All Blog Posts Tagged 'joomla' - All Together, As A Whole

Proposing a #how2joomla Twitterathon Week

2010-03-10T04:30:00.000Z

Hey all !

You might remember we had started a #how2joomla twitter tag community service some months back.. Thanks to all the contributers its come to a good start & we are seeing a lot of people contribute .

To inject some more action in the community around this, we are proposing a Joomla twitterathon around this twitter tag & invite all the Joomla Community to share your Joomla Knowledge in form of short tweets.

Its easy to participate.. Just post your tips & tricks & knols with the twitter tag #how2joomla thats it !

We are proposing starting with this today March 10th & continuing it till next Tuesday. Lets see how many tweets can we compile between us all !

See how #how2joomla is going here http://techjoomla.com/joomla-related/joomla-twiter-ppl-gather-how2joomla.html

How would you change the extensions directory at Joomla.org?

2010-03-09T05:00:00.000Z

At the January Joomla User Group meeting in Milwaukee, I gave a presentation entitled Selecting and evaluating extensions for Joomla. Of course we discussed at length the Joomla Extensions Directory (JED) and its various advantages and disadvantages compared to other directories.

Completely independently, a similar conversation has been brewing amongst the JED illuminati (aka ‘JEDIs’ or JED editors). However, the JEDI discussion has been focused less on the comparison to other directories and more on ways to improve the JED while reducing the tedium that comes with curating such large collection of information, reviews, votes, etc...

One question that we keep coming back to is as follows:

What does the Joomla community want from the JED?

To help answer this question, I’ve set up a poll over at JUG Milwaukee. This poll lists some options we’ve been discussing to improve the JED. Please head on over, take a second to register and then vote and/or comment as you like.

*Full Disclosure. The author is currently a member of the JED editorial team with 3 listings on the JED.

Is this secure enough?

2010-03-08T10:31:42.000Z

When creating a new account in Joomla!, the software sends an e-mail with the data of the user (including the password). However, if the server is not setup correctly (to send e-mails), the site admin will receive a return message like (similar) this:

Hello XXX,

Thank you for registering at YYY. Your account is created and must be activated before youcan use it.
To activate the account click on the following link or copy-paste it in your browser:
Activation link here.

After activation you may login to YYY using the following username and password.

- Username: myusernamehere

- Password: mypasswordhere

Best Regards,
YYY

The major issue here is that any bad site admin, by simply miss-configuring the e-mail server, would be able to see the password of anyone who registers in his/her web site.

I honestly think, this is a major drawback in the security of Joomla! and usually no passwords should be send via e-mail ever. The post is provoked due to a accident crash of my mail server and receipt of about 10 e-mails like this today, with the passwords of the people who registered.

What is your opinion?

Work smarter - translation

2010-03-05T13:54:27.000Z

I am not a programmer, so I can not contribute by writing code. At best, I can look at the code, figure out what it is meant to do and possibly change some things.

But my writing is not half bad. I do understand English pretty well and my mother language is Norwegian. As I am living in Brazil, I am learning Portuguese as well. So I figure I can help with a little translation. In the beginning, it will be to Norwegian, and I know they are under-staffed.

But I also look at the files and see clearly that there is a huge potential for making this job easier. Software has one advantage - it uses a lot of the same phrases. So a good translation system should be a great help here. It would speed up the translation and improve consistency a lot.

Obviously, the format that Joomla uses can present a challenge, but I hope it is possible. And for user manuals, I need something that can take text files / Open Office Write files.

Have you ever used something like this? Can you recommend a system? I have seen four types:

1. Run locally - open source

2. Run locally - closed source

3. Web based - open source

4. Web based - closed source

I do prefer an open source system that runs locally and if it also run on Linux, it is a HUGE bonus to me. But I'll work with the best I can find right now, so let me know what you have used and if you can recommend it!

Creating a Custom Renderer

2010-03-05T01:00:00.000Z

I have been struggling with a problem with Joomla!, lately, and figured out a nifty solution I wanted to share and see if others had ideas. Joomla!'s standard Components, Modules, and Plugins just didn't fit the requirements of this Intranet application I am building. I created a very flexible architecture of Portals->Themes->Positions->Portlets->Layouts->Resources with nice customization on the frontend by users, the ability to create groups and share resources easily, and a standard data model and set of processing that is used for all content, whether it's images, or text, or private messages.

To output the Portlet Layouts, I created a series of classes that use "JDoc-like" statements in the Template to drive processing. The application collects resource requirements (JS, CSS) from the Template and Portlets during processing and combines/minifies the files at the end. I have my own head process where output is available via layouts and easier to adjust, as needed.

The problem I ended up having was that Joomla! was unaware of the Portlet processing since it only handles normal Modules, Components and Plugins. For that reason, some times, Joomla! would finish before all of the portlets were processed, and before the resources were combined and minified.

