You've got your first Joomla site running! It's fabulous! It's amazing! And now how do we start taking it to the next level?

Just like you should never wear white shoes after Labor Day, and visible panty lines are never cool, there are a few fashion NOs that you should stay away from doing on your Joomla site.

1. Why does it need to say "Main Menu"?

I am a big usability buff. But if you have surfed the web for more than 5 minutes, you can generally recognize a navigation bar on a website. (And if you cannot, then the designer is not doing their job well!)

While Joomla comes pre-configured with a "Main Menu" in the Menu Manager, and a module to match it, that does NOT mean you have to leave the title on that says "Main Menu".

You can turn off the title for the menu module by setting "show title" to "no" in just about any module out there. (I have not seen a module where you could not turn the title on and off.)

2. Why does it need to say "Welcome to the Frontpage"?

Joomla sets you up with a Front Page Blog by default as your home page. By default, Joomla sets up the HTML title for the web page to say "Welcome to the Frontpage". (It's amazing how many sites are set up with this default text.)

That's nice placeholder text,  but it does ZERO for your search engine rankings, describes nothing about your site, and really doesn't do anything for you.

 Go to the menu item for Home in the menu manager. Click to edit it. On the right side of the screen, under System Parameters, there is a blank for Page Title. Put in the words you wish to appear in the HTML title bar.

3.  Joomla! - the dynamic portal engine and content management system

You should recognize that as the meta-description, set by default, in Joomla 1.5. Likewise, the meta-keywords are also set by default (Joomla, joomla).

Your site is very likely not about Joomla, or it's only one of the things you're talking about.  It's very likely these keywords do not work for you, and neither do the descriptions.

People do see the description when they do a Google search for your site. It shows up in the results under the HTML title which links to your page.

So make the meta-data meaningful, at least at a global level. Go to Global Configuration, under the Site tab, type something in the blanks for description and keywords. You can override what you put in on an article by article basis, but at least get something approximately close to your site in the blanks here.

4. Milkyway, Beez, and JAPurity

Joomla comes with three templates. They're actually there to teach developers a thing or two about how Joomla is put together. 

You can use them on your website if you want. However, you're contributing to the myth that "all Joomla websites look alike". Sure, if you use one of the three built-in templates, they do all look alike.

There are plenty of great free and low-cost Joomla templates out there that will make you look like a million bucks, or you can build your own Joomla templates.

5. Repeating menu bars on the site

I know I get very confused if I see a menu bar across the top and one on the left, and they both say exactly the same thing. I expect the bar across the top to be the main navigation, and the bar on the left to be the subnavigation for a given section.

If you are just repeating the same menu in two places, you are just confusing visitors. Turn one of the bars off. There's a publish/unpublish switch in the Module manager for every module on your site. Use it!

What other Fashion NOs have you seen on Joomla sites?