This article is all about "best practices" for yoflash 5. I'll try to explain some of the new features, why we use them and how to use them:
- Always have a menu item which connects to the "all games" a.k.a. "ROOT" category view. Since yoflash features a multi-category system it is important for search engines that they find the "Main" entry of the game. And also, all games need to be in one main category. Each game has a meta-tag for search called "canonical" which tells search engines to index onyle the main category for the game to avoid duplicates (which apparently search engines don't like). Now, when yoflash builds the canonical route for the game it first tries to find out the menu item of the main category (e.g.: Actiongames). If yoflash cannot find a connection between a menu and the category Actiongames it will try to look for an "All-games" alias "ROOT" menu item. Only if yoflash cannot find any of both, it willl fallback to the current itemID. This is also important for the search as well as the tag system; therefore, you should always have a menu item connected to the ROOT category view (even if hidden).
- Batch-Tagging is great! Yoflash feature something I call rapid batch tagging. Tagging your games is important to show "Similar games" under the game of the game view. Go through your games in the backend and edit games to give them some tags, let's say for exmpale "solitaire" for a card game of that kind. Next you can go to the "My games" section and search for all games that have solitair in the name. Mark them all by using the tick-box and then select Batch and under Add Tag select "solitaire". Update the entries by pressing "Process". Now all games that have "soliatire" in the name will bet tagged as such and Similar games will be shown under theese games.
- My favourite games. Yoflahs features a favour-button on each game, if the user is logged in. This makes it possible for users to save their favourite games and find them again quickly. In order to make use of this, create a ne menu item of the view Yoflash->Favourite games and set the permission of the entry to "registered". Now user will be able to see theit favoured games. Of course they can always unfavour (does that word exist?) the games in the list.
- The thumb sizes: When you manually embed a game you will need to provide thumbs for the card views, the minimum is thumb small, nut yoflash uses thumb medium whenever possible. Therefore, you should always provde one. Thumbs are always square. I recommend for the small thumbs usin a size of approximately 100x0100 pixels, for medium around 200x200px and for large 400 or more. By default, yoflash will look for a medium thumb in the card viw. If it can't find it, it will use the small thumbnail, which is mandatory.
- Google indexing. I recommend setting the yoflash game view (find it under yoflash->options) to "Index, nofollow". Because some of the games have hidden backlinks, it won't be fair if they get away with it. Even though I try to prevent theese backlinks from the yoflash server side, I cannot guarantee that google will not crawl theese backlinks. And please follow the first point on this list :-)
- Participate! Yoflash has been build to provide you an easy annd most importantly free way to create a nice games section or website with Joomla. I encourage you to engage in the forums, give feedback and keep the component alice. Afterall, I listen to a lot of the comments that have been made in the forums to enhance yoflash to your needs and I'll continue doing it... but for that your participation is needed.If you really like the component I would really appreciate it if you would consider writing a short review for the Joomla Extenesion Directoy (JED) here.
Have I forgotten anaything, or have you come up with a great hint or tip that need to be shared. Let me know and I will add this ehere as soon as I find time.