Today, I realized that what I needed was two new HTML Renderers, one for my position/portlet output, and the other for my head replacement. After some hacking around, I figured out a way to load a custom Renderer, and then use my own JDoc statements to get Joomla! to drive the Portlet and Head processes, just like it does with Modules, Components, and Plugins.

1. loadRenderer Function
I had to copy the loadRenderer Function from the JDocument class since the path was unfortunately hardcoded and I didn't want to add any files to the core libraries. This function can be added to any appropriate class. As you can see, my class is named TamkaDocumentHTML.

Note how I changed the path to my library location (I could have made that more flexible by passing in the folder location.) Also, it is important to note that the JDocumentRenderer.$type class must be followed.


class TamkaDocumentHTML 
{
  function __construct( ) {}
 /**
  * Load a renderer
  *
  * @access       public
  * @param        string  The renderer type
  * @return       object
  * @since 1.5
  */
 function loadRenderer( $type )
 {
         $null   = null;
         $class  = 'JDocumentRenderer'.$type;

          if( !class_exists( $class ) ) {
//                $path = dirname(__FILE__).DS.$this->_type.DS.'renderer'.DS.$type.'.php';
             $path = dirname(__FILE__).DS.'renderer'.DS.$type.'.php';
             if(file_exists($path)) {
                require_once($path);
             } else {
                JError::raiseError(500,JText::_('Unable to load renderer class'));
             }
          }
          if ( !class_exists( $class ) ) {
            return $null;
          }
          $instance = new $class($this);
          return $instance;
  }
}

2. Create the Renderers and place into the position specified, above.
Next, I created a Renderer for the production of the Position Portlets and also a Renderer for the Head Statement. The name of the class must be JDocumentRenderer + the value you will use as your JDoc Type statement. Also, the name of the Renderer file must be the same as the Type Value.

class JDocumentRendererTamkaPosition 
{
  /**
   * render
   * @param object $module
   * @param object $params [optional]
   * @param object $content [optional]
   * @return 
   */
   function render( $module, $params = array(), $content = null )
  {
  $_SESSION['TAMKA_RENDER_POSITION'] = '';
  require_once TAMKA_CONSTANT_INCLUDE_THEMES.'position.php'; 
  $tamkaPosition = new TamkaPosition($module);
  return $_SESSION['TAMKA_RENDER_POSITION'];
  }
}

The Header Renderer Class:

class JDocumentRendererTamkaHead 
{
  public function render( $head, array $params = array(), $content = null ) {
          
   /**
    *  Create Resource File Includes and possible minification
    */     
   require_once TAMKA_CONSTANT_INCLUDE_THEMES.'resources.php'; 
   $tamkaResources = new TamkaResources();         
   $tamkaResources->addDocumentResources();        

      /**
       *  Create Head and begin outputting buffer 
       */                             
        ob_start();

        echo $_SESSION['TAMKA_LAYOUT_OUTPUT_SITE_HEAD'].        
              $_SESSION['TAMKA_RESOURCES_DOCUMENT_HEAD_CSS'].         
              $_SESSION['TAMKA_RESOURCES_DOCUMENT_HEAD_JS'].
              $_SESSION['TAMKA_RESOURCES_DOCUMENT_HEAD_JS_INLINE'].
              '</head>.;

         unset($_SESSION['TAMKA_LAYOUT_OUTPUT_SITE_HEAD']);
         unset($_SESSION['TAMKA_RESOURCES_DOCUMENT_HEAD_CSS']);          
         unset($_SESSION['TAMKA_RESOURCES_DOCUMENT_HEAD_JS']);
         unset($_SESSION['TAMKA_RESOURCES_DOCUMENT_HEAD_JS_INLINE']);

         $contents = ob_get_contents();

         ob_end_clean();

         require_once TAMKA_CONSTANT_INCLUDE_THEMES.'meta.php'; 

         $tamkaMeta = new TamkaMeta();                           
         $tamkaMeta->unsetMeta ();                

         return $contents;
  }
}

3. Added a System Plugin that fires on onAfterInitialise to load the new Renderers

 require_once TAMKA_CONSTANT_INCLUDE_LIBRARY_BASE.'utilities'.DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR.'html'.DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR.'html.php';
 $tamkaDocument = new TamkaDocumentHTML ();
 $tamkaDocument->loadRenderer( 'TamkaHead' ); 
 $tamkaDocument->loadRenderer( 'TamkaPosition' )

4. Custom JDoc Statements in your Template index.php file to drive the new Renderers.

The following two JDoc statements are now available to my application. It's very much like normal JDoc Statements, except these statements drive my architectural elements *and* do so in a way that Joomla! is aware, and listening for completion before continuing to the next step.

