Blog entries tagged joomla extensions

On the importance of excellent web hosting for Joomla

Jen Kramer — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 17:58:07 +0100

This is a topic covered in my recent book, but the question comes up all the time.

In the early static days of the web, there was really little difference between one host and another. You uploaded a bunch of HTML pages and images (and later a CSS file or two) and the web host just worked. There wasn't a lot of analysis to do for the average small business site. One host was pretty much as good as another.

Now we're working with Joomla. And now, when it comes to hosting, everyth...

Chapter 15: Site Maintenance and Training

Jen Kramer — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 16:52:25 +0100

Chapter 15 of my new book is available for you to explore! It covers all of the usual post-launch issues, including ongoing site maintenance, upgrades, backups, and training your client how to use Joomla.

Download Chapter 15 here (PDF)

Cool Joomla Tip of the Day: Back-end Welcome Screen

Jen Kramer — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 12:26:10 +0100

If you ever installed the sample data in Joomla, you've seen that little "welcome" message over on the right side of the screen, right in the control panel.

Ever wondered how to get rid of it? Ever wondered if you could make your own, so that it was actually useful to your client and not just you?

It's easy to do!

1. Log into the back end of Joomla and go to Extensions - Module Manager.

2. Switch over to the Administrator modules. By default, you're looking at the ...

Certificate in Open Source Web Development, featuring Joomla

Jen Kramer — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 05:00:00 +0100

The Marlboro College Graduate Center in Brattleboro, Vermont, just released its Open Source Web Development certificate in a wholly online format.

If you've been working with Joomla, but you want to know a lot more about it, this is the certificate program for you. The certificate introduces students to Joomla, as well as planning a website, understanding the code that runs it, and developing and executing an online marketing plan.

The certificate consists of 12 credits:

...

Five Fashion NOs for Joomla 1.5

Jen Kramer — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 05:00:00 +0100

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 navi...

Loading a Joomla module in the article/content area

Jen Kramer — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 05:00:00 +0100

Got an email from someone looking for this information. I covered this in the Lynda.com Joomla! Advanced CSS videos but I'll write out the instructions here as well.

The basic instructions are:

Make sure the Load Module plugin is enabled and configured correctly
Make sure the module you want to display in the content is turned on for that page and that position
Insert the Magic Code in the article.
Voila. Magic happens. (Some styling may need to happen at this point, too.)
...

Joomla 1.0 to 1.5 migrations: Should I? And why?

Jen Kramer — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 06:00:00 +0100

To migrate from Joomla 1.0 to Joomla 1.5: That is the question

One of the big questions we get asked these days is whether it's worthwhile to upgrade from Joomla 1.0 to Joomla 1.5. As with all web design and development questions, the correct answer is: It Depends.

There are generally two schools of thought on this.

The "If It Ain't Broke Don't Fix It" school says that if you're site is working in Joomla 1.0, then why bother to migrate? It's doing what you want, so you...

Launched! New England Vegetable Management Guide

Jen Kramer — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 06:00:00 +0100

Today we launched the New England Vegetable Management Guide website.

This site was a challenge because we were tasked with putting a whole book on the web.

The Vegetable Guide is published bi-annually. It is composed by some of the most respected experts from all over New England.

Formerly, this group of professors used to exchange Word documents through email as they revised the Guide for the next year. Eventually, someone would put these Word documents together and ...

Sections, Categories, Articles, Menus: It's all a SCAM

Jen Kramer — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 06:00:00 +0100

Sections, categories, articles, menu items. See how it's a SCAM? Remember you do need to create them in this order, as menu items for articles can't exist without the article, the article can't exist without section/category, the category can't exist without section.

Then there's this thing called "uncategorized" associated with an article. So you CAN have an article that exists without section and category! Well, sort of. Think of "uncategorized" as the default section and...

Communicating your site's message through extensions

Jen Kramer — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 06:00:00 +0100

Brian Teeman, one of the Joomla founders, wrote an interesting post on the three types of extensions for a website. He's set aside the technical differences between modules, plugins, and components, and instead focused on how they add functionality to your website.

He defines these as eye candy (banners, blinking spinning stuff), additional functionality (forms, galleries, calendars), and applications (event registration, shopping carts, etc).

You can take these same divisio...

Cool new extension: Alienation Digital Image Editor

Jen Kramer — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 06:00:00 +0100

Got an email this morning announcing the new Digital Image Editor that runs inside of Joomla. Very cool!!! I have only tried the demo on the site, but it looks great.

