Blog entries

Device detection to single out the ipad for special styling

Administrator — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 15:45:26 +0100

My friend and colleague Bill from Grumpy Engineering helped me with this one:

I added this to the php block at the head of my template:

$isIPad = preg_match('/ipad/i', trim($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']));
if ($isIPad) $device="ipad";
else $device="not-ipad";

and then could use

class="<(question mark)php echo $device; ?>" on the body element of the index.php file.

(Of course I also added a line to the template with...

Joomla solution for non-flash mp3 player

Administrator — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 15:37:23 +0100

I searched the JED and the best I could come up with was to use Allvideos to create simple, single mp3 players for a website I'm working on.

The syntax of this pluggin is nice and simple: {mp3}Name-of-file-without-extension{/mp3} or

{mp3remote}http://other-site.com/name-of-file-with-extension.mp3{/mp3remote}

But... Allvideos uses Quicktime as a fallback when flash is not available and on the ipad the Quicktime controller was clunky. I did get...

absolute positioning when you don't declare both offsets....

Administrator — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 18:12:59 +0100

As if absolute positioning isn't complicated enough.... I think I always assumed that an object would move to position 0,0 as soon as position:absolute was declared.

But in fact, all my tests of browsers today seemed to leave the element where it was and only adjust the position - relative to it's positioned containing block -- if the offset is specifically declared. (This is not very clear in the w3c specs.)

Thus, in two different students' work, I...

Paypal RSForm that allows user to set quantity in Paypal Cart

Administrator — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 01:09:26 +0100

or...

How I spent my Valentines' Day while my musician husband was on the road....

working on a site that needed a form to collect information along with a paypal button for payment.

I had built the form in BreezingForms chosen in part because of their built in Paypal support, however, when I got the paypal account set up and put in the button, it led to a paypal payment form where the user could not alter the quantity. What if someone wanted to order two ...

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....