<jdoc:include type="tamkaposition" name="6" />

<jdoc:include type="tamkahead" />

This could be useful anytime you want to integrate an application of any nature that doesn't fit the normal architecture. I think it has a lot of potential.

I looked at nooku, as well, and it has the same inflexibility with the loadRenderer function. Much of nooku is still the standard Joomla! framework, with many improvements. In both Joomla! and nooku, it would be nice to make it possible to use JDocument::loadRenderer to extend this capability by simply using the class.

Hope this helps someone. If you have done something similar, or know a better way, I am very interested in hearing about it.!

Price research survey?

2010-03-02T22:00:00.000Z

Joomla! has a lot of business surrounding it. We all know that. But none has ever tried to attempt to make a research for the top/bottom/average prices for various services on global level.
IMO, due to the nature of this site, I think it would be a great success.
Last year I made such for the Bulgarian community with various questions (including control questions).

How was that organized?
1. Three sections: general information, services provided, prices for these services.
2. Information was collected by a 3rd party web site, so the survey was anonymous.
3. Data collected was analyzed and the minimum, maximum and average prices were disclosed publicly.
4. Minimum price to take order.

In details:
Section 1:
Experience with Joomla! in years
Estimated annual revenue from Joomla! (not required)
Share of Joomla! revenue for company/individual total (not required, but if the previous is filled is required)

Section 2:
List of all possible services (i.e. installation, template modification, unique design, component modification, plugin/module modification etc.) with three options: We provide it as a standard, We provide it upon request, We don't provide this service.

Section 3:
For all the services in section 2 we asked about: Minimum price for the service, maximum price for the services, average price for the service (all these for the past 12 months) and option "We don't provide this services".

The facts were very interesting, you can see them here (some data was not displayed due to lack of enough answers):
http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=1&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.joomla-bg.com%2Fthe-news%2F56-other-news%2F836-ceni-joomla.html&sl=bg&tl=en

IMO, if such survey is done on global level, it will be very handy for a lot of startups and may attract new ventures. Probably some additional questions will be required (i.e. specificing prices per continent/region as these will defer quite a lot).

Ignore the translation: All amounts are not in US dollars, neither in EUR, but in Bulgarian leva, 2 leva equal 1 EUR. So to get the price in EUR, just divide any number by 2.

Any thoughts?

Is Joomla All American?

2010-03-02T14:29:34.000Z

Today (Tuesday March 2, 2009) we published a short blog post at 02:30pm CET: How To Switch Non-secure And Secure Joomla pages

The feed aggregator at Joomla Connect says it is a one day old post (dated Monday, March 1, 2009):

Is Joomla All American?

Template developers cooperate

2010-03-02T11:30:00.000Z

What is different in Joomla! than some other CMSs is that developers of extensions usually do not cooperate a lot. Everyone has his own vision and it is not that
simple to make hooks between extensions. Therefore, if you go to JED, you may
notice that the interaction plugins/components etc. between major extensions
are usually developed by someone completely different developer.

While it has some advantages, it also has disadvantages, but not that far ago, every developer within the community was more or less egoist. It was even rarely to
find re-usage of code etc.

What I noticed in the last months is that the template developers appear to be the first major players that make a breakthrough on that.

Rockettheme for example used the template overwrites from Yootheme to reuse them in their template framework Gantry.

Today I saw that Gavick is adopting T3 framework from Joomlart.

Even these companies are competitors, it is the first time to see such admiration of other’s work in Joomla! And I personally find this very positive.

What do you think?

J and Beyond 2010 is getting more and more attention

2010-03-01T09:54:06.000Z

It is really great to see how the interest in J and Beyond is getting more and more. During the last weekend 21 new people registered on the website to vote for the proposals they like to hear.

On twitter the buzz is getting more and more using the tag #jab10 and if you search Google you find also more news about the event every day. What is really exciting is that some interesting proposals are in the list already and it is not only development and technical stuff. The event also includes proposals about business models with Joomla and Open Source software and solutions for template designers.

The extension lounge has its first members with Sobi2 and the team from JoomlaPipe. Other teams already spoke to us but are not yet sure if they can arrange it. The JUG lounge is filling too with members of the user groups from Sweden, Spain, Germany and the UK.

Did I missed someone? Post me a reply and in my next blog I make sure to mention you too.

Thank's to everybody supporting us in the event so far and I'm really looking forward to meeting all of you soon.

Alex

Dummy Image And Dummy Text Plugin For Joomla Dummies

2010-02-26T16:06:00.000Z

Have you ever been in any of these situations?

The client wants a website, but find it hard to put into words what they do, or what their website will be about.
You are building a site, but have not received any images from your client yet.
You want to whip up a quick mockup for a quote, but need to fill it with dummy text and images of some sort.
You want to see what size header will work on the site, but you don't want to make 4 or 5 images just to test it.
You are making a demo site, or an example site, but want your work to stand out, not the content.