It's a very basic editor that does simple things like crop, rotate, resize, flip, and apply a few filters. There's a history option so a client can go backwards if they make a mistake. That's really all a client needs to get images on their site. It's definitely not Photoshop -- but it doesn't NEED to be....

Launched! Concord Group Insurance!

Jen Kramer — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 06:00:00 +0100

In conjunction with Church & Main, we've launched the new Concord Group Insurance site.

CGI is a longtime client of Church & Main. Their previous site was static HTML. While it looked great, it wasn't possible for CGI to make their own edits.

Church & Main provided us with all graphic design direction as well as strategy for the site. We built the site based on their requirements.

Most people all want to know about "the little guy down in the corner&qu...

Launched! Brew Your Own Magazine!

Jen Kramer — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 06:00:00 +0100

Finally, after months of work, we are thrilled to announce we've launched Brew Your Own: The How-To Homebrew Beer Magazine.

This is a companion site to WineMaker Magazine, which was released earlier, in September.

BYO has been around for years, and puts out all kinds of interesting articles and resources for home beer brewers. We used a ton of extensions to make this site go, including JoomSuite Content, RS Gallery 2, MyBlog, VirtueMart, the Joomla poll and the Joomla banner mod...

Azrul discontinuing development for Joomla 1.0 extensions

Jen Kramer — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 05:00:00 +0100

Got an email from Azrul today stating that they're going to stop developing for Joomla 1.0, now that Joomla 1.0's support end date is announced. They will support products for Joomla 1.0 already out there and anyone under a support contract until the contract runs out.

Azrul writes great extensions like MyBlog, JomComment, and others. I'd recommend using his blogging software for any Joomla site actually writing a blog... rather than using the blog functionality to post press rel...

July 22, 2009: The End of Joomla 1.0, and Frequently Asked Questions

Jen Kramer — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 05:00:00 +0100

Support for Joomla 1.0 is slated to end on July 22, 2009, 18 months after the release of Joomla 1.5.

This leads to many Frequently Asked Questions.

1. Should I be building my new Joomla sites in Joomla 1.0 or Joomla 1.5?

We at 4Web strongly believe you should be building your sites in Joomla 1.5, unless there is a compelling reason to do otherwise. We have not found a compelling reason to build a site in Joomla 1.0 since Joomla 1.5 Release Candidate 1 was release...

sh404sef and 404 error pages

Bill Tomczak — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 05:00:00 +0100

My last entry here was inspired by the possible use of sh404sef in the site we just launched (YAY!). We ultimately decided against using it for this site. Despite many great features that would make it a valuable addition to any site there were just too many issues I couldn't address in the time frame available before launch.

The initial motivating factor that made us look into it was a need to handle "404 page not found errors". Joomla 1.5 (J!15) does have the abi...

sh404SEF and some other extensions

Bill Tomczak — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 05:00:00 +0100

Oh gosh! Been awhile since I wrote here. We've been completely swamped by the impending launch of one of the most complex sites I've worked on. We're using a bunch of extensions with a variety of compliance to Joomla 1.5 coding standards. None of them perfect, but some pretty darn close.

Joomsuite has been a mixed blessing. Having the code encrypted makes it more difficult for me to be excited about it. The idea is fantastic, but I'm finding it's capabilities - at least for our pu...

JomSocial from Azrul

Jen Kramer — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 05:00:00 +0100

Azrul (who writes JomComment and MyBlog, in use on this site) is working on a new extension called JomSocial. Looks like an alternative to Community Builder from the limited amount on his site. Given Azrul's great track record for building simple, easy-to-use interfaces, I would bet this will be better than CB, although I have not seen it yet. An interesting development to follow!

More great extensions: Wysiwyg Pro

Jen Kramer — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 05:00:00 +0100

One of our favorite extensions is Wysiwyg Pro, which works great with Joomla 1.5.

TinyMCE, the default editor that comes with Joomla, is fine for editing if you're a geek and you know exactly what you're doing. But if you don't -- and that's most people out there who just want to get some simple editing done without a degree in IT -- TinyMCE is really hard to use. There are a number of big problems.

There's no way to link to a page on your site within the editor by browsing. You have...

World's Greatest Joomla Extension: Mass Content

Jen Kramer — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 05:00:00 +0100

I exaggerate perhaps only a little.

I'm typically the one at 4Web who gets stuck getting all of the content for the website into Joomla, if it's a new site that we're developing, or if we're porting content from a previously static site. (If it's an old database driven site of some type, then Bill gets the honors. :-)

I feel like days of my life have been spent creating a new section, a new category, a new article, lather rinse repeat.

Much of the time spent crea...