Suguay Productions

In case you hadn’t noticed, Joomla! doesn’t automatically come with the ability to handle comments. You will need to add this functionality. I added it when a friend asked about it because she wanted to comment on one of the articles. Sadly, I think I’ve lost that comment because of changes I’ve made. I’ll explain.

I had been using !JoomlaComment. The version I was using howerver required legacy support and I wanted to add some extensions that required 1.5 Native so I needed to change. I set the parameters to what was recommended for removing the version I had so hopefully I would keep the comments as few as they were, and then I removed the old version of !JoomlaComment. That went smoothly.

Next I updated my Joomla to running in Native mode instead of Legacy. And tried to load the new beta verion of !JoomlaComment. This didn’t go so well. I got something akin to the blue screen of death you get in Windows when you installed a driver that Windows really, really didn’t like. Yeah, this didn’t work. Not to be deterred I thought I did something wrong so I went back over the instructions and tried again. Nope.

Now, I may have still done something wrong. However, I on that day my break it threshhold was set low and I wasn’t interested in tinkering with this feature for very long. It was actually in my way of getting to something else I wanted to tinker with. So rather than beat my head against the problem until one or the other gave way, instead I fround a different comment tool.

I’m now using yvComment. It runs in Native mode seemingly without a hitch. It was a quick install and engage situtation and an added bonus is that the option for adding a comment is less intrusive. It doesn’t stand out quite so boldly and thus it blends into the page better.

That’s how I lost my friend’s comment on my article. I probably have it in the database somewhere. I’ll have to go hunt for it one day.

Cheers.

Originally published at: suguayproductions.com/joomla which has been discontinued.

I’ve been tasked with creating a social website for a group of people, several of whom are on Facebook and other social sites. When I was first enlisted in creating them a website, they needed some place to communicate about general topics and upcoming gatherings. So I set them up with a forum. Over the past couple of years their needs and desires for their site have grown. Fortunately in that time I found Joomla! and even more recently I’ve found Community Builder.

Community Builder is a social networking extension for Joomla!.
It includes the ability to have your own profile and connect with people, and to put those people in groups (a la Facebook and other social sites). It has it’s own login module and it’s own who’s online module that tells you who is online not just the number of users and guests.

To download the software you’ll need to go to the Joomlapolis website and register. The main product is free. There are templates, and some other enhancements that are offered for purchase as well as other web type services. As of this initial posting the stable version of Community Builder is 1.2.1.

The download is simple. All the core components and modules come in a zip file. You will need to extract the zip file to install. In the zip file are four more zip files – these are the components and modules – as well as some text files with instructions for a new install or an upgrade.

While I did have Community Builder 1.2.0 installed and I could have used the upgrade instructions, I chose not to. I am testing the software on a site that has no users so I was able to uninstall 1.2.0 and use the new install instructions for 1.2.1.

Read the installation instructions as there is a recommended order of installation for the components and modules. This might be a required order of installation if you want it to work. I don’t know, I followed the instructions.

Once installed you will need to go to the module manager to enable the CBLogin module as well as the Communitly Builder Who’s online module and workflow module.

You’ll also want to go to Community Builder under components and set things up under user management, at least. There are additional items for configuration such as for the tabs, and how to handle connections. If you want to have private messaging and blogging available. The big thing is to remember to enable or publish the feature you just finished configuring. I missed this a couple of times. After setting something up I went to the front end and refreshed only to see no changes.

Something else to keep in mind. My site is set up with articles open to everyone and the added functionality only available to registered users, therefore, other than the login and who’s online modules, changes aren’t visible unless you log into the site. The cool social stuff doesn’t show up until you go into ‘your profile’. The your profile section is different from your details, too.

In addition to the components available from the team at Joomlapolis there are extensions available from other sources that expand the functionality of Joomla! and Community Builder even more. I will be adding a forum to this site and would like a little finer control over user access. I will also be looking into a way to accept donations as well as integrate an online community store.

Community Builder is easy enough to install on a Joomla! site. Configuration options are fairly extensive so you will want to take some time here. Expandability appears to be pretty good at this time.

You’ll likely be reading more about this as I find and add options and tools.

 

Originally published at: suguayproductions.com/joomla which has been discontinued.

For those of you who were enjoying this site without the commercialism of advertising you will have noticed the addition of said evil. Figuring out how to add advertisements (adverts or ads) to my page has been one of the many things I’ve been meaning to do in learning about using Joomla!. I don’t know if I’m doing it the “correct”or official Joomla! way. Here’s how I got it to work.

I support an organization called Kiva and they have written the code that you can add to your page to help support them. I copied said code and set about trying to figure out how to put it on my page and then how to get it the way I want. So it turns out that under Banners under Components you first have to setup Clients and Categories. I suggest setting up the category first then the client and then the actual ad. 

There’s a little catch for setting up the clients though. You need to have a contact name and email. Since I didn’t have either really for these I made up something. If you are selling advertising directly then you will have this information. So I set up a client for Kiva and then created a banner. I ended up creating a banner, regardless of how I wanted it to display or where it was going to display. 

Depending on the layout of the advert and where I want it displayed I use one of two modules.  I use either the Banner module or the Advertisement module. If you have just one ad per client it’s not big deal. I however wanted to put up two ads for Kiva and they are different in their layouts. To do this the easiest thing was to create two clients. When I name them I try to name them based on where they go or their position on the page.

With two clients it makes it easier to put in either the ads or banners. I tried not doing it and Joomla! tried to display my banner ad off to the right side and it tried to put my tall ad down below my banner ad making the page unnecessarily long. So I use multiple clients for the same customer.

The next trick for me came with wanting to put multiple ads down the right side to sort of stack them. For this I just made copies of the Advertisement module and put the different ads in the additional module copies. This works well because then you can name the copy so you know what position it has on the page.

Unless you are creating a site that is really only personal or for a small group, at some point you are going to have a need for the Banner module or the Advertisement module or both.

Cheers

 

Originally published at: suguayproductions.com/joomla which has been discontinued.

So now I’ve switched this site over to one of the main templates that domes with Joomla!. It’s pretty good as far as layout and features that it includes. You get new flashes and polls and  latest news and most popular. 

I like that the  spacing doesn’t seem off in certain areas. Like the text editor where I write these little bits. It fits within the template nicely and I don’t lose the last 2 or so characters like one of the other templates. It’s nice and clean looking. And while the white background maybe a little boring to some I think it makes things more navigable and readable. 

I have managed to modify the top header a bit to include a graphic of the site name. I may work on the fade part or the background bit soon. Just to see what sort of different look I can get. I may even add back some things that I’ve temporarily turned off. I need to get some better graphics to go with things like on the weblinks page. 

Still it’s getting there. I’m not sure where.

Cheers.