to any automatic update the Joomla! Toolkit can take a snapshot backup of your site just in case you need to roll back. You can also view every backup action in the audit log.
You also have the ability to set up scheduled backups with daily or weekly options. This backup is independent of Plesk Backup and gives you that granular control over your Joomla! Instance itself.
If time is money then the Joomla! Toolkit is well worth the small investment for a Plesk license if you are running your own Plesk Server. Feel free to grab a Plesk license from our store.
If you have a Conetix VPS we can provide you with an upgraded key and install the Joomla! Toolkit for you.
If you are on a web host that can not provide the Joomla! Toolkit please reach out to one of our team here at Conetix. We provide FREE migrations and we can even provide your first month for FREE so you can instantly take advantage of the Joomla! Toolkit.
