Tips & Tutorials

Having an eCommerce Magento site and longing for more graphics, messages or charts? Wondering if you can do it manually? Sure! You can get it done with ease by creating a static block of your desired content and call it onto your front-end. Let me show you how.

Hate it when the article you are working on is lost or overwritten or that one time your content gets “mysteriously” modified, and you have no clue who did it?

I know it’s rather frustrating and annoying to a certain extent confronting those situations (right?!). This is when Joomla content versioning comes in handy.

Recently we released our well known Joomla template Purity III in its latest avatar. One of the features in its documentation is that of a progressive sidebar navigation highlighting the progress of scrolling down each section of the page in question. We received few requests regarding this feature and here we are with the details on how you can have one for your own site.

In the last tutorial, we have shown you how to create extra fields in article with T3 Framework. Today we will introduce you another extra field type - the extra field for form.

You can add extra fields for any form such as banners, contacts, search or menu...

In our previous tutorial about extending Joomla com_content, we have shown you how to create extra fields (custom fields) and display them properly in the Portfolio layout in Purity III. Today, we're back with another advanced tutorial regarding Joomla custom fields (extra fields), digging deeper into the extra fields and to show you how to achieve your own professional looking Product showcase as we have done for our recent Customer Showcase page.

Without further ado, let's get to it.

Extending your Joomla com_content

What is CCK?

CCK stands for Content Construction Kits has its root in the Drupal CMS and been embraced by Drupal core. In this blog, we are going to focus on Joomla CCK itself and not other CCK system. A typical CCK in Joomla will generally allow you to:

1. Define the content types (content can be a blog entry, a recipe, a poll, etc.) along with modifying numerous custom fields.
2. The layout for each content type.

1. Overview

Let's learn about Joomla Global Check-in component

Global check-in is a Joomla built-in component allowing a Super Administrator to check-in i.e. unlock all items into editable status.

1. Overview

Error Reporting is a useful Joomla function to troubleshoot PHP errors on your Joomla site. This function provides some clues about what and where the PHP problems are.

2. When to turn it on?

Got blank/ white screen in your Joomla site frontend? Well, that calls for turning on the error reporting feature. You may also want to disable the URL rewriting (htaccess method) using Apache mod_rewrite under the SEO settings for differential diagnosis of the issue as url rewriting with htaccess file in non-supported server (mod_rewrite not active) also renders blank pages.

lets start with the definition of Joomla Cache : “The mechanism that offers users a stored view of (part of) a web page so that does not have to be pulled from the database. Joomla core offers three levels of caching: Page caching, View caching and Module caching. By default, Joomla does not cache any content. When caching is switched on, the stored views for this are stored in the filesystem for Joomla ../cache/page/ folder”. (Source: Joomla Glossary)

Cache settings in Joomla

There are 3 places where one can access these settings.

1. Global configuration - Progessive / conservative cache
2. System plugin - Page caching / Browser caching
3. Module level cache for all modules

1. Overview

Mass Mail is a practical Joomla feature allowing you to send emails to all or specific group of registered users. It can be very handy to announce important news for the site users especially in the absence of newsletter subscriptions.

2. How to proceed

To use Mass Mail feature, in your Joomla admin back-end, navigate through Users >> Mass Mail Users.

Take a look at your website. No really. Chances are, you're quite pleased with it. It functions, brings in sales, even looks nice in the right lighting. But here's the problem: the web is changing. What worked and "looked nice" five years ago is now a relic of a bygone era that may repel as many visitors as it attracts. As trends and innovations unfold, prudent businesspeople are forced to recognize that "good" is a relative term, contingent on time and context.

While holiday shoppers are clipping coupons and bundling up for the cold, retailers are making their own preparations for the annual commercial boon. According to Forbes, holiday sales are expected to reach $78.7 billion this year, meriting a little extra attention from businesses both large and small. But while this volume represents a real opportunity for savvy businesses, tapping into it is a challenge all its own.