Blog entries

Could you be more specific, please?

Administrator — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 19:45:34 +0100

I'm preparing notes for the html / css class I teach at the Marlboro College Graduate School and at the same time helping a colleague troubleshoot a ready-made Joomla! template.

Needing to override a styling rule, there are many possible ways to make a rule more specific without using !important!

Firebug (Firefox extension) and CSSEdit (part of Espresso package from MacRabbit) are two tools that will help you identify the style rules currently in play. &nb...

htaccess 301 redirects

Administrator — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 19:39:59 +0100

It happens sometimes that you just need one or two old addresses , or shortened addresses to be mapped to a current url.

Adding a few lines of code to the .htaccess file just might be the fix you need. These might be actual file names for a static website, or a Joomla generated url or Wordpress permalink.

Here's the syntax:

Redirect 301 /old-path/old-url-name.html http://full-domain-name.org/new-path/new-page-url.html

Removing content from Google

Administrator — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 15:28:12 +0100

I'm working on a project where Google currently has over 9000 indexed entries, most of which are comments on a K2 article accidentally left open to comments by the previous developer.

According to the instructions at Google Webmaster Tools, the "remove url" tool is not to be used except in urgent situations where private data has been shared and that using the "remove url" tool otherwise may hurt the site.

How then to get Google to crawl the indexed pages (which were remov...

jbPure template problem fixed...

Administrator — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 21:11:29 +0100

On a site using the Joomla Bamboo template Pure, I was having trouble with footer not clearing the sidebar. I discovered that a custom html module with just a non-breaking space in the bottom position would fix the problem. I didn't mind the dark banner that stretched across the screen and I was willing to live with this work around (having tried all kinds of clears, etc. on the footer module.)

Then I discovered that that "fix" didn't fix it in PC browsers: ...

Menu item ordering bug in Joomla 1.7.x

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 20:38:22 +0100

I have a site that started its life in 1.7.0. After upgrading to 1.7.3 I lost control of the order of menu items. Numbering and saving didn't work. Tweaking with the blue arrows only worked in some places, and then didn't seem to stick. I "solved" the problem by using the MOVE function at the bottom of the menu items manager page, selecting an item and moving it to the same menu -- this would add it at the bottom of the list. I repeated until all were...

Category -- Categories -- which menu item to choose?

Administrator — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 23:41:30 +0100

I'm preparing a talk for JoomlaDay NYC on Alternative Layouts and Custom Menu Item Types. There had been so many posts on the joomla.org forum about these new capabilites of Joomla 1.6 and 1.7, and so many were complaining that the "feature" simply didn't work, I was getting a bit worried about the presentation. I had proved them working back in the spring for a presenation at Joomla Day New England, but had things changed in the subsequent versions?

Finally las...

What's wrong with this?

Administrator — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 19:21:28 +0100

The following rule was in the stylesheet for a Joomla component I use:

    div.thumbs_div a:hover, a:active, a:focus{
    background-color: transparent !important;
    }

Do you spot the syntax error which caused me no end of grief?

I finally did!

It should have been:

div.thumbs_div a:hover, div.thumbs_div a:active, ...

Szaki Table (Joomla Extension)

Administrator — Fri, 20 May 2011 20:02:49 +0100

Szaki Table is a Joomla Extension that allows sorting a table by any column header.

I used it on a client's site to make a list of educational opportunities sortable by date, location, type. All was well until we added a column for cost and entered cost in US Dollars using the $ sign.

The entire table was replicated in the cell with the $!

Fortunately one only needs to "escape" the $ by including before the guilty character.

...

CMS Expo and Joomla Day New England files

Administrator — Thu, 05 May 2011 04:00:00 +0100

I've uploaded my PPT presentation "What's New in Templates with Joomla! 1.6" as a .pdf file.

I've also uploaded a .txt file of all of the snippets for a basic template.

New Facebook code on a Joomla 1.5 site....

Administrator — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 15:37:21 +0100

This topic came up on the Joomla New England list and Terry posted the solution:

In case anyone needs to know, what worked was to split the FBML version of the code in two. That is, paste the script tag at the bottom of the head tag in the template HTML, then paste the rest of the code into the module (or article). In other words:

Head tag:
<script src="http://connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1"></script>

Module:
<fb:like-box href="htt...

