Category: Joomla Extensions
Posted by John Sundberg in Joomla Extensions Saturday, 27 February 2010 View Comments
After you’ve built one or more Joomla websites you will start to realize that there are a handful of Joomla extensions that, in your opinion, should have been included with the standard Joomla package. As it is, you’ll need to assemble your personal collection of tools and add them to your website. Everybody has their own list . . . here’s mine:
Posted by John Sundberg in Joomla Extensions, Joomla!, Tutorials, WordPress Friday, 8 January 2010 View Comments
2010 is now one week old. Have you updated the copyright date in your website(s) yet?
When I was updating the copyright date in our website and our clients’ websites this week it occurred to me that there should be a way for the date to be updated automatically, and there is IF your website is dynamic and uses PHP like Joomla or WordPress does.
While implementing these changes I encountered three different ways various Joomla templates (and a WordPress theme) handle the copyright information. There are probably more possibilities, but the basic coding principle is going to apply in each situation, so you may need to put some thought into making this work if your website is set-up differently than one of the three options I’m going to describe.
Also, this tutorial is exactly that, a tutorial. In no way should this information be construed as legal advice in any form. I’d also recommend making a fresh backup of your website (files and database) before making any significant changes. Having said that, here’s how to do it.
Posted by John Sundberg in Business, Free Stuff, Joomla Extensions, Joomla!, Life in General, Resources, Technology Thursday, 31 December 2009 View Comments
This post could go in numerous directions but I’m going to try to stay focused on web-related discoveries, since this is, after all, a blog that lives on a website about and for Black Hills Web Works.
One conversation in particular with an old friend I reconnected with on Facebook is worthy of being called “the milestone of 2009.” I was remodeling the website for my construction company and experimenting with Dreamweaver and static HTML pages and he suggested I look into using a CMS like Drupal or Joomla!. I took his advice and looked at both of those platforms, and though he was pushing me towards Drupal I felt drawn to Joomla!, and the rest of 2009 is history. Black Hills Web Works was born, websites were built, new languages learned (HTML and CSS to name two), and my thinking and experiences were significantly broadened.
And so, here is my list of “significant” discoveries that I made or learned about this year. Some, most, or all of these may be familiar to you already. On the other hand, it’s just possible that there is something new in here that you haven’t found yet. Have a look…
Posted by John Sundberg in Joomla Extensions, Joomla!, WordPress Wednesday, 23 December 2009 View Comments
When I built this website earlier this year I used a Joomla template from RocketTheme called “Affinity.” If I remember correctly it was one of RT’s first templates that was designed to be integrated with K2, the “super-component” from JoomlaWorks. JoomlaWorks makes some great extensions, and K2 is one of them.
According to their website, K2 is the “powerful content component for Joomla! with CCK-like features…[and it] provides an out-of-the box integrated solution featuring rich content forms for items (think of Joomla! articles with additional fields for article images, videos, image galleries and attachments), nested-level categories, tags, comments, a system to extend the item base form with additional fields (similar to CCK for those acquainted with Drupal), a powerful plugin API to extend item, category and user forms, ACL, frontend editing, sub-templates and a lot more!”
K2, WordPress and blogging
I’m convinced I haven’t begun to tap into the possible uses for K2, but the primary reason I started using it was to “power” this blog. At the time WordPress wasn’t a viable option because the customization necessary to make a WordPress theme match the Affinity template was far beyond my capabilities. I was a little disappointed that I wouldn’t be able to use WordPress since I’ve been blogging on a couple blogs at WordPress.com since 2008, and several hundred posts and a hundred thousand (or so) words later I’ve become rather familiar with WordPress as a blogging platform.
But like I said earlier, it really wasn’t an option at the time so I gave K2 an honest try and managed to produce sixteen blog posts on various topics. To its credit, K2 is light-years ahead of using a bare-bones Joomla blog, but in my opinion it simply can’t match WordPress for features and blogger usability.
Posted by John Sundberg in Joomla Extensions, Resources Thursday, 3 December 2009 View Comments
An unpleasant reality of life with the Internet is spam, and if you have a website that uses a contact form eventually you will be a target of spammers. One solution to fighting spam is to use a Captcha form along with the contact form. The problem with Captcha is that it can be discouraging to the real person who wants to use your contact form but they can’t read or figure out what they are supposed to type in the Captcha form – especially if the Captcha looks like one of these examples.
Mollom and Moovur – a better way
One solution I’ve started using for my websites is Mollom and Moovur. According to their website, “Mollom is a web service that helps you identify content quality and, more importantly, helps you stop spam on your blog, social network or community website.” How does it work? For the complete answer you should check out this page on their website, but basically everything that is submitted through your contact forms (and login forms) is run through Mollom to determine if the submission is by a real human or a spam bot. They are claiming an average efficiency of 99.74%, meaning 26 out of every 10,000 spam messages are making it through their system. Those are pretty good odds, in my opinion.
To use Mollom on a Joomla! site you’re going to need a free plugin called Moovur provided by Moovum. Moovur is what makes communication between Joomla! and Mollom possible, and it can be downloaded from this page on Moovum’s website.
Of course, Joomla! isn’t the only website platform that works with Mollom – plugins are available for Drupal, WordPress and others, and the list continues to grow. Check out the full list on this page on Mollom’s website.
Another caveat – if you’re using a third-party extension for your contact form instead of the form that comes with Joomla! you’re going to need to do some codework to make it work with Moovur. You can read more about that in this PDF from Moovum.
So does it work? Spam or ham?
The real question that needs to be answered is “Does it work?” In my experience, yes. At this point I can only recall one instance of a spam message that made it through Mollom’s defenses since I started using Mollom. And what didn’t make it through? Click on the screenshot below to see screenshots of Moovur’s dashboard from four different websites. In the graphs, orange denotes spam, and green denotes “ham” – the good stuff that Mollom allowed to get through.
