Justin Frydman - Web developer/designer from Canada

How to adjust your Concrete5 theme while the edit bar is visible

defunct — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 21:04:03 +0000

A lot of people have the problem that when you are logged into the Concrete5 backend, the edit bar can move things around in your design. Here is an easy way to add a specific class to your tag so you can adjust positions of anything on the page while the edit bar is visible.

Replace your body tag in your Concrete5 theme’s header.php with the following:

canWrite()) ? 'class="c5-edit-mode"' : ''; ?> >

When you are logged into the dashboard and viewing pages though the sitemap, your body tag will look like this:

Now you can adjust your CSS, able to single out any classes or IDs.

Here is a section from my stylesheet:

body {

margin: 0;
padding: 0;
color: #4d4d4d;
font: 12px/13px Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
background: #000000 url(images/bg.jpg) top center no-repeat;
}

/* Move our background down by 48 pixels while the edit bar is visible */
body.c5-edit-mode {
background-position: center 48px;
}

Slow Speeds and Speeding up Concrete5 5.4

defunct — Tue, 11 May 2010 14:46:25 +0000

*UPDATE: Read the comments, the server hard drive was dying and that is the reason why files were never being cached. However these methods will still help speed your concrete5 website up.*

If you’re using the new Concrete5 5.4.x package you may have noticed your website has slowed down from previous versions. After doing some NET tests with Firebug we can see where the bottleneck presents itself.

Default Concrete5 5.4 Speeds

After examining the chart you can see that loading Concrete5′s jquery takes up the most time per page, at over 1 second in this case. Under normal circumstances we could live with this as it will get cached next load, let’s click on the page again:

Cached load of Concrete5 5.4

As we can see, ccm.base.css, jquery.js and ccm.base.js are being loaded every single time a page load is executed. These files seems to load insanely slow, especially the extra second it takes to load jquery. My theme is currently not editable, which slows down your site even more, causing more CSS files to be loaded every page load. The CSS files being loaded in this example are only needed when you are logged in editing pages and do not need to be loaded on the front-end.

Your tests may very depending your server setup, location from server and of course your template itself, but in the end this may be overhead you don’t need, so let’s speed up concrete5 page loading.

If you do not need jquery at all you can follow this guide on the Concrete5 website. This will stop jquery and all the non needed CSS files from loading in your front-end giving your website a snappy boost. If you do need jquery, I recommend loading it directly from google’s servers. This can speed up performance significantly and allows for actual file caching.

1. Copy concrete/elements/header_required.php into your local elements/ directory.
2. Open the file and find these lines:

$this->addHeaderItem($html->css(‘ccm.base.css’), ‘CORE’);
$this->addHeaderItem($html->javascript(‘jquery.js’), ‘CORE’);
$this->addHeaderItem($html->javascript(‘ccm.base.js’), ‘CORE’);

3. Replace them with the following, loading jquery direct from Google’s servers and not using their API for better performance – (cut and paste from here):

if ($u->isRegistered()) {
$this->addHeaderItem($html->css(‘ccm.base.css’), ‘CORE’);
$this->addHeaderItem($html->javascript(‘jquery.js’), ‘CORE’);
$this->addHeaderItem($html->javascript(‘ccm.base.js’), ‘CORE’);
} else {
echo ‘’;
}

Results of our modifications

Non-cached load after Concrete5 modifications

Already we have taken our page load down a bit from 2.68 seconds to 2.41 seconds. Compare Concrete5′s 1.16 second jquery loading to Google’s 91 millisecond time. A significant difference. Now let’s compare a cached page load.

Cached page load after Concrete5 modifications

At last, a full page cache! Compare this from our previous cache test of 1.55 seconds to our new 619 milliseconds!

Concert Catalog Splash Page Launched

defunct — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 11:25:25 +0000

A little while back I provided the design for Concert Catalog, an iPhone application that provides concert listings in your city. We just launched the splash page with a basic explanation and a download link, so get going eh! It’s free to download.

The page ironically uses CU3ER (as one user on Twitter pointed out), a flash slideshow technology for a device that doesn’t support flash. While this page was meant for mostly desktop users, the slideshow does default to the initial screenshot for users without flash installed. For those with flash capability, they get an extra treat, but the page degrades nicely.

Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with Concert Catalog, I just did the design and XHTML for Ryan, the guy behind it all.

Social Icons Block

defunct — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 08:53:55 +0000

I’m pleased to release a simple block called Social Icons. It functions similar to what you see on the left of this page, by entering a URL into the block, the icon and link will appear automatically pre-formated that can be changed with CSS. This block is free!

You can download the block on the Concrete5 Marketplace.

The icons are created by Rogie and be used free of charge on non-commercial websites.

Enjoy!

Download Social Icons 1.0

Featured member on the concrete5 community!

defunct — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 17:26:07 +0000

I’m please to announce I have been selected as a featured member on the concrete5 community page. Concrete5 certainly has changed the way I build websites and applications and I am proud to be apart of such a great open source community! If you haven’t joined the forums yet, now is a good time.

How to disable Concrete5 site statistics

defunct — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 21:31:08 +0000

Concrete5 has built in site statistics tracking but it’s very simple and records every hit, not checking if the user is unique. This can create some very large database tables and possibly slow down your website. Although the graph will remain in the dashboard, the site will no longer track all the visits.

Open up config/site.php and add the following lines:

// turn off site tracking
define('STATISTICS_TRACK_PAGE_VIEWS', false);

As well, load up your favorite database manager, like phpMyAdmin and find the table PageStatistics and empty the contents to clean up past tracking data.

Injecting header items into a block

defunct — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 21:16:52 +0000

Many times you need to inject includes of javascript or css into the header instead of writing the include path into add.php or edit.php. This is a much cleaner solution and can be accomplished in the blocks controller.php. In this example I include both swfobject and jquery’s colorpicker libraries as well as the jquery colorpicker Concrete5 css file:

        /*
         * include swfobject and colorpicker in the header
         */
        public function on_page_view() {
                $html = Loader::helper('html');
                $this->addHeaderItem($html->javascript('swfobject.js'));
                $this->addHeaderItem($html->javascript('jquery.colorpicker.js'));
                $this->addHeaderItem($html->css('ccm.colorpicker.css'));
        }

Using the on_page_view() function easily accomplishes this.

Changing the Concrete5 title divider format

defunct — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 21:11:44 +0000

Many people do not like the default spacer that Concrete5 uses for its page titles which is “::”

To change this, open config/site.php and add the following code:

define(‘PAGE_TITLE_FORMAT’, ‘%1$s – %2$s’);

You may adjust the “-” character in the above code to any that you wish and that will become your new page title divider.

Updated Concrete5 Testimonials Package Released

defunct — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 22:24:32 +0000

There is an updated version of my Concrete5 Testimonials Package now available on the Concrete5 Marketplace.

New Features Include:

Now includes a WYSIWYG editor in the backend.
Testimonials can now include images, formatted text and more.
Includes an optional content field which displays below the testimonial so you can add additional information like Website, Country, or anything you need!

The screenshots have been updated on Testimonials page, so have a look!

Concrete5 Testimonials Unlimited Developers License

defunct — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 00:19:39 +0000

I’m happy to announce the release of a developer licensed version of my Concrete5 Testimonials package. This means it’s a one time fee of $125.00 USD and you can use it on as many websites as you wish, meaning you never have to buy another Concrete5 Testimonials license again. If you or your firm have a lot of clients this will save you a lot of money.

You can pick it up below and you will receive an unlimited licensed version in your email within 24 hours.