Joomla How Tos and Tutorials

How To Package Joomla Libraries

joe@jlleblanc.com (Joseph LeBlanc) — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 23:16:03 +0000

You’ve seen it before: the monster Joomla installation package. It’s a giant component, several side modules, and at least one plugin. Once you dig through the code, you notice the plugin isn’t even responding to events: it’s merely there to load up code shared by the other extensions.

Fortunately, Joomla 1.6 and higher provide a better way of handling this. Reusable code libraries can now be installed into the libraries folder without creating extraneous plugins. Just like any other extension in Joomla, a library is packaged as a .zip file with an XML manifest to guide the installation.

If you’ve created Joomla XML manifest files before, creating one for a library is straightforward. The main thing you need to keep in mind is the added <libraryname> element. This element is the “system name” for the library: make sure it is valid as a directory name across platforms. When coming up with this “system name,” avoid spaces, capital letters, and special characters. Upon installation, Joomla will create a subfolder of libraries using name specified by <libraryname>. Contrast this with the <name> element, which identifies an extension with a human readable name.

How to override offline mode in Joomla without requiring a login

Y5tn_cory@corywebbmedia.com (Cory) — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 21:47:14 +0000

As you may know, you can set your Joomla site "offline" by setting "Site Offline" to "Yes" in the Global Configuration. This is a great feature that enables you to build or troubleshoot your site in offline mode, restricting access only to backend users who login through the login form displayed on the offline page.

The only limitation to this feature is that you have to be logged in to see the frontend of the site, so you cannot test the site from the perspective of a user who is not logged in. For example, if you want to test registration, AEC or Ambra Subscriptions integration, or any number of other things that might require you to see the site from the perspective of a non-logged-in user, you cannot do that because offline mode requires you to log in to see the front end of the site.

I have developed a Joomla plugin called Offline Override that enables you to put the site in offline mode, and enter a keyword to override offline mode without requiring a login. You simply install and enable the Offline Override plugin, create your secret keyword (no spaces) and enter it in the plugin's parameters. Then, when your site is in offline mode, you can override the offline mode by adding "?keyword=VALUE" in the address bar for the frontend of your site. For example, if your keyword is "joomlarocks", you would go to http://yoursite.com/?keyword=joomlarocks. The override only lasts the length of your session and you must re-enter the keyword in the address bar (http://yoursite.com/?keyword=joomlarocks) the next time you open your browser.

Getting started with JForm

james@webamoeba.co.uk (James Kennard) — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 15:35:14 +0000

JForm is one of the most exciting new features to be introduced as part of Joomla! 1.6. The intention is to provide XML configurable forms complete with custom field types and form validation. I cannot stress enough just how much easier this is going to make life as a Joomla! developer. In this article we take a look at how to define JForms and how to display them.

Joomla! Day DC 2010

joe@jlleblanc.com (Joseph LeBlanc) — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 18:25:26 +0000

Far and wide across this great nation, Joomla! users have been waiting. Waiting for their voice to be heard. Waiting for their vote to count. On October 16th at the footsteps of Washington DC, the wait will be over. We will finally be hearing from the President himself... Mr. Ryan Ozimek, President of Open Source Matters!

For many months now, NoVA Joomla has quietly lobbied from inside the Beltway to build a collation of representatives from across the nation. Delegates are traveling from the District of Columbia, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, Virginia, Nebraska, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas; we're even expecting visitors from England and Greece! Will you be represented? Only if you attend! Come with us and wave the Red, Green, and Blue! (and orangey-yellow too!)

How to track your Joomla! project with Git

joe@jlleblanc.com (Joseph LeBlanc) — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 17:39:47 +0000

If you’ve ever worked on an existing website, chances are you’ve run into a directory listing like the following:

Copy of index.html
about.html
contact.html
favicon.ico
index.html
index.html.bak
index.html.bak2
index.html.old
pricing.html

It’s also quite possible you are responsible for having created a mess like this. We’re always told to make backups of our files, and so we make them, often right next to the files of a live site. While it’s a good idea to make a backup of your code before changing something that already works, .bak, .old, and .other files can accumulate very quickly.

Made-up extensions like .bak tell us (let alone others) very little about the significance of each change. It would be nice if there were some way of keeping a history of every change made to a file. Better still, tracking who made each change would be useful. And a way of combining changes from two different copies of the same file would be fantastic.

Fortunately, such systems already exist.

Deploying Large-Scale Websites with Joomla - Part 1: An Interview with Mitch Pirtle

Y5tn_cory@corywebbmedia.com (Cory) — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 17:02:40 +0000

I've heard a lot of talk lately about whether or not Joomla can handle large-scale websites, or if it's best used for small mom-and-pop sites. I can say emphatically that the answer to that question is that Joomla is not only useful for small mom-and-pop sites, but it can also be used to build it medium and large-scale sites. There are a few popular examples of large-scale websites built with Joomla, and two developers have been involved in a number of these sites: Mitch Pirtle from Space Monkey Labs and Fotis Evangelou from Komrade and JoomlaWorks. In this 2-part series, I am interviewing both Mitch and Fotis to get their insights on what it takes to deploy large-scale websites with Joomla. Part 1 is my interview with Mitch.

Establishing a patching process

joomlajabber@gmail.com (Tom Canavan) — Mon, 17 May 2010 20:49:40 +0000

Good day,

Waaaaaay back in January, I took the time in this column to discuss with you the concept and need to patch your site. Since that article was written till now (May 16, 2010) there has been about 180 report vulnerabilities for Joomla extensions. And some number of them for the Joomla core (to be fair only a few).

Given that you might be using one of these, its important to revisit this highly important topic.

UTF-8 in Joomla

james@webamoeba.co.uk (James Kennard) — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 19:16:55 +0000

Have you ever browsed to a website only to find that half the content is unreadable? Or that certain characters are being displayed in strange and mysterious ways? Or perhaps you wanted to enter a foreign or unusual character but found that the result was a garbled mess.

The chances are you have been subject to poorly managed character encodings. Joomla! extensions are no exception to these occurrences, but with a little bit of effort and some help from the Joomla! framework, we can avoid these problems with relative ease.

Announcing /motif - a New Template Framework for Joomla!

Y5tn_cory@corywebbmedia.com (Cory) — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 16:44:29 +0000

We are pleased to announce the beta launch of our new Joomla! template framework, /motif. Actually, it's not that new. We built /motif back in October of 2009 for our own purposes.

/motif is a template development framework for Joomla! built to simplify the development of fully-custom Joomla! templates and empower web designers to become Joomla! template developers. We are Joomla! template designers and developers, and we built /motif in October 2009 to "scratch our own itch." We needed a simple, robust, and flexible template framework with a non-restrictive license so we could use it on all of the custom templates we build for our clients. Unfortunately, none of the frameworks available at the time quite fit what we needed, so we built our own.

This framework will be the basis of a new Joomla! template club called Themeables, which we will be officially launching at CMS Expo in May. Head over to the Themeables website and grab a copy of /motif for yourself. The framework is free (as in freedom and as in beer). If you want to learn more about /motif, check out the /motif documentation.

Better Communication with the Joomla Community

Y5tn_cory@corywebbmedia.com (Cory) — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 16:50:44 +0000

In recent months, there have been a few issues in the Joomla community and with Joomla's leadership that have caused some people to get upset with how decisions are made and with the lack of communication between the leadership team and the community over certain decisions. Steve Burge has formed a team to address these issues and come up with a solution for better communication with the community. You can read about this new initiative on Joomla.org. If you have a moment, please take some time to read through Steve's post and fill out the form at the end of the post to share your ideas. {jomcomment lock}