All great reasons to take advantage of the free Dummy Image and Dummy Text Plugins for Joomla.

Read what Brian Teeman tweeted : "Played with these tools once. now they will never leave my side now. http://tinyurl.com/ydjynvl essential for every #joomla developer"

Read more in my blog post here: http://www.opensourcesupportdesk.com/blog/101-joomla-plugin/385-dummy-image-and-dummy-text-plugin-for-joomla-dummies

Preventing jQuery and MooTools conflicts in Joomla! on component level

2010-02-26T03:30:00.000Z

Jquery and mootools are nice tools and Joomla! developers often like to use both. The drawback is that mootools must be loaded before jquery in order to make sure there won't be conflicts. So far not a big deal, but without forcing mootools to be loaded first there is a good chance that your jquery code will conflict in certain situations.

To prevent that, just put this line at the top of your component entry point file (compname.php):

JHTML::_('behavior.mootools'); // this will make sure mootools loads first

Now in your jQuery app, return the jquery handle:

var jq = jQuery.noConflict(); // and use jq instead of $

or just

jQuery.noConflict(); // keep using $

Hope that helps and works for anyone out there looking for a simple and clear solution.

Joomla and the Mobile platform.

2010-02-18T20:30:00.000Z

Is Joomla ready for the mobile devices platform? Good question. 2010 will certainly be the year for mobile devices. There are a few mobile extensions for Joomla, some work, some don't work very well and some are still in beta.

iPad, iTablet, smart phones and others. More people throughout the globe will be looking to mobile devices to connect via the Internet to websites for information, with friends, purchasing of products, banking and a whole range of other services.

I think Joomla should be in a position to provide for the mobile device market. Current Joomla websites will require re-jigging for the mobile revolution.

Welcome Robert Vining All Together, As A Whole Host and Spokesman

2010-02-17T16:30:00.000Z

All Together, As A Whole has been a remarkable experience.

I have been involved in the Joomla! project and community for a number of years. I have been on the outside. I have been on the inside. I have stuck with the project through difficult and enjoyable phases. I contributed significantly to the project and have frequently been called Joomla!'s biggest cheerleader (and sometimes, it was a complement :) ).

After the GPL talks, there were understandably very few people helping keep the fires going. Under Wilco's leadership and because of his enthusiasm and vision and community development skill, we formed the Bug Squad and involvement started to rebuild, slowly, and as a result of that involvement, 1.5 was released and supported.

Joomla! lacks a clear strategy for community involvement and there is no real leadership in that area, there is no one championing the cause, and no apparent recognition that low involvement is due to this lack of leadership, rather than a lack of community interest.

I opened this site in an attempt to see if others shared my desire to come back together as a community and network as Joomla! Developers and Web site Builders. It appears many of us share the same desire and the response has been overwhelming positive.

All Together, As A Whole has very little structure or declared purpose, but there are important principles at play. We are inclusive; everyone is welcome. We share knowledge. We help one another. People are free to speak their mind. Members enforce high standards of integrity, decency, and respect. We take a lot of criticism for the freedoms allowed here and we must continue to respond to those criticisms with a very strong demonstration that personal integrity, peer support, and freedom are what make a Code of Conduct work.

We've had a turbulent start. A number of announcements made by OSM made it clear that there has been a lot of behind the scenes planning that could impact the definition of community and Joomla!'s future. There has been very little sharing of information or opportunity for community feedback. The trademark implementation was poorly handled and OSM discourages open discussion on this policy to this day.

As a result, a lot of pent-up frustration has been channeled through ATAAW and a very strong message was delivered. We are starting to see change but there is a lot of work to do. The effort is not only required of the project, but most especially by the community. We can't just sit back and wait for others to do it for us. We shouldn't waste our time complaining about what "they" do. We need to make good things happen together and accept responsibility for our ecosystem.

To me, it is clear that the Joomla! project and OSM have lost touch with the community and the community has lost touch with the project.

We need leaders. We need those who have helped guide in the past to keep the faith and continue, but those of us who have been in the foreground need to drop back and assume an elders role, helping with advice, as needed, and cheering people on, but not leading the charge. Today, those with new ideas, enthusiasm, and hopeful spirits need to step up and get involved.

The recent announcement of the Open Source Matters Board members was a very good sign of new leadership. The selections were a show of support for local communities, respect for our International membership, and a recognition that personal integrity matters.

I am stepping aside and have asked Robert Vining to be our new All Together, As A Whole host and spokesman. Robert is the kind of person who I know can help guide this effort during it's next phase. He has an exceedingly kind and welcoming nature. He is enthusiastic and has a million ideas about things we could do to strengthen the network. He understands that the most important function ATAAW serves is that it provides a place for people to come. He is inclusive and open minded and honest. He calls it like he sees it, and has the strength of character to listen and make up his own mind. He is strong but not controlling. I am very excited to see how we can work together with Robert's support.

