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You probably recognise it: you log into the dashboard of your WordPress or Joomla website and see a red message. "Updates are available." With a click of a button, it's settled, or even easier: you have 'automatic updates' turned on. Wonderful, you think. Technology takes care of it, security is in place and you can get back to focusing on your core business.

In theory, that's a wonderful story. In practice, blind reliance on that autopilot is one of the biggest risks to the stability and security of your company website.

Imagine this: a potential customer is sitting on the sofa at night with a question you have the answer to. Instead of going 'Googling' and scrolling through a list of ads, this customer opens an AI assistant like ChatGPT or uses the new voice feature on a phone.

The question is simple: "Who can help me with [your service] near [your city]?"

The assistant immediately replies, "Based on reviews and recent information, [Your Company] is an excellent choice. They are known for their expertise in..."

The big question for you as an entrepreneur is: Is your company in that answer, or will you be skipped?

Have you ever considered that AI assistants can actually barely read your website?

Not because your website is bad. Not because you have done something wrong. But simply because websites were originally built for human eyes and browsers, while AI works very differently.

Let that sink in for a moment, because this is something that will become increasingly important in the years ahead: whether your website can be found and properly understood by the AI tools that more and more people rely on every day.

I don't mean "when did you pay the bill", but when did you consciously think about it? Because something was wrong. If that answer is yesterday, you don't have a website problem. You have a hosting problem.

Joomla 6.0 is the latest version of the popular content management system and was officially released on 14 October 2025. This release brings a big step forward in terms of ease of use, stability and automation. For instance, from now on it is possible to have Joomla updated automatically, so websites always stay up-to-date without manual intervention.

An updated default template has also been added: Cassiopeia Extended, a modern and more flexible version of the familiar Cassiopeia template. In addition, version control has been completely revamped, making tracking and restoring previous versions of content now more extensive than before.

Joomla 6.0 introduces new field types that give developers even more freedom when building complex forms and content structures.

In total, Joomla 6.0 contains a whopping 276 tweaks: from new features to enhancements and bug fixes. The result is a more future-proof CMS that is ready for the next phase of web development.

As a self-employed person, you'll turn around for everything. From administration to customer contact, from marketing to delivering your services. You do it all. So when it comes time for a website, it seems logical to take it on yourself too. There are plenty of platforms promising that you can have a beautiful website "in a few clicks". But this seemingly smart choice can actually get in the way of your self-employment success.

As a designer, you regularly get asked, "Can you also create a website for us?" It's tempting to say yes - extra sales, happy customers, and you can use your creative skills more broadly. But the reality of website building often brings more worries than expected.

On 15 April 2025, Joomla 5.3 has been released, so if you have a website running Joomla version 4.x or 5.x, you can update your Joomla website with the click of a button. This release brings many small (code) improvements and a number of options and features will be added. In this article, I will show you the most important changes.

WordPress is undoubtedly the most popular CMS, but it is not always the best choice for every website. For users looking for more flexibility and functionality - whether you want to build a small blog, a medium-sized corporate website or a complex online application - Joomla can be a valuable alternative. Joomla offers more features by default, making you less dependent on plugins and customisations. This makes it an excellent choice for various types of projects, from simple sites to more advanced applications.

In this article, I explain the main differences between Joomla and WordPress, and you will discover why Joomla can be a good alternative to WordPress in terms of performance, accessibility and SEO.

On 15 October 2024, Joomla 5.2 will be released. During the JoomlaDagen (JD24NL) in Tilburg, the release managers told us that the focus of Joomla 5.2 will be on consistency and not on adding a lot of extra features. Nevertheless, there are some new features to be found which I will explain in more detail below.

On 16 April 2024, Joomla 5.1 was released. If you have a website running Joomla version 4.x or 5.x, then you can update your Joomla website with the click of a button.

This release brings many small (code) improvements and a number of options and features will be added. In this article, I will show you the most important changes.

The Dutch JoomlaDagen is the largest event in the Netherlands for users of the Joomla CMS. This annual two-day event provides a great opportunity for Joomla users to learn about the platform's latest developments and innovations, and to network with other professionals in the Joomla community. In this blog post, I will discuss what the Dutch JoomlaDagen are, why they are important for Joomla users, and what you can expect if you participate in this event.

