Joomla! 1.5 FAQ:Where is the Static Content Item?

Before Joomla! 1.5, the so called Mambo-Joomla connection version, there were two separate process of creating a content item.

Remember the two Types of Content Items for the “Mambo-Joomla connection version? They were known as Static Content Item usually used for About Us and the “Duh” Content Item which is associated with Sections and Categories …

Hands-on! exercise:
Create a Static Content Item? (About us | Mission Vision | Permanent Information
Create “Duh!” Content Item? (Ever changing contents, company updates)

With Joomla 1.5, the two entities have been combined. No more Static and no more “Duh” Content Item.

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How to Move Your Joomla! Site to a New Server

Why not use a fresh install?

In my case, I probably could have. I only had about 4 or 5 articles on the test site, and I am using relatively few 3rd party CMT's (JomComment, TagBot, and JoomlaXplorer). But, I decided it would be easier just to move the installation I had to the new server, so I did.

You will want to move your Joomla! installation rather than re-install if you fit one or all of the following parameters:
Your site has accumulated a large amount of data in the database over time (sections, categories, content items, contacts, newsfeeds, etc.).
Your site uses multiple 3rd-part extensions already configured and/or customized for your site.

You just feel like trying it out to see if you can do it.

Step 1: Backup everything!
The first thing you want to do is backup all files within your Joomla! installation. Create a folder on your local system, and download all files to that folder using your ftp client application. I used FileZilla as my ftp client application to download all of my files to a folder on my desktop I named "howtojoomla".

Step 2: Export your database
Note: For this step, it really helps if you have phpMyAdmin installed on your server. Most hosting companies have phpMyAdmin already installed. If you are unsure, ask your hosting provider.

The second thing you need to do is export your Joomla! database. The best thing to do is to export it into an SQL file, which makes importing it easier in a later step. An SQL file will contain all of the necessary SQL commands for creating your database tables and filling them with your data. Be sure you export the entire database.

Step 3: Modify configuration.php
This step is very important. Go to the folder on your local system to which you downloaded all of your Joomla! files. In the first level folder, you will find the file named "configuration.php". Open this file with a text editor and make the necessary changes. At the very least, you will probably need to change the following parameters:
$mosConfig_absolute_path: This is the absolute server path to your new Joomla! installation. It will probably look something like "/path/to/joomla/installation".
$mosConfig_cachepath: This is the absolute server path to the cache for your Joomla! installation. It will probably look something like "/path/to/joomla/installation/cache".
$mosConfig_live_site: This is your website's url. It will be something like "http://www.yoursite.com".
$mosConfig_host: This is the location of the server that hosts your MySQL database. For most instances, this value will be "localhost". If you are unsure, ask your hosting provider.
$mosConfig_db: This is the name of your MySQL database.
$mosConfig_user: This is the database user name. Make sure this user has all privileges on your database.
$mosConfig_password: This is the password for your MySQL database user.

Step 4: Upload all of your files to your new server
Using an ftp client application (like FileZilla), upload all of your files to the location on your new server where you want to install Joomla!.

Step 5: Import your database to your new MySQL server
Using phpMyAdmin (or console commands if you are an advanced database administrator) and the SQL file you generated in step 2, import your old database into your new database.

Step 6: Test your new installation
Your move should now be complete, but please don't take my word for it. Test your site to make sure that everything is in it's proper place and working the way you expect it to. For example, if you did not use relative url's for your links on your old site, they will not work properly on your new site.

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Uses for Joomla in Corporate America

The basic package for Joomla can be easily installed by people that are not knowledgeable of anything that deals with computers or the internet. Corporate America functions on numbers that are related to revenues, and the multimedia software programs can be modified to keep track of record sales if the need arises.

There is a large group of individuals that live their life creating programming codes that are based on the Joomla software, and these creative people want to share their creative endeavors with the rest of the world. The core management software team online mba course organizes and updates Joomla throughout the year, is not focused on profits but they are focused on making sure that the open source standing that Joomla is made from continues for many years to come.

