ashel

I recently programmed a complicated component for Joomla 1.5 and thought I would share some thoughts on different dev tools I used. I see a lot of questions on the forums about how to do this or that, these tools can help solve many problems, especially in a Joomla environment, my personal favorite. What’s “Open Source”? It’s synonymous with “free”. You are allowed to see the source code, and change it however you like. It is usually maintained by a group of people, and when anyone has contributions to the development, they update it and publish it back to the world. To compare, something like Windows is “closed source” which means they own the code, you can’t look at it, you can’t change, they don’t care what you think, and they’ll update it when they feel like it. AND they will charge you money. Firefox Anyone that says IE is better that FF out of the box, is off their rocker. IE is consistently loosing market share and it’s for a reason, they suck. IE has always done their own thing, any web designer knows the headache of a webpage looking perfect in FF or IE and then view it in the other browser to see something horrid and ugly. This is because IE has not always been standards based. They interpret rules their own way and it causes pain for developers. I digress for the moment, go get Firefox. Over 475K google results for “ie style hacks”. Firebug (for Firefox) This is probably the greatest little Firefox extension a developer or designer could ever ask for, and it’s another open source (free) tool. It only works on Firefox, so visit the link in FF so you can install it. I won’t go into to many details, but here are some of the features. For designers, FB will let you see exactly what styles are applied to certain elements, and it will let you manipulate those styles, remove them, and add new ones. There is a visual box that will even let you see in an expanded view what you margins, padding, and element sizes are. It’s simply invaluable. (die IE) For JavaScripters, you are able to set breakpoints and inspect variables and objects during your breaks or after the script executes. There are so many more points, I could write a whole article on just this tool. Go get it, kick the tires, if you don’t like for any reason, you can get your money back, oh wait, that’s right, it’s free. Joomla!… What is it? It’s an open source (free) Content Management System (CMS) aimed at helping you publish a fully functioning website, complete with a user management administration area as well as a plethora of options for publishing content straight out of the box. If there is some sort of special feature you can think of that you need, you could do a search at their extension directory and probably find it for free. At the time of this writing there were 4,175 extensions available. A large majority of these are free. And each usually has its own dedicated website for support and further development of the extension. Here are a few of the major extensions and ones I use frequently: FireBoard (native forum solution) VirtueMart (complete ecommerce solution) Community Builder (user profile extension) RSGallery2 (Gallery) There are literally thousands more. This just gives you an idea. J!Dump This is a component/plugin that is specific to Joomla. If you have ever coded php. You can appreciate being able to see in real time what your variables are doing, what information your objects containe, and where you script is at within conditional statements. You can output any object or variable from your code simply by calling one function like so dump($varibleORobject, “Some Variable or Object”) ; When you refresh the page, you will get a popup that contains that information. If it’s an object, it will give you the objects properties and methods in a tree view format. Once you use this to code with, you won’t want to code any other way. Sped up my dev time by weeks. Eclipse Eclipse is an Integrated Development Environment. It has more options than even I know about. It has been another instrumental tool to help me along the way and saved countless hours of programming. The biggest feature I like is the tree view of functions when I load a php page. I can just click on the function in the tree view and I’m taken straight to where that code starts. I used to think Dreamweaver was the best dev application. It still has its uses, but eclipse is just too advanced and helpful for me to ever go back. There are multiple version of Eclipse, specific ones of Javascript developers and specific ones for PHP, and more and more. Spend some time investigating it, it’s another tool that will pay for itself over and over again. Oh yes, and it’s also open source (free). Can you tell I like the free stuff? XAMMP If you have never programmed or designed using a localhost, you are wasting time! Localhost is what you use when looking at webpages on your computer. The url looks like http://localhost/somepage.php So somepage.html would be located on your computer but the browser would know where to find that file, render it, and display its output. If you have never tried to setup Apache and a Mysql on your local computer, you just don’t know the joy you are missing out on. It’s more fun than six flags. No, it’s a pain in the arse and you’ll wish you were dead. This is where XAMPP comes in, it will install the necessary files you need to run these two critical programs for web development. It still takes a bit to get it running and figuring out where to tell it to look for files, but it’s 10 times easier than doing it all yourself. I have programmed/built/customized several sites using these tools. My latest site is www.TrickyLinks.com. I hope this was helpful to you. If you have any questions related to any of these topics, I have a good bit of experience so feel free to PM me or ask here. Aric

You are asking for a lot out of people that usually have limited time on their hands. I don't think anyone will offer up to be your personal go to guy/gal. Most are on here promoting their sites and spend the rest of their time working on their projects. Your best resource for learning php, is to RTFM on php (read the full manual) and ask questions on the Joomla! forums. Aside from purchasing a couple books on the matters, which is what I had to do, perusing the sites and forums will open a wealth of knowledge. Best of luck.