Please join me in welcoming Robert as our new All Together, As A Whole host and spokesman. I ask that you please give him your full support as he takes the lead in this next leg of our journey together.

Thank you, Robert, for your willingness to contribute in this way to the Joomla! community.

Fears come true...

2010-02-15T20:52:10.000Z

What I suspected more then year ago (with all that chasing of trademarks etc.) is becoming true.
Joomla! probably goes corporate and the community goes in the sink. More details on:
http://community.joomla.org/blogs/community/1117-how-open-source-development-is-funded.html

A sad day for Joomla! OSdM and the poor COC, which basically sold a community project.

What do you think?

Datatables in Joomla/K2 content?

2010-02-14T16:55:41.000Z

On a site that I am working on, a little problem has presented itself.

On the old site, there is some data that is being presented in tables. Of course, I could just continue with that. But I was hoping there was a better and more userfriendly way to maintain these tables.

The data in the tables are the results of a couple of simulator tournaments in golf. Take a look at one of them here:

http://www.golfsenteretmyrens.no/module_info/index.php?level=2&xid=96&venstreUnderMenyLink=0

Each table represents one month. There is no fixed number of rows in a table (determined by number of participants). Main heading for a table is Month/Golfcourse played (on the simulator).

Column headings are:

Player/Team name
Handicap (I want to add this to avoid two lines in the name column)
Tee
Results (up to 3 values)
Best round (the lowest of the three previous values)
Ranking (1-15 and below)
Points - see the scale below.

Each tournament is played over 5 months. The worst month get dropped when the
end results are calculated.

Each player can play a maximum of 3 rounds each month. The best round counts
as that months result.

Lower score is better. A typical score for a month might be as low as 65-70-72
or as high as 100-102-115.

Points are awarded for the 15 first places each month.

1 - 30 points
2 - 25 points
3 - 20 points
4 - 18 points
5 - 16 points
6 - 14 points
7 - 12 points
8 - 10 points
9 - 8 points
10 - 6 points
11 - 5 points
12 - 4 points
13 - 3 points
14 - 2 points
15 - 1 points

In case of a tie between people/teams, they get the same points and the next
place(es) are skipped. So if two are tied for first, they both get 30 points
and nobody is on second. Next place is third.

The people working there are used to maintain the tables manually by doing the calculations and then typing in the results.

Does anyone have any idea about any component that would be ok to maintain these tables? What do you use in your own work? It could be that something obvious has passed by just because I do not know exactly what to search for. So I am turning to the community for suggestions.

I have been searching a lot on JED, but the league extensions I have found are too focused on either racing or teamsports (basketball, football). I have still not found any generic extension to maintain plain tables. If it would support sorting on one specific field, that would be fantastic.

I have a feeling that it might be possible to use something that can be used for videogame scores. But it has to be generic, not tied to one specific game.

It does not need to calculate scores etc., but a huge bonus if it does.

Extension and Services Section Editors Needed for Joomla! Community Magazine

2010-02-13T15:30:00.000Z

The Joomla! Community Magazine will have a monthly feature sharing examples from broad categories of Joomla! Extensions and Services. One month might feature Template Frameworks, the next CCK offerings, following by Joomla! Blogging options or Hosting solutions, etc. The goal is to promote and make visible the diversity of amazing solutions provided by this community.

Since the Joomla! Community Magazine is our baby, we need to make certain it's successful. It is good for our ecosystem and community pride. We need two teams, each with four (or five) members. This is a perfect way for Web site builders and Trainers to contribute to the project, given your knowledge across these various categories and experience with various options.

Planning continues, but here is the basic idea for how this might work:

Two Extension and Services Teams, each with four or five members will rotate so that there is two months available to produce each category issue.
Collectively, the Extension and Services editors determine and schedule upcoming categories.
Community are invited to propose options during the first two weeks of the month and vote for their favorite options during the last two months. It is still under discussion whether the community vote should determine all options, or if editors should select one or two items in order to feature important, newer titles that might not otherwise be visible.
Developers will be encouraged to get their customers, friends, and mothers into the forums, propose and vote on their work. A special "brag" badge can be displayed on developer Web sites telling visitors that their Extension is to be (or was) featured in an issue. This should be a fun encouragement for developers and a way to promote the magazine.
Once the options are finalized one of the Extensions and Services Teams will split up the options to be featured in the magazine and each write articles about the Extensions (or services, etc). In other words, Person 1 will write an article on Extension 1 and Person 2 will write an article on Extension 2, and so on.
The team will also write a combined article that compares and contrasts these options to help differentiate the offerings.