Corporations work on some of the same concepts that the developers for Joomla do. They both have instituted training programs, and will routinely offer clients and guests the opportunity to use online mba course product free of charge. Joomla is very popular because it is free, and that is the way that the developers want to keep it. The training programs for Joomla ensure that every user has a positive experience.

Positive experiences can produce outstanding results in both worlds. Some of the best computer programming occurs online mba program a developer is relaxed and happy about the job he has undertaken. As evidenced by the surmountable amount of extensions that are available for download, the developers at Joomla are very happy.

This in turn makes Corporations very happy because they have more opportunities to take advantage of free extension programs that might help them with their inventory control systems, or help them online computer courses an exquisite product catalog that can be displayed on the internet and incorporated with the corporate ecommerce website.

Corporate America might not be aware of Joomla but they have been ready for the large number of choices that are offered by this outstanding content management system. The easy installation and user friendly online mba program might make some corporate shake their heads in wonder. Some corporations might feel that their requirements and needs can never be met through an online software application, and are jubilant when they find out that they have been wrong for a long time.

Some corporations use the Joomla templates to collect data on all of the visitors to their websites, and other areas of the corporation at a higher level might use the reporting tools to keep tabs on their bottom line and know in an instant if their quarterly projection on profits needs to be adjusted or left where they are online mba program another few months. They might choose one of the extensions files of Joomla as a banner advertising system that will increase their profits further than recent projections and corporations like that aspect of Joomla very well indeed.

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Yahoo Lets Developers Help Deliver The Mail

Yahoo made good on its promise to embrace an open-source strategy by rolling out enhancements to Yahoo Mail and Yahoo Toolbar this week, both of which are part of its Yahoo Open Source Strategy. The goal behind the Yahoo Open Source Strategy is to welcome independent developers into the fold while simultaneously positioning Yahoo as something of a social network.

The new and improved Yahoo Mail—which initially is being rolled out to a limited number of users in the U.S. and Australia—embraces social media. It's being billed by the company as a "smarter" mailbox that streamlines information and highlights other friendly Yahoo users' activities.

The company promises that the new version of its e-mail application will "surface messages, information and activity updates from people users care about most, as well as an updated inbox and folder view that filters messages from those personal connections."

The nuts and bolts of the Yahoo Mail include connections where—much like Facebook, MySpace or Twitter— users can connect with friends who use the service and designate their activity as important. The upshot, it seems, is that their activity, messages and updates will be flagged and given priority on the Yahoo Mail homescreen. The types of "activity" that Yahoo will highlight for users include interactions with Yahoo profile updates, Yahoo Buzz and TV, and music and travel selections friends are reading or talking about.

The open-source angle of the Yahoo Open Source Strategy will also come into play on the e-mail homescreen, with the search engine company allowing a limited number of third-party developers to create applications that will live in the Yahoo mail screen. Think Google Labs for Gmail or the App Store for Apple's iPhone. Yahoo hopes that by making its start page less static that users will choose to talk, share and interact with friends on their pages instead of surfing over to an established network like Facebook.

Another prong of Yahoo's Open Source Strategy is the Yahoo Toolbar, which also launched this week. The idea behind the toolbar is to give users immediate access and notifications to things like e-mail alerts, favorite Web sites and instant Web search.

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Tips to Improve Joomla Performance

When you are using the Joomla content management system, the overall site performance could be affected by various factors. Moreover, if you have many site users, the page loading speed could be influenced by the simultaneous number of MySQL database queries.

In order to obtain the best results for the page loading speed (which is a key factor for the search engines rankings) and to maintain the best performance of your Joomla website, there are a few tips that could help you.

Enabling the Cache for Joomla

When you are using the Joomla content management system, the overall site performance could be affected by various factors. Moreover, if you have many site users, the page loading speed could be influenced by the simultaneous number of MySQL database queries. In order to obtain the best results for the page loading speed (which is a key factor for the search engines rankings) and to maintain the best performance of your Joomla website, there are a few tips that could help you.

