Category: Joomla!

As expected, there is a handy little plugin on the extensions site which will communicate with several well-known spam prevention sites and block user registration attempts from blacklisted usernames, email addresses, and ip addresses.

Registration Plugin

In the upcoming Joomla! 1.6 release, templates take on a whole new shape. Probably the most exciting new feature of the template system for site owners will be the template styles. Now, when you use a template that has parameters for setting one of a multiple background, or overall color, or whatever, you can save that parameter configuration as a template style. So you could use the same template on multiple pages and have different styles without installing the same template several times. Another difference with Joomla! 1.6 templates from Joomla! 1.5 templates, is that you assign the pages to the template inside the Menu Manager for the link rather than from inside the Template Manager.

 

 

Continue reading “Joomla! 1.6 Templates – First Glance”

Have you ever wanted to extend the Joomla! 1.5 User Registration form to also include those fields in the Contact form? So you can grab your user’s address and phone number information at the registration period and have them available in your Contacts component?

Continue reading “Linking Users to Contacts Automatically”

To load a module directly into an article is pretty simple in Joomla! 1.5. There is a system plugin which will load it for you. First, make sure the plugin is enabled by going to Extensions -> Module Manager and looking for the plugin called “Content – Load Module.” Make sure this plugin is Enabled.

 

Next, go to Extensions -> Module Manager and find the module you want to load in your article. You can create a new one or copy an existing module, if you need to. On the left side of the module’s parameters page, there is a drop-down selector where you pick a template location for the module. However, you can type right there in that drop-down and put in any module location you want. Make something up, and place your module there.

 

Now, just go open up your article, and use the special {} instruction to load that module right in your article.

Now, when you browse to the page with this article in your front-end, you will see a module loaded right at the top of the article. 

Changing Article Order in a Blog Layout in Joomla!

Select the menu item of the blog layout page by going to Menus->Your Menu and clicking the name of any blog layout type menu link (Front Page, Section Blog or Category Blog).

 

On the right hand side, click to open the Parameters (Advanced) tab.

You will see a dropdown selector named Category Order. The four choices are:

• No, Order by Primary Order Only – this means to display according to the rule in the selector below named Primary Order
• Title (Alphabetical) – this means to display the list in alphabetical order based on the title of the article (A-Z).
• Title (Reverse alphabetical) – this means to display the list in reversed alphabetical order based on the title of the article (Z-A).
• Order – this means to display the articles according to their order in the article manager.

If you choose Order, then whatever you select in the next dropdown selector named Primary Order will apply. The choices for Primary Order are:

• Default – use the order in the article manager
• Oldest first – use the article creation date going from oldest to newest
• Most recent first – use the article creation date going from newest to oldest
• Title (alphabetical)
• Title (reverse alphabetical)
• Author – alphabetical
• Author – reverse alphabetical
• Most hits
• Least hits
• Order – the article order in the article manager 

 

 

Changing the Front Page Layout in Joomla!

The front page has two sections of articles: the leading and the intro articles. The leading articles disply the full width of the article area, and the intro articles can appear in the full width or in columns.

You can change the number of leading articles and trailing articles and the number of columns. (first blue arrow)

You can also change whether the columns fill across or down – choose across if you want them to be balanced. (second blue arrow) This setting is in the Parameters (Advanced)

Enforcing SSL (https) for a Joomla! page.

In Joomla! 1.5 you can enable SSL on any page that has a menu link (or displays under any menu link as in an article arrived at by clicking in a category or section list).

In the backend (/administrator) go to the menu manager and open up any link to a page you want to be on https://. On the right side, click to open System parameters. Select yes in SSL enabled.

This method may not work in every server environment. If you are using a shared certificate with another address than your domain address, it may not work.

The Number One Joomla! Newbie Question

How do I remove the “Welcome to Frontpage” text?

Go to Menus->Main Menu (or whatever menu your home page link is on if you have changed it).

Open the link to your home page. On the right side, click to open System Parameters.

Featured Articles

This module allows you to construct a list of articles by section, category, or article ID (similar to Latest News). It relies on the GD libraries, so make sure you have that configured in your web server’s php if you want to use the image feature of this module.

You have the option to also display the list with a thumbnail of the first image in the article itself.

The module comes with 3 style displays defined already: joomla, style, style2.

Continue reading “Extensions: Module Featured Articles”

PostHeaderIcons (in Artisteer Templates) for Joomla!

If you have a template (more than likely generated by Artisteer) and you want to remove the PostDateIcon (or PostAuthorIcon) from displaying, here’s how to accomplish that task.

For whatever reason, the Artisteer templates apply the icons to the article date and author inside the html over-rides rather than through CSS (like they should).

You’ll need to edit /html/com_content/all_sub_dirs/default.php (or blog_item.php etc.)

Find the line like: 

 <?php ob_start(); ?><?php echo JHTML::_(‘image.site’, ‘PostDateIcon.png’, null, null, null, JText::_(“PostDateIcon”), array(‘width’ => ’17’, ‘height’ => ’18’)); ?> <?php echo JHTML::_(‘date’, $this->item->created, JText::_(‘DATE_FORMAT_LC2’)); ?>

You need to remove the

 <?php echo JHTML::_(‘image.site’, ‘PostDateIcon.png’, null, null, null, JText::_(“PostDateIcon”), array(‘width’ => ’17’, ‘height’ => ’18’)); ?>

part.

Then you may need to go into your /template/your_template/css/style.css and adjust the article header css some:

/* begin PostIcons */
.PostHeaderIcons, .PostHeaderIcons a, .PostHeaderIcons a:link, .PostHeaderIcons a:visited, .PostHeaderIcons a:hover
{
  font-family: Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif;
  font-size: 11px;
  color: #630F70;
}