Looks like a good resource. Some CMS's have built in custom 404, like Joomla! for instance. However, this looks like it actually integrates into the server. It will take some more investigating, but looks promising.

Do you have a link to the site, or are you doing local dev? You can do absolutely anything you want in Joomla, from the most basic one page site, to a full blown commercial website. Check my sig links, they are both Joomla, the AFP site is Joomla and Coppermine integrated. You can change the default logo by simple replacing the file in your directory structure, try to use the same dimensions or the page could go screwy. For the CSS find the css file, you can look for it on your hard drive or insect the page using something like firebug to see what CSS is being applied where. It's a great tool.

Check out: 15 Steps to Select a CMS I personally boast about Joomla all the time, I have built dozens of sites with Joomla, it's my favorite and has just about everything you could ask for. If it doesn't, you can add on easily, if you have the knowledge. Best of luck in your quest.

Helps to put up a link: Instant Update Looks promising, more of a CMS that you add into an already made website. Where as Drupal and Joomla are full fledged websites in a package. I love Joomla, can't go wrong with a full featured website in a matter of minutes There are lot of options when it comes to CMS, look for customization options, price, and scalability!

The: <jdoc:include type="modules" name="user3" /> Are modules that can also be defined in a template. I use several "non-standard" modules that are defined through the template. In the admin area you can assign which modules go where through the drop downs. Your best source for further info would be the Joomla forums and Joomla docs and like prateek suggested, download some templates to get a feel for how they work. Siteground has a bunch of free ones you can tinker with. Just install them through the admin side and then look through the files that get installed on the server. Especially look at the xml files, they define a lot about the templates. It also helps (a lot) to know how Joomla uses templates and how those code pieces are filled at render time. It's really very interesting. I use xampp also, great to be able to do develop on the local system. Don't forget to use firebug as well. A wealth of information will be at your fingertips. Best of luck.

I use Joomla a lot, check out yootheme demos and you'll see some pretty cool switchers. Look at the top of the page for drop downs. RocketTheme is another one that works with Joomla CMS. The tough part about switchers, is changing all the graphics if needed. If you can get away with just changing the css colors, borders, and font's that's great and gives it a new look. But usually you'll have to change graphics and that can lead to a whole lot of work in your favorite graphics editor. Best of luck

Do you have a link to the site, so I can see the code. Or can you post the relevant code and html here?

Link maybe? What is the site programmed in? This is a VERY vague question, details are needed to provide a helpful response.

I have setup a few sites with coppermine. http://www.compu-graphix.com (I think this is sort of what you are asking to do) http://www.armedforcesphotos.com is another I built with Joomla and CPG. What you are asking can be done through the admin section in coppermine. It would be difficult to explain every step to make your forum look like the other. You will just have to get your hands dirty and play around with it. You may need to do some template modification too. CPG Manual may be of help. Also, asking on the CPG forums may be a good source.

Very clean site. The forums are still lonely! I couldn't find a demo. If it's there, it's tough to find. That's the absolute first thing I look for when considering purchasing scripts and web software. I deal in Joomla heavily and never touch a "pay" component without being able to try it first. This could really help you get your site off the ground. Try to add admin demo as well. Best of luck

Hi there, this is my first post on the forums. I spent the holidays building a game from an idea I had a couple months ago. It's a game where you place links on web pages, and then others try to find them. Links can be hidden or out in the open. Users can make it hard to find them, or easy so people stumble on them. There is a whole point system and you can buy/sell/steal links from other players of the game. Join groups, team up, etc... Ultimately, try to get ranked. Hopefully it will get some attention and people will like it. Check it out at www.TrickyLinks.com It's a pretty original game, I think. Give me some feedback and let me know if it's interesting or just plain stupid. I am at a stopping point on developing it to see if there is any one willing to play. If people start to play, I'll keep working on it and expanding more ideas I have for it. You won't hurt my feelings.