The
recent studies show that Joomla is twice as fast when used with PHP 5.2.3 in comparison with PHP 4.4, as a consequence the use of the last PHP version (which is definitely improved) will always offer you the optimal Joomla performance.

If you turn on caching on the Cache tab from Joomla Global Configuration in Administration Panel, then static files or a cache of your website will be created. The file caching allows the system to find a certain page directly from hard disk and removes the delay induced by a MySQL query to retrieve the same page in the database. The speed of page loading will also be increased by enabling caching.

On the Cache tab, when enabling caching, you must not modify the default cache folder, but you can set a lower value for the cache time if you update the site contents often and a higher value if the content is changed rarely. There are also many modules from Joomla structure that support caching. It is recommended to enable caching for those modules. There are also components that improve the page caching process, such as Ircmaxell’s Page Cache.This component will have visible effects on page load speed in case of website with high traffic.

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Ways to edit Joomla templates

You must have read a lot about editing a Joomla template. Here is how actually you can do this.

Prior to actually editing Joomla templates, you need to ask yourself why do you want to change or edit it. PinPoint what you actually want to change. Once you have come out with a conclusion, you can start off with your task.

Steps to follow:

Make a copy:
The wisest thing to do when editing the original Joomla templates is to make a copy of the original template. This will help you a lot in changing the original templates. There are many reasons available online for this.

Change the images:
When using Joomla templates; you would like to change some of the images that are already used as well as logos with your own. This is very easy to do. You don’t have to do much work when changing your images. In fact, you need to spend money when changing the whole of template to match your images. In case, you replace images, the best thing to do is to replace these with images of the same size.

Changing the content:
The content and the design of Joomla templates is completely separated. The content is actually present in the file ‘index.php’ and the design is in one or more of the CSS-files.

Change the style:
You need to change the CSS files. Here, you may have to edit more than one CSS files.

Changing Joomla templates is not easy if you follow all the instructions mentioned above.

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How to build a better RSS feed for your Joomla Blog

If you have already worked with Joomla, then you must be knowing about its’ syndication function. In case, you are not, you can go and publish the module known as ‘syndication’. However, you must have also seen it on the FrontPage and after an all-new Joomla installation.

Here are some ways to improve your Joomla Blog feeds:

- First, you can use a superb component known as DS-Syndication.
- DS-syndication is installed just as a normal component and thereafter comes with some superb features such as a button maker for all your RSS Icons.
- See how to get to the screen and then think of using some of the settings.
- Here, you will get a huge screen with lots of settings.
- You would get a lot of settings to choose from.
- The settings you get are as given below:
- RSS Type:
You can either leave this on set it to RSS2.0.
- Number of messages:
Set to what you exactly want. If it is for SEO purpose, opt for a number such as 12 or highest.
- FrontPage Only:
Try setting it to a ‘No’. This should be the case unless you really want a special FrontPage feed.
- Section:
This is where you can actually make a difference. Here, you need to opt for a section you have created for blogging.
- Exclusion:
In case, you really like, you can exclude a category from getting into the feed.

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Joomla! Joins Another List of Winners

EContent today published their EContent 100 List of Companies that Matter Most in the Digital Content Industry. You can see us right here under Open Source Matters along with other notable open source friends like Drupal and Wordpress. The EContent 100 winners will be honored at the Buying & Selling eContent Conference next April 5-6 in Scottsdale, AZ.

There are a variety of categories: classification & taxonomy; collaboration; content commerce; content creation, production, & digital publishing; content delivery; content management; content security; fee-based info services; intranets & portals; mobile content; search engines & technologies; and social media.

EContent said, "We are proud of this list and of the companies on it. Members of the EContent 100 List are the companies empowering the content that fuels business today. We hope that our readers find the list as valuable as we did the process of creating it." The Joomla Project is honored to be recognized as a high-calibre business solution.