Paul is holding a forum discussion on this process and you are invited to join the discussion at that location (Please do not discuss the process here.)

We need volunteers. If you are willing to be an editor on one of these two teams and will write every other month, please volunteer. We need people to get involved in this project and build a strong, positive, active community voice. This section of the magazine will be a powerful promotion and learning tool and, as such, will helping strengthen the Joomla! ecosystem and promote our collective work.

The Joomla! Community needs you. Will you please help?

Best-practices for subscription-based extension distribution (SBED)

2010-02-12T20:00:00.000Z

Many, many Joomla extension developers (components, modules, plugins, templates and languages) distribute their products using a for-profit, subscription-based model (subscription-based extension distribution; SBED) whereby a download service is optionally mixed with support services.

The history of how this model became popularized is long and boring, but a number of successful code shops have arisen as a result.

Along way, these shops have tweaked the features of their subscription packages to make support (extension and customer) faster and easier, and of course to minimize liabilities such as bad PR or extension forking by other code shops.

This got me to thinking about what the 'best practices' to keep subscribers satisfied and happy while managing to earn a living, pay staff, and innovate.

I'd like to start off this list with a few points for your consideration (some which i learned the hard way), but I'd love to get input to we can get a comprehensive set of guidelines that make sense to a wide swath of commercial developers.

1. Provide support. Even though your extension is GPL and sold 'as is', if folks pay for it, they expect it to work and to work as advertised. (added 13-Feb-2010) Knowing your clients and providing appropriate support is critical. For example, if your clients are not comfortable editing code, then you need to support them a that level.

2. Don't charge for alpha-early beta-versions. If you have a community, have them test your earlier builds for quality for free. This can be a 'bonus' to your subscribers, but u need to distinguish these extensions from your mature, fully supported extensions.

3. Keep your merchant happy! Whoever is processing your payments (PayPal for example) is basically your silent partner with a strong interest in making sure you keep bringing in money while at the same time serving as role in consumer protection. who you really need to keep on your side. To do this, make sure you have good customer support. When subscribers start complaining to your merchant, you could find yourself on the wrong side of a frozen asset pile.

4. Don't submit your extension for independent review until it's mature/stable. Joomla extension developers are quick to get their new extension on the Joomla Extensions Directory (JED)* as this is typically the largest source of traffic, and the JED traffic has a higher conversion rate from say Google ads or organic traffic. Early reviews of alpha/early beta versions of your extension can really limit the success of the product in the long run.

5. (added 13-Feb-2010) Clarify the terms. Make it painfully obvious what is included in the subscription. Note that the terms should ideally keep in mind the items above.

So, what do you think? Comments and additional 'best practices' welcome.

*Full Disclosure. The author is currently a member of the JED editorial team.

Upgrading to Joomla 1.6

2010-02-12T06:05:08.000Z

Just wondering how user friendly will it be migrating from 1.5 to 1.6..?

I have never liked the process of upgrading from 1.0 to 1.5 (some how the process was time consuming, it was like moving from a totally different platform) Unless I did things the wrong way.

Oh! and how compatible will the extensions you used on 1.5 be on 1.6?

Can users demand a refund for a service?

2010-02-11T19:09:52.000Z

This question appears to be matter of some contention in the Joomla world, and is maybe different around the world. I'd like to get some feedback on the matter from my peers (that's you!).

I can only speak for North America where refunds can be given for products or services.

Services can include anything from magazine/cable TV subscriptions, car repair, or a massage.

What about subscriptions to support services? My uncle once paid a monthly fee for IT support with his new computer from a big box retailer (Best Buy). Turns out it was very poor, so he requested and received a refund.

What about you Joomla folks around the world? There are lots of service providers in the J!sphere from support to development. Do you all provide refunds?

Save Ferris!

2010-02-10T11:52:08.000Z

Ferris, if you're out there, we all support you and love your free spirit. We think you're a righteous dude.

Rebuild your article aliases with for a few seconds

2010-02-10T00:00:00.000Z

When this script was written by Plamen Botev (AFAIK), it was supposed to handle the issues for non-Latin languages after migration from Joomla! 1.0 to Joomla! 1.5. It was a major issue for anyone who wanted to turn on the SEF, but during the migration, all the aliases were stripped due to the Cyrillic only letters in it.

Now it turned into something different. Three years ago, in Joomla! there were Latin aliases or nothing (if not using 3PD extension to handle it). That was the reason, several plugins were released to handle that issue.

The internationalism and transliteration of the aliases had a quite nice history in Joomla! 1.5:

First it was yvTransliterate from Yuri Volkov. It had good concept, but was a bit complicated for an end user.
Based on the idea of yvTransliterate (while no code was used), I created Protos SEF, an extension that transliterates anything on the fly from Bulgarian to Latin.
Jan Pavelka, took the idea and created similar plugin for the central European languages.
And the culmination was the Unicode Slugs plugin by Jean Marry Simonet, which allowed using any alphabet in the alias.