In this article, I will show you the main improvements and new features that the Joomla 4.2 version brings.

A new minor update (version 4.1) in the Joomla 4 series was released in February 2022. In this article, I will show you all the improvements and new features that this version brings.

The past few years have proven by now that being visible online is becoming increasingly important. But do you know where you stand? How do you score in the search engines and how are your competitors doing? And above all, what could be better about your website?

Joomla version 4.0 was released on 17 August 2021. What does this new version mean? What changes and what new features can you expect? And how does the update or migration to Joomla 4 work? In this article, I will tell you everything you need to know about the latest version.

Last year, I was tasked with cleaning up a large Joomla website. And that clean-up was definitely needed! Dozens of extensions, hundreds of images, more than 1,300 unused articles and almost 2,500 unnecessary modules I managed to clean up. In this article, I will explain how you can clean up your website yourself so that it remains a workable environment.

When you get started building a website, you (often unconsciously) make a lot of mistakes. The great thing is that you can learn from every mistake, so you can never make enough mistakes. But let's avoid these mistakes and do things the right way.

Joomla 3.9 is released today (30 October 2018) and includes a lot of new features. In this article, I will tell you a bit more about the main new features of Joomla version 3.9. Joomla version 3.9 will add around 250 new features!

"Joomla is only meant for small websites, right?"
A question I hear more often than you might think. Many people associate Joomla with hobby projects, small associations or local entrepreneurs. And while the CMS is indeed excellent for that, that absolutely does not do justice to Joomla's capabilities for large organisations.

In this short series of blog articles, I am going to talk about the misconceptions I have heard about Joomla in recent years. I will try to start from the strength of Joomla itself but will not be able to avoid making a comparison with other systems.

When it comes to e-commerce, you probably first think of selling to consumers. In itself not a strange thought because it is well known that consumers are buying more and more online. But B2B webshops are also becoming increasingly popular, and Hikashop has plenty of opportunities to be active in this market too.

In this short series of blog articles, I am going to talk about the misconceptions I have heard about Joomla in recent years. I will try to start from the strength of Joomla itself but will not be able to avoid making a comparison with other systems. In this series, I will start with the main reason why I still work with this CMS, security.

The Joomla User Group Breda (JUG Breda for short) is organising a full HikaShop day for a second time on Saturday 25 November 2017.

In this article, we are going to take a look at ourselves. It is always nice to see how a website has evolved. I dived into my backup archive and that is quite a job to get older Joomla versions running with the all sorts of different system requirements etc. But I succeeded and have listed the complete history of this website.

This year too, I had planned some weeks off during the summer to give myself and family some rest. And what will you do then? Right! Clean up your own website, because that was 2 years ago. Over the past 2 years, I have learnt a lot, when it comes to content, but also technology, and I wanted to implement all that into the website. In this blog, I'll show you what has changed (under the bonnet).

Joomla 3.7 is expected at the end of March and contains a lot of new features. In this article, I will tell you a bit more about the new features of Joomla version 3.7.

On 12 July 2016, Joomla version 3.6 will be released. As we are used to, there will again be many improvements in this version. In this article, I'll tell you more about the new features.

The Joomla User Group Breda is organising the very first Joomla Extension day in the Netherlands on Saturday 11 June. During this day, we will cover the different components of HikaShop, the popular web shop extension for Joomla.

On 21 March 2016, we can expect the first stable version of Joomla 3.5. There are again a number of improvements and new features added to the system. You can read about the most important changes here, of course. A fun fact is that several Dutch developers have again been involved in this release.

A Joomla website that is not properly maintained is potentially vulnerable and can become a target of a hacker. Over the past few years, I have come across several hacked websites and none are the same. So there is also no 1 solution, but if you follow these steps, you are most likely to still be able to restore your website (for the most part).

Last year, Joomla announced the new release cycle with an emphasis on releasing small regular updates instead of the complicated long/short updates. The release of 3.4 is coming a bit later than planned, but today (24 February 2015) we can expect the first stable version.

Video marketing is popular. Increasingly, I get requests to add videos to a Joomla website. These include corporate videos, instructional videos and even customer reviews through videos I have come across in the past year. Since hosting them yourself often takes too much disk space and the videos load too slowly, video hosting is often used. In this article, I look at the features, pluses and minuses of Youtube, Vimeo and Wistia.