Posted in Joomla! Tips on January 24, 2010 by Administrator
Recently, we put together a "Joomla! on a Stick" for a
workshop - installing
Server2Go and Joomla! on a flash drive. While there was plenty of space on the flash drive, the installations of large extensions were failing in a way that was similar to running out of memory.
Googling around yielded the suggestion of increasing either the max_execution_time or the memory_limit in the php.ini file. It seemed straightforward, however, when these settings were modified, they reverted back to their original values each time they were run. Odd.
Server2Go is a "self-configuring" system, of course. In order for the changes in the php.ini file to stick, the configuration template for the php.ini file, config_tpl/php.ini, needed to be modified rather than directly modifying the php/php.ini file.
Posted in Joomla! Tips on November 16, 2009 by Administrator
Security is always a concern. It's important to update your core Joomla! installation and your added extensions regularly. A popular tool for updating the core is Update Manager for Joomla!. It installs as a regular extension, and then provides a one-click method for updating Joomla!. Caution - if you have modified core Joomla! files, you may overwrite them during the update. Which is one reason you should not be modifying core files, unless all else fails. Stick with template overrides whenever possible.
Some individual extensions require you to uninstall and reinstall, and others can be installed on top of the current version. Especially if you have more than one site, it helps to keep a spreadsheet with all of your installed extensions, their version numbers, url where you downloaded the extension, and install date. There is no one click method for keeping your extensions updated - you need to manually check them on a regular basis.
Posted in Joomla! Tips on October 01, 2009 by Administrator
Without installing any third party extensions, we can display articles in a 'blog format' by choosing the menu type - articles - category blog layout or section blog layout. Once the menu item is created, we can change the number of articles to display, the number of columns, the order, and more. So that's one idea of a blog - somewhat simple - no comments allowed. Here's an example with 1 column: http://www.shofarsites.com/blog
The next step up is to use the built in blog format display with a third party commenting extension added. !JoomlaComment is a popular free extension - but be aware it requires legacy mode to be enabled, it isn't native 1.5. yvComment is a new extension that has been getting good reviews, and is Joomla! 1.5 native. Enable the comments only for your blog category (unless you want people to comment on all your site articles).
If you want more power, you need to look at third party blog extensions. A new free extension was recently released - LyftenBloggie - that looks very capable. Includes comments, and the ability to have multiple authors. And that's what is powering this blog.
The commercial extension options aren't cheap - You can combine MyBlog and JomComment from Arzul to create your blog. I would try LyftenBloggie first and see if there's anything missing that you need.
For Wordpress nuts, corePHP has developed a commercial extension that is basically Wordpress installed on the backend of Joomla! They have single user and multi user options and you can have multiple distinct blogs with the second. Again, it's not cheap. I have personally encountered a lot of problems with their wordpress mu extension, but you may have better luck. And since it is commercial, you have support. I would recommend it for a) people who are wordpress fans migrating to Joomla! who need a familiar interface or b) who need multiple blogs. I haven't found another third party option for multiple blogs (not just multiple users) within Joomla!
Happy Blogging!
Posted in Joomla! Tips on September 29, 2009 by Administrator
Sometimes you need to have the contents of a module display right in an article.
1. Check in extensions / plugin manager that 'Content - Load Module' is enabled/published
2. Make a copy of the module that you want to put within an article
3. Make sure the new copy of the module is published. For the position - where you can choose left, right, top, etc. - there's a neat trick - you can actually type your own position in the box. Make up a new name that will only apply for this module.
4. Go to the article where you want to embed the module - type - be sure to use brackets and not parentheses.
5. Go to the front end and view the article, the module should appear within the article.
Posted in Joomla! Tips on September 28, 2009 by Administrator
The WYSIWYG editor that comes with Joomla! is not a thing of beauty or a joy forever. Two popular alternatives are JCE (free) and wysiwygPro ($54 per domain). We use JCE - feel free to leave comments on your experience with JCE or wysiwygPro - which works best for you?