Error installing J! 1.5.22 onto MAMP 9.5

Tue, 29 Mar 2011 13:15:17 +0100

Helping a colleague today and got a nasty message about MySql not being happy. Googled a bit of the error message itself and found helpful solutions online. We had to modify the joomla.sql file from the Installation folder, changing TYPE=MyISAM to ENGINE=MyISAM throughout the file.

I had a Query Tool for Postgres that let me open the .sql file. It did not want to open in a simple text editor...

Puzzled by alternative layouts not working?

Mon, 21 Mar 2011 15:23:53 +0100

My puzzle was that my alternative layout for a category blog would not show up as a choice in the category manager.

I turned to the Joomla Forum and found that others had posted about their alternative layouts not being implemented, even when they chose them for a particular category.

Here's what I posted in reply:

Alternative layouts will NOT be implemented if a menu item pointing to that category exists. (Even if you arrive at the category via list, or...

Alternative layout overrides in Joomla! 1.6

Administrator — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 12:58:29 +0100

Two years ago I blogged about a solution to have different "read-more" links for different sections of a website.

With Joomla! 1.6 it would be possible to have two variations of the php file that generates the blog, one that would include the words "read-more" and one that wouldn't. Since this affects the display in the blog "page", not the individual articles, this layout alternative would actually need to be an alternative menu item type.

Here's how you would...

What's New in Templates for Joomla! 1.6?

Administrator — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 12:42:59 +0100

I'm getting ready for two conferences this spring and have worked up a new Templates card with all the php snippets plus sections on Template Overrides, Layout Overrides, Custom Menu Item Types, and Parameters.

I'm in proofreading mode on the NEW Template Cheat Sheet for Joomla! 1.6. This one will be yellow with a yellow iris in the corners.

If you'd like a sneak peak, or to be a proofreader of the new one -- before I go to print -- email me and I'll send you a...

Making Beez Better - typo!

Administrator — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 11:23:02 +0100

My purple Template Cheat Sheet 2 handed out at Joomla! events in New England and the CMS Expo 2010 has a typo in the section called "Making Beez Better"

The sheet reads:
$this>escape

but should have said this:
$this->escape

Alas, that missing hyphen would lead to a fatal error!

My apologies to all, and kudos to my student Dawn Russell who discovered and pointed out the error.

The really good news is that none of that code will be needed in T...

When things go wrong ....

Administrator — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 22:54:54 +0100

Chances are the same things have gone wrong for someone else!

Yesterday my husband got a new computer and moved his files over from an older Mac. He was horrified to find blank pages where his data should have been -- only a few labels displayed. Other layouts seemed to be OK. The data -- 9000+ records -- seemed to be intact. He set out to rebuild the layout for his data entry screen: ~60 labels and fields.

I set out to find the problem....

IE8, JCE, and email links....

Administrator — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 16:26:35 +0100

Yesterday at a training session a user showed me a very strange display of what should have been a linked email address. There was all kinds of code where the link text -- the email address -- should have been.

She was working in Firefox on a Mac, and deleted the link and rebuilt it and all was fine. (She was editing a page that someone else had worked on.... probably in IE!)

Today I get a call from a different client who wanted to be reminded of how to link ...

Working on an iPad...

Administrator — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 17:31:56 +0100

I'm writing this post on an iPad - trying to get used to some of the features - and to test whether I really need to buy the adminPad extension from the folks at JoomlaPraise.

One thing I noticed right away was the apparent lack of a scroll bar in the editor window. Turns out this is just how safari works on the iPad. One finger drag scrolls the whole page, two finger drag scrolls in the editor window -- or other scrollable areas on a site.

When I first discovered that boxes...

Imagesized revised...

Administrator — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 13:57:01 +0100

NEW version of Imagesized plugin includes more options, but forces a bg and border for all generated thumbnails. Set to white this could often just disappear on the page, but on the fbg site I needed thumbs to sometimes be on a background image for front page.

I was using very standard image sizes so I could predict that all thumbnails would be the actual size, and not need a "fudge-factor" so I modified the plugin code as follows:

In plg_imagesiz...

Modifying Read More links

Administrator — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 16:20:36 +0100

A question was posted in the Joomla! New England forum about getting rid of the titles from the read more links generated by the Beez template overrides. Here is how I responded:

The Beez template was designed for accessibility.

It is an accessibility No-No to have multiple links on the same page with the same text that point to different urls -- so...
the Beez template overrides pull in the article title, creating unique links to t...