Joomla Xtreme

15 How To With Joomla

Thursday, 08 November 2007

Welcome to the most updated page!
We will have this page updated regulary, with the most questions asked about joomla.
Need to install a module, or simply having difficulties adding a poll. We will have it all here.
For now i have compiled and summarised 15 of the most frequenlty asked.
I hope this will aid you on your quest with joomla. If you also have valuble info or think something should be put up, dont hesitate to contact us.
Please Note: That these were randomly viewed and asked the most, through all forums related to joomla.

Why does my page title not change when I click on a link in the calendar module or latest events module?

Joomla uses the menu Itemid to determine the page title to display together with which module are visible (e.g. what appears in the left or right columns). You therefore need to ensure at least one menu item points to the JEvents component - if you don't want this menu item to be visible you can add the link this can be on a menu that you do not use.

JEvents is generating heavy search engine crawling activity. What can you do?

User-agent: *Disallow: /component/option,com_events/ The problem is that Joomla 1.0.x sets the robots meta tag in such a way that we can't change it. JEvents 1.5 will allow you to set a min and max year for the calendar which will help. Look at http://de.wikipedia.org/robots.txt how wikipedia handles undesired spider access.

How do I use the EventReport mambot?

When you edit the mambot settings the description gives you the information:
Displays link to event report after event expiry. Replaces
{eventreport}link text|url|day|month|year{/eventreport}
with a link "url" using the given "link text" but only after "date to enable". e.g. Place the following in your event description:
{eventreport}Event Report on BBC|http://news.bbc.co.uk|12|02|2007{/eventreport}
Before 12 Feb 2007 the event detail will show no information about the event report. After 12 Feb 2007 the event detail for this event will then include a link like Event Report on BBC.In practice you would of course use a link to a URL on your Joomla site.

I'm running jevents in French. Many of the dates appear in English - whats going on?

The date is formatted with the php function strftime() which uses the locale of your Joomla installation. Check if the locale is set to fr_FR, fr_CA, fr_CH,... If you are using Joomfish - make sure your ISO codes are set correctly.The locale date strings are part of the C library of your server operating system. Assuming you have a Unix/Linux based server you can check your server with the following php script:
setlocale(LC_TIME, "C");echo strftime("%A");setlocale(LC_TIME, "fi_FI");echo strftime(" in Finnish is %A,");setlocale(LC_TIME, "fr_FR");echo strftime(" in French %A and");setlocale(LC_TIME, "de_DE");echo strftime(" in German %A.\n");
If run on a Thurday this should display: Thursday in Finnish is torstai, in French jeudi and in German Donnerstag. To make life a little easier JEvents 1.4 contains a little script that you canuse to analyse you Locale Settings. On your server try visiting
http://yourdomain.com/administrator/index2.php?option=com_events&task=checklocale
Remembering to replace the domain name or course ;).

I don't like the box around the events calendar - how do I get rid of it?

Try adding something like the following to your events_css.css file fieldset
{ border:0px!important; padding:0px!important; }
You could also consider adding the following to the style sheet to gain some more width .cal_table
{ border: 1px solid #000000; width:100%!important;}

Help - editing events in the frontend messes with my right hand column. What can I do?

If you have a narrow template design the best thing to do is to not have any modules in the right hand column for the Events menu item. Alternatively try experimenting with you events_css.css. For example adding the following will fix your problems for the SolarFlare template:
div#jevent{width:450px!important;}.inputbox {width:340px!important;}textarea#extra_info {width:340px!important;}textarea#content {width:340px!important;}

You will of course have to limit the width of your WYSIWYG editor - for TinyMCE choose the simple layout.

How do I change the pink header background?

You can do this sort of investigation very effectively with Firefox DOM Inspector. In the meantime look for background-image in the css file and then create your own desired background images of colours.

Help - Save and Cancel buttons do nothing when I try to edit an event in the frontend?

It probably that your template doesn't run initEditor for events.Make sure you have
global $my; if ( $my->id ) { initEditor(); }
or the equivalent active for com_events in your template index.php file.

How do I get a WYSIWYG editor working for the event description?

It probably that your template doesn't run initEditor for events. Make sure you have
global $my; if ( $my->id ) { initEditor(); }
or the equivalent active for com_events

What happens to my”Tags Component”?