In Joomla! 1.6 unicode aliases will be supported in the core. So far, so good, but what a mess would happen if your web site is using Latin aliases till some moment and Cyrillic after another.

I had a task these days to re-work a web site with 10k+ articles. 3k of them without aliases (due to migration from 1.0), 5k of them with Latin aliases (with a transliteration plugin) and the last 2k articles with Cyrillic aliases with the Jean Marry’s plugin. So the task was to unify all aliases into single alphabet, following same rules.

At that time, I remember about this script, which was rebuilding the aliases and tested it. Voala, it worked for all articles (only). Not only that, but if you have some of these plugins, that effect the alias creation, the script executes them (i.e. if the JM plugin is enabled, it will re-create all aliases in Cyrillic, if Protos SEF is enabled, it will re-create and transliterate all aliases in Latin).

So, how this script can be useful for you?

If you haven’t migrated yet.
If you have old articles with non-existing aliases or aliases you want to change at once.
If you want to start/stop using aliases in Unicode or by applying transliteration.

How it works?

ou first create a backup of your site files, database, anything.
Then rename your main index.php file to index.bak.
Upload the file, which is in the attached package in the main Joomla! folder.
Open your web site, you will see a blank screen. Don’t do anything till you see “Done”.
After that delete the index.php file and rename back index.bak to index.php

What will it do?

It will delete all existing aliases and rebuild them in the very same way Joomla! creates them automatically.
If there are plugins installed which manipulate the Joomla! class for creation of aliases, this plugins will be executed.

Hope you find it useful.

alias_rebuild.zip

Simple gallery recomendations?

2010-02-09T22:30:00.000Z

I'm looking for simple image gallery component that would have the following:

categories/galleries with thumbnails
large images open is lightbox/slimbox or similar
an ability to resize images (large and thumbnails)
can upload multiple files
minimal & clean look
no noticeable bugs
no frontend uploading/editing/comments/rating/descriptions/crap/crap/crap (...ok..at least option to turn it off)
no spam links

Ideally there would also be a plugin that would allow direct inclusion of galleries in articles.

Any recommendations? Everyhing I try is either buggy or ugly or includes hidden surprises.

JandBeyond Website is Online

2010-02-08T12:05:18.000Z

Hi,

the JanBeyond Website is online. Please Register, submit proposal for talks and training.

We hope you like it.

Thanks to all helping us to bring the site online.

Robert

ATAAW Network, Brand Essence Exercise — in search of Mantra

2010-02-08T02:22:21.000Z

Hi guys and girls.

With a view to clearly defining our ecosystem, I'd appreciate if you took the time to fill in this form

ATAAW Brand Essence — Mantra Form (please fill me out).

The philosophy of this process is indelibly linked to People: Purpose and Process; while at the same time looking for the personality of this group.

We know there is a significant — and healthy — difference between J.org forums and our little world here. Put your thoughts into words, have your say about what's great, what's not and what can improve by taking 20 minutes to answer the questions.

The end result or Mantra, which will be published here, should reflect the appeal, character, purpose, nature and differences of ATAAW as a network of professionals. Ideally, the brand essence or mantra will come down to two words (sometimes two is impossible but the fewer the clearer the group's aims).

Thank you in advance for participating.

Pete :)

Working pagebreak some day?

2010-02-07T21:30:00.000Z

You all know what I am talking about! And I am surprised that 15 versions after 1.5.0, none has fixed this issue.
When you use TinyMCE and use the read more button, in 99.99% of the cases it breaks the paragraph by letting the opening

<p>

in the intro text and the closing

</p>

in the closing text.

It could be even worst, if the string is not

<p>

but

<h3>

or something like that.
For most of my web sites, I don't need that much from the text editor. Bold, italic, h2, h3, paragraph is basically what I use. But it appears that all the time, it is needed to install JCE only to have the pagebreak working as expected and not crashing anything. In fact, JCE handle this, but removing the core Joomla! extended button and placing their own.

Shannon Noack - Common Misconceptions about Web Designers

2010-02-07T20:30:00.000Z

http://sixrevisions.com/web_design/common-misconceptions-about-web-designers/

Good read! I wonder how many of us can see ourselves in some of the areas mentioned in this article?

As a web designer, I’m proud to be a part of an Apple-loving, forward thinking, technologically advanced group of people that devour tutorials and web design blogs, hoping to create a stellar design that gets posted in every CSS gallery out there. Yep, we’re a group of people that works hard, plays hard and strives to meet our deadlines, while learning something new along the way.

Martina Skender - How To Create Creativity

2010-02-07T19:46:40.000Z

http://sixrevisions.com/creativity/how-to-create-creativity /

Interesting article. Maybe our Joomla! Community can benefit from some "creative" thinking at this point in time.

