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September, 2010

Generic Terms and Conditions

What is a terms and conditions web page. Terms and conditions are rules, usually set by the website owner, that are presented to website users, to notify the user of any usage rules that apply to access to the website, or certain areas of the website. Ecommerce shopping cart websites typically need a terms and conditions web page to stipulate the guidelines for usage of the shopping cart. Blog websites will often need terms and conditions web page to state liability restrictions of user comments. Download websites will often have a terms and conditions web page to state the usage restrictions of downloads.

Here is a generic website Terms and Conditions statement. read more…

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Enabling Joomla Legacy compatibility

Some really great modules and plugins have been developed for older versions of Joomla. So how can they be used in recent versions of Joomla?
Go to: Extensions>Plugin Manager
Enable the plugin “System – Legacy

That will allow backwards compatibility for most modules and plugins.

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Creating Joomla Banners

Banners are a native component/module system in Joomla.

Upload the banner image(s):
Go to Site>Media manager
Upload the image(s) to the banners directory

Create a Joomla Banner component: Components>Banner
Create a client
Create a category
Create the banner component, specifying the client and category.

Create a banner module:
Go to Extensions>Module Manager
Select Banners
Specify a title, enabled, position, banner client and category.

The banner image will now display in the page position specified

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Changing Joomla article parameters advanced

The Joomla article editor has a section on the right sidebar titled Parameters (Advanced). Here you can specify display properties for items as the article title, publish date, author, PDF, print and email icons and more. Changing these parameters will only affect the specific article being edited. But what if you want to set these parameters once to affect all the articles?
In the Article Manager at the top right tool bar there is a button title “Parameter”. This opens a dialogue menu where you can specify the advanced parameters on a global level to affect all articles.

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WordPress: Remove the Update Message

WordPress is the most popular website CMS, offering unlimited scalability with unrivaled ease of use. The WordPress team is constantly working to improve the software, and WordPress version updates are issued more with more frequency than probably any other Website content management system. This ensures that WordPress consistantly leads the way in respect to Internet software modernization and innovation.

Anytime a newer version of WordPress is available, following notice is displayed at the top center of the WordPress administration interface:

"WordPress *.*.* is available! Please update now."

Many website owners will rarely, if ever, need to upgrade their WordPress version. In such cases the update message that can be a bit annoying. In some cases, older versions of WordPress are not compatible with the newer major revision upgrades, and performing an automatic upgrade could break the website. These are both good reasons to hide the upgrade message. Thankfully this is easily accomplished via the WordPress functions.php file.
Add this code to the functions.php file:

<?php
remove_action('wp_version_check', 'wp_version_check');
remove_action('admin_init', '_maybe_update_core');
add_filter('pre_transient_update_core', create_function( '$a', "return null;"));
?>

The message will no longer be displayed.

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Joomal Articles in left, right, bottom postions

In Joomla, the left and right sidebars typically contain menus or application modules by default. But website owners often want to display custom content in this areas HTML text and images opposed to dynamic menus, lists and widgets. There are many ways to achieve this; third party modules and plugins are one way. Giving and article a unique category and assigning it to a newsflash module is another. A Google search will result in various methods. After testing most of these it has been determined that the best method is to us a Custom HTML module, which is native to Joomla.

Go to Extensions>Module Manager and click New. A screen displays all the available modules. Select Custom HTML.

Show Title:

Enabled:

Give the module a Title, specify whether you want the title to display above your custom HTML as a header. Enable the module and and specify it’s position on the page. Left position will place it in the left sidebar.

Now scroll down to the Wysisyg and add your html. If you create your HTML locally in a text editor, you can click the ‘HTML’ icon on the Wysiwyg and paste your html code into the editor. Click save, refresh the front end, and your custom HTML will now be displayed in the left sidebar.

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Joomla Add Image to Article

Images are added to articles using the Editor Buttons below the content editor window in the Edit Article screen. Note: It is possible to insert images using the editor in Joomla! however this feature provides a simple way of inserting images stored in the images/stories directory of Joomla!

  1. Open the Article for editing either by:
    • Click the Content > Article Manager menu item to go to the Article Manager, select the Article and click the Edit toolbar button.
    • Clicking the Add New Article button in the Control Panel.
    • If logged in to the Front-end, you have appropriate permissions and are viewing the Article you wish to edit: Click the Edit toolbar button.
  2. Choose where you would like your image placed in the flow of the text by moving the cursor and click the Image editor button at the bottom of the screen.
  3. The Insert Image screen will open over the top of the Edit Article screen. Choose an image by clicking on it.
    • You may also move directory by clicking on the folder icons.
    • Use the drop down Directory field to quickly select a directory and click the Up button to go up a directory level.
  4. Set the image properties as required:
    • Image Description: This becomes the alt attribute for the image, an important feature for accessibility and compliance with web standards.
    • Image Title: Used for the optional caption and also becomes the title attribute in HTML.
    • Align: Sets the image alignment. If left blank the align attribute is not set.
    • Caption: Enables the caption which displays the Image Title below the image.
  5. Click the Insert button to insert the image. The Insert Image screen will close and the image will be displayed in the editor.
    • Click the Cancel button to leave the Insert Image screen.

Uploading images using the Insert Image screen

You may also upload new images using the Upload section of the Insert Image screen.

  1. Click the Browse button to open a file browser.
  2. Select the image files you wish to upload. Click Open in the file browser to confirm the selection. Note: The file browser style and layout depends on the browser and operating system you are using.
    • To remove selected files before uploading click the red icon next to the listed files.
    • If you are uploading multiple files in batches you can clear the list of completed files by clicking the Clear Completed button.
  3. The selected file(s) appear as a list at the bottom of the Insert Image screen. Click Start Upload to begin uploading files.
    • When the upload is complete a green tick will appear next to the file.
  4. You may now select and insert the uploaded image as before.
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View Joomal Module user areas

To view a visual layout of the modules being used on your page, append your root url with /index.php?tp=1. This will overlay a text box on each area with the title of the module/user area.

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Joomla footer text

By default, Joomla has the statement “Joomla! is Free Software released under the GNU/GPL License“, placed in the footer. You can modify this in several ways.

  • Edit the text in the Language/en-GB(or your language)/en-GB.mod_footer.ini (or your-language.mod_footer.ini
  • Edit the code in Includes/footer.php
  • Disable the footer module in Extensions/Module Manager
  • Edit the footer code from the index.php file
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WordPress 3.0 Custom Post Types

WordPress 3.0 is a revolutionary release to the world’s #1 website content management system.  There are several new functionality additions to the WordPress 3.0 release, but custom post types is arguably one of the most important.

Custom post types empowers WordPress designers with a fantastic new toolset for creating custom WordPress websites.  In the following example, I’m going to make a very simple custom comment form to allow visitors to submit comments to a predefined post, creating a web page that can be used for submitting testimonials, etc.

This example assumes that you are familiar with editing WordPress template files, such as functions.php, single.php, ect. read more…

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