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Java and Linux - an open marriage in search of success

In 2004 Eric Raymond wrote an open letter to Sun Microsystems' then chief executive officer Scott McNealy demanding Sun open up their core Java intellectual property and allow anyone do whatever they damn well please with it.

That other pillar of open source, and creator of the GNU Project Richard Stallman, meanwhile, became one of Java's loudest opponents - sternly advising people not to install the closed-source evil that was Java, and giving Java as a dire example of corporate lock-in.

Two years later Sun silenced the the baying crowd with OpenJDK - an open-source project based on Sun's closed-JDK codebase.

Sun also released Java Standard Edition (Java SE) for the desktop, Java Mobile Edition (Java ME) for mobile devices and Glassfish - Sun's implementation of Java Enterprise Edition (Java EE) - under GNU General Public License v2 (GPLv2). Sun said GPLv2 would achieve the objectives of "driving more volume and adoption for Java and maintaining the 'write once run anywhere compatibility' promise."

Sun has spent much of the intervening period talking about how OpenJDK would make it easier to distribute Java with Linux, putting Java into new markets and on platforms, and into the hands of new developers. Stallman, himself, was sufficiently impressed by the move.

Two years on, has Sun's move changed anything other than end the shouting war over whether to open-source Java?

Sun's chief open-source officer Simon Phipps told The Reg that OpenJDK is doing "at least as well as I hoped." Sun could hardly have done any worse.

But has the move improved the life of Joe the Programmer, the everyday coder? "If you're an everyday developer programming under Windows writing everyday programs, you'll probably see no visible differences. But a tools developer will see a huge difference, as their market has suddenly grown hugely," Phipps said.

In other words, their tools will now be easily available on Linux as well as Windows.

Java goes further

The addressable market is certainly bigger. OpenJDK is now included in the top four FOSS GNU Linux distributions - Fedora 10, the Ubuntu main repository starting with version 8.10, OpenSUSE 11, and the planned Lenny version of Debian. It's also available in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL5) and CentOS 5. Sun, meanwhile, claims success by download on Glassfish: eight million downloads and 250,000 "product registrations" in the last 12 months.

OK, so OpenJDK ships with top Linux distros - job done? Not quite. Java might ship with certain distros, but there is no single version of Java, or set of Java APIs or libraries, certified as 100-per-cent Linux compatible. That makes the job of installing it and administering Java on Linux a headache and creates portability hurdles for application developers writing software for different Linuxes.

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Creating Joomla plugin

Joomla! plugins serve a variety of purposes.They are like hook of Joomla!. As modules enhance the presentation of the final output of the Web site, plugins enhance the data and can also provide additional, installable functionality

The eight different types of plug-ins include the following:
1. Authentication — Provides user authentication functionality so that additional methods may be
added. Some of the authentication plug-ins included with Joomla are LDAP, OpenID, GMail,
and Joomla.

2. Content — Allows content to be modified after it is retrieved from the database and before it is sent to the user. This allows content to be modified (for applications such as email address cloaking to prevent spam) or supplemented with additional information (such as item rating, user comments, and page navigation features).

3. Editor — For content editors such as TinyMCE and XStandard Lite.

4. Editor button — These plug-ins extend the capabilities of the content editor with buttons that add functions such as the ability to insert an image or a page break. In previous versions of
Joomla, this type of plug-in was called an editor-xtd.

5. Search — Used to add search capabilities for a particular item type such as content, sections, contacts, Web links, newsfeeds, or categories.

6. System — Interfaces with the core Joomla system functions and allows control and modification over foundation tasks such as publishing, unpublishing, and even installation.

7. User —Used to synchronize a user database with another user privilege system such as Gallery2, Simple Machines Forum, and so on.

8. XML-RPC — Receives events directed through the XML Remote Procedure Call (RPC) communication protocol.

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