‘Creative’ is the most popular adjective in the design world. Everybody wants to be a creative individual, find a creative solution, or discover a creative book. There are many synonyms for the word ‘creative’: ingenious, clever, prolific, innovative, gifted, inspired, inventive, original, stimulating. But what does this word really mean? And how can we activate our own creativity?

Improve Joomla! 1.5 SEO side

2010-02-07T15:25:29.000Z

This post has been originally published on my blog. If you note some errors they're probably due to the fact I merely copied the HTML source code from that post here.

Today I've decided to develop a simple but useful plugin, that somehow puts a medication on some Joomla! 1.5 SEO lacks.

It's been a couple-hours work and it's submitted to the JED ( so we need to wait a couple of weeks to see it into the JED ) but I've already released it in the site of my company.

Let me introduce you Custom Meta Tags for Joomla! 1.5 plugin, a brand new GNU GPL v2.0 Joomla! plugin.

The HTML title

A feature that I've always appreciated, in CMS, is the ability to display a title for the user and a metatitle for the search engine.

For example, this article has a title that you see ( "Improve Joomla! 1.5 SEO side" ) and a metatitle ( or HTML title, "SEO plugin for Joomla! 1.5: Custom Meta Tags" ) which you see at the top bar of the browser or in the SERP.

This is important for example, when you want to give your users a friendly title but also to the search engine an HTML title full of keywords:

title: They're back: grunge breaths again in Seattle
HTML title: The Nirvana will perform a reunion concert in Seattle the 11th February 2010

The title is aggressive, good for you users but the HTML title is even better: full of keywords ( Nirvana, concert, reunion, seattle, 11th February ) which give it the possibility to appear at the top of SERPs.

So, with Joomla! 1.5 you can't do that for single article, and that's a bid deal: but this plugin saves you!

You only need to type in your editor:

{metatitle:The Nirvana will perform...}

and in that article's page the HTML title is gonna be the one you defined in the edior with this syntax.

The same thing can be done with:

meta description
keywords

using

{metadesc:my decsription of the article in 160 chars...}
{metakeys:keyword1. keyword2}

Canonical URL

You can specify a canonical URL for the article using:

{metacanonical:www.mycanonicalurl.com/index.php...}

so you will be able to face better the problems related to duplicated content which affect some Joomla! installations or components ( due to webmasters lacks, moreover, than Joomla!'s ).

Generator

You can decide between 4 possibilities.

If you type

{metagenerator:Wordpress 2.9}

that custom generator will be displayed in the source code of that article's page or... ...from the plugin manager you have a drop-down option list in order to:

display an empty generator ( for [low-level] security purposes )
display automatically Joomla! 1.5's default generator metatag
display automatically a default generator metatag you can define in a text-form later.

Content is king, or how are google's changes going to effect your developemts

2010-02-07T05:18:42.000Z

I came across this article http://boagworld.com/marketing/google-changes and while I don't see some of what they were pointing out, Is is clear that social networking and real-time results are coming and coming in a big way from all the major search company's. So to open this discussion, what are some new thing you might try to play the "google" game?

Joomla! Tips: customize robots.txt

2010-02-07T00:31:37.000Z

One of the poorest sides of Joomla! is that it does allow multiply URLs be the very same page. Which for search engines usually means duplicated content.

The effects from this are not very clear, however it is better if this can be avoided.
What I usually do with robots.txt and some other tricks, in order at least to have my page look more clear in the webmasters tools.

1. Very common thing is that some template designers put a link to the logo to site.com/index.php - which basically means duplication with site.com. Therefore, if I use a ready template, I look at its code and change all links to index.php just to site.com.
2. If I use SEF (the built-in), I always in fact forbid search engines to index anything that starts with index.php, because this is duplicated content in 99% of the cases. I do this by simply adding in robots.txt:
Disallow: /index.php
3. I add the following line in robots.txt, if I want google to index my images:
Allow: /images/stories
This line should go, BEFORE the Disallow: /images
4. I use only www or totally forbid www in my web sites (it depends in every case, to use www or not), by redirect in htaccess
Add this code, to remove www:

RewriteEngine On 
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.domain.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://domain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Use this code to always force www:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.your_domain.com$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.your_domain.com/$1 [R=301]

5. The most important, according to me. Joomla! has a big issue by having routing like:
component/COMPONENTNAME/VIEW/SOMETHING/SOMETHING
This happens, when certain item is not linked in any way through a menu item. Well, if I haven't link something via such item, it is either a duplicated content, or something I don't want to show. Therefore, I see no reason, why Google should index it. By adding to robots.txt:

Disallow: /component
It very well solves the issues with duplicated content.

Share your experience in making your web sites more SEO friendly.