• Trying Out Community Builder for Joomla!

    Posted on by suguay

    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.


    📂This entry was posted in Software Used - Joomla!

  • Change in the Weather

    Posted on by suguay

    The first noticable change in the weather has occured here and it seem to be something to savour even for me. Don’t get me wrong, I like it hot. Though I prefer New Mexico hot, or California hot, or even Oklahoma hot, all over Florida hot. Though it beats snow.

    So, the first morning we get with just a little crisp in the air, after a long, hot, sticky summer, is truly a treat.
    It’s a time to throw open the windows and air out the house and take just that extra moment over the morning coffee or tea and enjoy. Trust me, it won’t be like this in a day or two. We’ll be right back to the hot and sticky, after all this is Florida and it is only early October. There’s still plenty more heat to be had. In fact, I’m thinking of going to the beach this weekend.

    And still for this one morning the slight (or big for here) change in the weather is something to be appreciated. It even seemed so on the drive in to work. The other cars and their drivers didn’t seem to be quite as rushed as usual. Like they were enjoying the ride in because it wasn’t yet so hot and they weren’t rushing in to the over air conditioned office building just to keep from dripping.

    I’ve had several people say how nice it was this morning. How much they enjoyed the ride in to work. Some where so excited to be able to roll the windows down on the way in. It was just a feel good thing.

    Yes, it was about time for a change in the weather.

    Cheers.

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


    📂This entry was posted in The Blog!

  • This bugs me…

    Posted on by suguay

    Have you ever been to a website of a person or company that says they develop websites and yet there is something off with their site?

    I’m thinking of those sites that you have to scroll down past a big gaping space because they couldn’t take the time to get their spacing right. They want you to buy their services and yet they can’t make their own site look right. I’ve seen it in a couple of places recently. It really bugs me.

    Wait, I know,
    they might be optimized for one type of browser or another. I understand that proper html, css, javascript code and all that doesn’t usually work the same in all the browsers. I have had to write some really good tweaks to make a site look the way I want. And when I do, I think look at the site in at least two major browsers and sometimes four. The machine I’m writing this on has three browsers on it. I have another that has five. It’s not that hard to open your site in all those browsers and make sure the code works.

    Oh, and then, while you’re at it, resized your browser window. Not everyone runs their browser in full screen mode. I know I don’t. It is a very rare case when I do and it’s usually because someone with poorer sight than mine is looking at something with me. Pages that are written for a certain size or a certain resolution don’t look right when they are on a machine that uses different settings. Just because you have a mondo size screen and can run your resolution at 1680 x 1440 or whatever the setting is, doesn’t mean that the rest of us can or even do if we can.

    These things just really disturb me. I don’t think it takes that much more effort to make it look right. And if you are a person selling your skills as a web site developer and your page looks like that…well, I would be thinking really hard about whether I want you to develop my website. And run spell check. I forget to sometimes when I’m writing these articles. If you are getting paid to put something up on the web for someone, run spell check. If your software you use to write pages doesn’t have it then cut and paste it into a word or open office text document and run it there.

    If you are getting paid to write someone’s web page, you are a professional. You should be turning out professional level work and demonstrating professional level standards. That means the site shows up properly in a variety of web browsers, it displays properly in a variety of sizes and resolutions, and you don’t misspell obvious things. (Note: I did look up misspell with the spell checker.)

    As you can tell, this really bugs me. I try not to be guilty of it. I occaisionally miss a word when I’m writing or setting up a menu item. I go back and fix it as soon as I see it, or someone points it out. I try to make my sites show properly in most browsers and resolutions. These are the small details that really make a site look like it was purposely developed instead of thrown out on the web as an after thought.

    I’ll get down off my soapbox now. Anyone else want to step up onto it?

    Cheers.

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


    📂This entry was posted in The Blog!

  • Knowing What Is Up With Your Site…Google Analytics and Adsense

    Posted on by suguay

    So I got all excited I figured out how to add the adverts to my site. If you use Google Adsense for this which is one of the things I did. Then you start to get a little information about visits to your site. The other thing you can do is to set up Google Analytics. Both will tell you something about your traffic. And it’s kind of cool information.

    First how to set up each. For Google Adsense go to the site at: http://www.google.com/adsense and apply for an account. Yes, apply. Their email or message says they will give you an answer within about 2 days. I had mine back in a few hours. When you get notified that you’ve been approved, then you will need to create/set up the type of ad you want to display. Don’t ask me too much about this as I’m still figuring it all out and I haven’t read all the details. Once you have created your code you will place it in your banner for that client on your site. For a bit more on this see the article on adding adverts to your site under the Joomla! section. Read carefully because you don’t want to break the rules. Don’t click on your own ads for Google and you can only have so many of each type on a page. 

    For Google Analytics you will need to go to that site at: http://www.google.com/analytics and get set up there as well. This doesn’t really require an application process so you won’t have to wait for approval. Once your account is created and you give some general information you will then get the code to add to your site. When the code displays it provides instructions as to the best place to paste this code on all the pages you want to track. If you are using a static site that is not created using a content management tool then you will likely want to add it to every page. You paste it into the html code at the very end just before the </body> tag. That is just before the closing body tag. And then away you go. For Joomla! users, this turns out to be way easy. Ok, I confess I have a book I looked it up in. Basically, from within you administrator console, under extensions go to the template manager, click on the template you are using and then click on ‘Edit HTML’. It will open up the index page and you will paste the analytics code in just before the closing body tag (</body>) towards the end of the page. Save it and you are in business. For template users it’s much the same as for Joomla! users. Paste the code in your template just before the closing body tag  (</body>).

    So what will all this tell you? Well with the Adsense page, when you log into your account you can see how many page impressions and click throughs are happening. This also tells you how much cash you might have made so far.  The Analytics page has more information. You find out how many hits you have had on your page, if they have been organic or direct. Did some come from search engines? Of those visiting your page what browsers were they using? How are they connecting to the internet, are they using cable, DSL or what? You can even find out what pages they are visiting so you can tailor your content more effectively. You can also find out how long they are staying on your page. 

    You can connect your Adsense and Analytics accounts to make accessing the info easier. I haven’t done this yet so I can’t tell you what other advantages it might have. If you are an iPhone user there is a Google Analytics Lite app that you can download for free at this time. It will give you a quick view. Not as indepth as the full Analystics site but still helpful.

    Cheers

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


    📂This entry was posted in Software Used - Other Software

  • Adding Adverts to My Joomla Site

    Posted on by suguay

    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.


    📂This entry was posted in Software Used - Joomla!