A. Well you can continue to run this component on your site, or if you purchased after 1st November 2006 you are entitled to a free copy of“Joomla Tags” as per our published policy. The two components have VERY different database tables but we have aimed to make migrationof data as simple as possible.

What happens when you release “Joomla Forms”? Will that replace Phil-a-form?

A. The same policies stated above will all still apply. Phil-a-form will still be developed and Phil-a-form customers have no automatic entitlement to a free copy of “Joomla Forms”. We have made this perfectly clear in our communication for over a year now.

What other Joomla Components are releasing on the bfFramework?

A. We would not like to tell you all of them for commercial reasons.However we have already committed to the following JoomlaExtensions that will work in both
Joomla 1.0.12
Joomla 1.5
Joomla Forms - The Ultimate Forms Extension for Joomla
Joomla Tags
Joomla Knowledgebase
Joomla Directory
and 8 more exciting additions…

Adding code to content, why doesn't it work?

When you try to insert code (HTML, PHP etc) into content, the WYSIWYG editors strip out any code you enter into content.
To get around this problem you could simply try turning off the WYSIWYG editor for your account, inserting the code, and then saving the document.
Once you have finished inserting the code you can go back into your account and turn the WYSIWYG editor back on again. However, you will need to remember that, if you go back any time in the future to edit that content item, you will need to turn off the WYSIWYG editor otherwise the code will be striped out when you save the content item.
To change the WYSIWYG editor locate Site > User Manager > locate your account -> User Editor - select NO WYSIWYG editor -> save. [b]TIP[/b]: Changing the Default WYSIWYG Editor in the Global Configuration doesn't change the WYSIWYG editor for existing users.

How to check for Site Exploits using the Unix Shell

Check the active processesUse the "ps" command to look for odd or unknown processes, if you aren't sure what to look for there, user "netstat -ae | grep irc" and/or "netstat -ea | grep 666" and look for ports 6666, 6667, 6668, 6669, these are common ports used for running IRC bots, they may have the name "irc" listed against them, or may have "httpd" or sometimes other regular services names. Check crontabCheck your crontab and see if there is a strange entry, these are used in many exploits to restart IRC bots, even when admins or automated process monitors are used to kill a rogue process. Check for hidden files or directoriesCheck for hidden files or directories you dont expect to see, those starting with "." (dots) and also look for ". " (dot, space) often favored to try and catch searches for hidden directories.

Configuring Windows/Apache For SEF

Many Joomla! Community members are using ther local Windows based PC's to test and develop Joomla! sites on and one of the most frustrating items about Apache on Windows is that Winodws cannot support many of the Apache functions that can be used on Linux/Unix based production sites. Joomla! SEF Capability on Windows/Apache
1 ) Ensure that you have the Apache Rewrite Module ( mod_rewrite.so ) installed/available in the Apache " modules/ " directory.

2 ) Enable Apache " mod_rewrite " in httpd.conf by removing the " # " ( hash sign ) from the following line in httpd.conf     # Remove the "#" if it exists from the following line in the modules section    LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so

3 ) Restart Apache to check that the ReWrite Module is loading correctly and not crashing Apache         apache -k restart

4 ) Again, modify the following lines in your httpd.conf to support Windows File Naming conventions
# AccessFileName: The name of the file to look for in each directory
# for additional configuration directives. See also the AllowOverride
# directive.
#AccessFileName .htaccess
# Allows for Joomla! SEF functionality on Windows (Notice, No dot)   AccessFileName htaccess
# The following lines prevent .htaccess and .htpasswd files from being viewed by Web clients.
#< FilesMatch "^\.ht" >
# Allows for Joomla! SEF functionality on Windows (Notice, No dot)
< FilesMatch "^\ht" >        Order allow,deny        Deny from all        Satisfy All    < /FilesMatch >

5 ) Restart Apache to check that the FileMatch Rule is not in error and not crashing Apache, apache -k restart

6 ) Rename htaccess.txt to " htaccess " (notice, no "dot", unlike the *nix equivalent)

7 ) Modify $mosConfig_sef = 0 to now be a 1 (turning on SEF)

8 ) Access you local WebSite and check your SEF is working.