Joomla4Web Blog

Cool new extension: Alienation Digital Image Editor

jen@4webinc.com — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 05:00:00 +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. [...]

Lynda.com Joomla templates videos released!

jen@4webinc.com — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 05:00:00 +0100

I'm tickled to announce that my new videos, "Joomla! Creating and Editing Custom Templates" was released at Lynda.com today. Check them out! Starting tomorrow, there will be a live action shot of me doing the introduction. There are a few free videos, so please go click all over them and check them out. Better yet, subscribe! Lynda.com is a great resource for learning all kinds of great skills.

My second set of videos, "Joomla! Advanced CSS" will be out later, [...]

J!10 vs J!15 - some thoughts

bill@4webinc.com — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100

With the impending end of official support for Joomla! 1.0 and as I prepare for my session at the upcoming CMS conference, I've found myself revisiting the ongoing question of whether to build sites in 1.0 or 1.5.

As a developer who has enthusiastically embraced 1.5, my knee jerk reaction is that of course (!) we should all be building new sites in 1.5 and drop 1.0 like a hot potato. How could anyone even question this? Some of the comments to the official annoucement (see here) served [...]

Blacklisting and Whitelisting HTML Tags in Joomla 1.5.8

jen@4webinc.com — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100

I really love Joomla! User Group New England. We meet the 3rd Wednesday of each month. And it's amazing what happens when you put so many intelligent people in one room -- the problems we solve!

Earlier that day, I was working on a site that had just been upgraded to Joomla 1.5.8. I noticed that a script tag I had included in a piece of content was getting stripped out when I saved the article.

Step 1: examine the wysiwyg pro settings. Wysiwyg Pro is our prefered editor for Joomla [...]

Launched! Concord Group Insurance!

jen@4webinc.com — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +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@4webinc.com — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +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 [...]

Flash version 10

bill@4webinc.com — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100

There has been some buzz lately about Flash version 10 breaking the media manager in Joomla. This won't be fixed until after 1.5.8 so what to do in the meantime? Since it only affects the media manager in the administrator, at least the problem only affects your staff. Your choices are to either wait to upgrade Flash until Joomla fixes the problem. If it's too late for that, all you need to do is disable the media manager's flash uploader. Go to "Global Configuration/System" and rig [...]

Azrul discontinuing development for Joomla 1.0 extensions

jen@4webinc.com — 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 [...]

Flash 10 causing problems in Joomla media manager

jen@4webinc.com — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 05:00:00 +0100

Flash 10 was released with the new Adobe CS4. I'm sure it does wonderful things for Adobe... but it's breaking a lot of Flash-based image uploaders out there, including Joomla's in the Media Manager.

More information on the Joomla site.

Basically, the Joomla team says that they will not be fixing this problem in 1.5.7 or 1.5.8, but will address it after that.

The workaround is to turn off the Flash uploader for the media manager. You can do this from the Global [...]

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

jen@4webinc.com — 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 [...]

In the can: Joomla template and CSS videos via Lynda.com

jen@4webinc.com — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 05:00:00 +0100

I just got back from a week in Ventura, CA, working for Lynda.com. If you don't know them, they are one of the best training resources out there for most things related to web development. Way back at Dreamweaver 3 and Photoshop 5.5, I learned these programs via Lynda.com Hands-On Training books. They've since put a huge emphasis on their online training video library. The videos are fantastic and very helpful for explaining how to do just about anything in the Adobe or web [...]

Denver Expo

sam@4webinc.com — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 05:00:00 +0100

I'll tell you what, the excitement is sure building for this team of 4Web to attend the conference in December. We are all looking forward to meeting all sorts of experts and to sharing our insights on how we are using Joomla to enhance our clients' reputations!

Joomla is just fabulous and this conference will be an excellent opportunity to connect with others who are using such a flexible and powerful CMS. Jen, Bill and I will be in Denver on Wednesday to lead the Joomla Basics Boot [...]

Your Online Reputation

sam@4webinc.com — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 05:00:00 +0100

As they say, reputation is everything. And while there's an opportunity to make a great impression with a beautiful website, there are plenty of things you can do that will turn off your visitors.

Sites should be quick to load, easy to use, get your visitor in to the information they require and get them out. It's that simple. Sites like this let visitors know that the organization respects their time. The organization wants to help the visitor get great customer service — even i [...]

The Absolute Importance of a Great Webhost

jen@4webinc.com — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 05:00:00 +0100

Recently, we've been dealing with some web hosting issues with our current company. They've changed our tech support package on us, and they were bought out by another company -- all without one email communication to us. We found out after the fact.

The story has a happy ending, as we've found another great host, and we're in the process of moving our sites.

This isn't the first time in my web career that I've dealt with icky web hosts. Some cardinal rules of finding [...]

Obama Launches iPhone App, Makes Everyone A Campaign Worker

jen@4webinc.com — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 05:00:00 +0100

Article is here.

Leave politics aside for the moment, and just consider the beauty of this application.

The problem: You need to get millions of people to vote for you in an election.

The details: You know that personal contact is the best way to win voters. But personal contact needs to happen regularly. It's just not possible to do this when you must reach millions of people.

You also know that voters can be influenced by friends and family, and that conversati [...]

4Web Update: Why are we so busy in this economy?

jen@4webinc.com — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 05:00:00 +0100

For our fans, we haven't been posting much because... well, we've been awfully busy. We are thrilled with our first 9 months in business. We established a new company, just as the economy was tanking and gas and oil prices were going sky-high. Yet we've had plenty of leads, and plenty of work to keep us very busy.

Watch this blog over the next 3 months. We anticipate launching 4 large, substantial sites by the end of the year, all with various custom-coded components and modules, and of [...]

Rant: What IS it with Joomla developers and clients???

jen@4webinc.com — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 05:00:00 +0100

I can't tell you how many calls and emails we receive each week that go something like this:

I'm a client without a lot of technical skills, and I have a Joomla site. Can you help me because:

My site is still under construction but my Joomla developer is nowhere to be found, won't return calls or emails, and I don't know what to do.My site was built and launched, but no one ever showed me how to use the site and make my own updates, which is why I wanted Joomla in the first place.My [...]

Launched! WineMaker Magazine!

jen@4webinc.com — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 05:00:00 +0100

We are thrilled to announce that we've launched a HUGE site we've been working on for the last few months, WineMaker Magazine.

WineMaker Magazine started in 1998, and it's about how to make wine at home, whether you start with fresh grapes, or whether you start with a kit. The main goal for the website is to push subscriptions and sell back issues of the magazine. The content surrounding that supports those goals.

Because the site supports a magazine, it should contain [...]

404 page not found handling

bill@4webinc.com — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 05:00:00 +0100

Once we had decided against using sh404sef, we were still left with the need to handle '404 Page Not Found' errors. Clear and explicit information on this wasn't particularly easy to find, so I thought I'd document how we did it here.

In J!15, errors are normally handled by - surprise! - a template file. Look in the the system template folder for the file error.php. Standard J!15 error handling sends the user to this page for any unrecoverable error. Including 404 errors. If you c [...]

sh404sef and 404 error pages

bill@4webinc.com — 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 [...]