Joomla Extension Tips (10)

As you probably know, Joomla 1.5 has reached end-of-life. It's no longer supported, and you shouldn't use it. OK?

That said - there are situations where the use of Joomla 1.5 is inevitable. For instance, I regularly come across people who want me to help them port their site to the latest version of Joomla. Sometimes, the site can't be upgraded immediately. Perhaps there's a financial issue at hand. Other times, it can be that the site is so complex and full of outdated extensions and special solutions that it's not possible to migrate without building new components or find alternatives. This can take time, and while you find the solutions the site needs to stay secure. 

At the moment, I'm working on a directory site based on Joomla and Sobi Pro. On this site, I would like to display news stories related to the topic the directory is about.

On one of the site's pages, I've used a new Javascript from the guys at Joomlaworks to pull in news stories from websites that talk about the same subject matter. However, sometimes the general news media also writes about it. That's not so easy to pick up. Of course, I could set up an automatic Google Reader feed and have it show all the results from that feed. However, that's too generic and will sometimes display undesired, irrelevant or, at worst, inappropriate content on my site.

thumb_facebook-fanboxI set up a Facebook fan page a while ago. Now, I've put up a FaceBook Fan Box here at JoomlaBlogger.

This box displays fans of my Facebook page directly in Joomla. You can find the module in the right sidebar.

To put a box like this in your own site you have a few options.

When I first installed a Facebook module on my site, I had some trouble with it. I've now found another module which seems to work better.

akeeba-quota-ill2As you might have noticed, my blog was unavailable on and off for about 36 hours a few days ago. Obviously, this is not something I'm happy about.

The reason for the down-time seemed to be some trouble with the mySQL server. It just didn't want to start. I tried everything I knew, then contacted my hosting company. They told me to restart the mysqld service (done). They then told me to reboot the server (done). After several more emails from me, describing the problem, I didn't hear anything.

Come the next day, I sent some more emails to the hosting company. Still no response. Around 1 pm, I called them. As it turns out, some other server in their hosting environment had been hacked and they'd been working on that one first... Doh! It took the support tech 2 mins to determine my disk was full!

If you're using sh404SEF, you have probably seen the alert which says:

WARNING: $live_site missing from Joomla configuration.php file!

It stands out in bold, red letters - but what does it really mean? And how do you fix it? Read on for enlightenment.
sh404sef Joomla configuration - live site URL missing

akeeba-backup-logoMany people ask how to upgrade their Akeeba Backup(previously JoomlaPack) installation.

It's quite simple, really.

Read on for how to do it.

I see that many people look for information on how to upgrade sh404SEF. This Joomla extension is a component, which means it's like an application inside your Joomla site.

Most Joomla components have their own tables in the Joomla site database. This is where the settings and data that the component uses are stored. These tables are (normally) not deleted when you uninstall the component. In the case of sh404SEF they are not deleted when you uninstall. At least that is how the component is set up by default.

Submitmailer ProIf you're the administrator of a Joomla website with many editors and publishers, a constant challenge is to keep updated on who does what on the site.

The built-in notification features of Joomla 1.5 are not good enough as I see it.

Luckily, there are options available through third-party extensions.

The recent upgrade of Joomla! to 1.5.12 included an update of TinyMCE.

The default settings might result in problems with image alignment and other parameters if you don't change some of them in the TinyMCE editor plugin.

If you have trouble using the YooGallery plugin from Yootheme with SuperBlogger, I found the solution after a little poking around.