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Author Archives: Steven Zeegers

About Steven Zeegers

My business card says IT administrator, but my hobby is running Joomla-and-more.com (Joomla, IT) and Toretto.be (Video games). Gamer when possible, regular found @ the movies.

How to add your address to Hikashop Order mails

17 Apr

The past weeks, I’ve been working on an interesting website with quite a few integrations. One of the extensions I had to integrate, was Hikashop – an e-commerce extension for Joomla! that was new to me. While it works good – definitely tons better than the alternative we had – there were some things that I was missing out of the box. One of these things is the option to add your own address to the order mails Hikashop sends out to your clients.

Where I live, you’ve got to add your information to official business communication – and order mails are definitely part of that. To modify the mails Hikashop sends out to show the client address, I came up with the following solution.

How to do it: Language Overrides

To make changes to the mails Hikashop sends out, you’d have to edit the language files. I prefer using the override function for Joomla instead. So, how did I add the clients’ address to the order mail?

  • Log in at the back-end of your site.
  • Go to Extensions > Language Manager
  • Go to the “Overrides” tab
  • Use the filter to go to (Your Language* / Website) and click New
    * “Your Language” being the actual language you’re using…
  •  For Language Constant, enter: BEST_REGARDS_CUSTOMER

We are going to modify the “Greeting” displayed at the end of the mail. Usually it would say something like “Kind Regards, YourCompany”, but we are going to modify it to add the store address as well.

  • Text: Modify the greeting as you see fit, for example:

Kind Regards, <br />
%s <br />
YOUR ADDRESS <br />
MORE INFORMATION <br />

When you save the Override, new outgoing mails will display the customized greeting – including the store address – instead of just the regular greeting. Problem solved!

 
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Posted by on April 17, 2012 in Joomla

 

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Sell Kunena forum access using Akeeba Subscriptions

19 Mar

With the release of Akeeba Subscriptions 2.1, a few new options have been added to offer you even more options. One of the “new features”‘ is an integration with Kunena, a creation (courtesy of Roland Dalmulder) This integration does not work as you would expect, though. It allows you to assign users to “Ranks”, based on their subscription.

The reason of this, is that Kunena plugs into the ACL of Joomla.  If you want to sell “access levels” to your subscribers, you might be better off using the J! 2.5 integration of Akeeba Subscriptions instead. In this tutorial we’ll explain you how to combine Akeeba Subscriptions and the Kunena Forum to sell access levels.

First things first

Before you get started, you’ll need to configure your Joomla site properly. Since this isn’t a topic on “How to configure Akeeba Subscriptions / Kunena” we’ll be brief in this section.

  1. Install the Kunena component.
  2. Install the Akeeba Subscriptions Component
  3. Configure the Kunena forum as you see fit.

Create a Subscription level in Akeeba Subscriptions.

When you’ve got the basics covered, it is time to prepare your subscription for Kunena. As we mentioned, we are not going to use the new Kunena Integration plugin. Instead, we are going to use the old “User groups plug-in” for Joomla.

Instructions

1. Go to Users > Group > Add New Group (We’ll need a new user group for Kunena). Create your “Kunena Group” under the Public level.

2. Go to Kunena. We’re now going to restrict the forums so only people of the User Group Kunena can access the forums. The fastest way to do this is the following:

  • Open Kunena
  • Go to “Category Manager”.
  • Open your Main Category (or categories).
  • Under the “Permissions” tab, set the Primary User Group to “Kunena” (or the user group you chose to use).

The category and all categories below it will now only be accessible by people of the “Kunena” category – or managers, administrators and super users.

Your Kunena configuration is now done. Now, we’ll move on to the Akeeba Subscriptions side of things.

3. Go to the “Akeeba Subscriptions – Joomla! 1.6 Usergroups Integration” plug-in. In the “Add to Joomla! 1.6″ box, add the following:

Nameofyoursubscriptionlever=nameofyourkunenausergroup

Both Akeeba Subscriptions and Kunena are now set up, and you’ve created the following scenario:

  • Regular registered users can’t access the Kunena Categories.
  • People who buy your subscription will be added to your new Usergroup. They will have access to all Kunena Categories. You can now start to sell access to your Kunena Forum!

Akeeba Subscriptions is a free component to sell subscriptions on your Joomla! website and is developer by Akeebabackup.com. Kunena is a popular forum component for Joomla! 

 
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Posted by on March 19, 2012 in Joomla

 

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How to remove Articles in a joomla! article

04 Mar

Last week, I was working on a client website when my eye fell on something. Some articles had a heading which said “Articles”. If this happens to you, don’t bother looking for the solution inside Joomla.  There’s still a simple fix for this problem, though. Actually there is more than one way to fix it, I will just explain the solution that worked for me.

Using Language Overrides

If you do some research, you’ll discover that this “Articles” header only appears for articles which aren’t linked to a menu item. To remove this header, we’re going to use a built-in Joomla! option: the Language Overrides.  Here’s how it’s done.

1.  Go to your Joomla! back-end and log in.

2. Navigate to “Extensions > Language Manager”

3. Click the “Overrides” tab.

Screenshot 23

4. Click “New”.  A new screen opens.

5. In this new screen, write the following in the “Language Constant” field: JGLOBAL_ARTICLES

6. Leave the text field empty, and save the override.

As a result, the “Articles” will be stripped everywhere in your website, which solves your problem with the unwanted text!

 
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Posted by on March 4, 2012 in Joomla

 

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How to upgrade Joomla 1.7 to Joomla! 2.5

13 Feb

With Joomla! 2.5 the latest (and greatest?) version of the poppular CMS has been released somewhere last month. Since this is a LTS version – Joomla! 2.5 will be supported for 18 months which means one and a half year of patches – this is the version people will want to use for the time being.

But maybe you’re an early adopter, or just chose to use the 1.6 or 1.7 series. There were good reasons to do so. One was that there was a promise of “simple one-click upgrades” to Joomla! 2.5 which, of course, sounds tempting. Joomla now features an update option, just for that reason.

Your best bet is still AdminTools

Unfortunately, the built-in upgrade option in Joomla! 1.7 has lead to problems. People who were hosting their sites on “cheaper” hosting, like Godaddy and the likes ran into problems when using this option. When their (not that great) server decides it doesn’t want to play nice anymore, the update process can stop abruptly. The results of this can be unpleasant – it can even “destroy” your site (you did make a back-up before upgrading, right?)

Fortunately, there is an alternative option. One which doesn’t assume that your hosting is super awesome, and which knows how to work around the limits of your (shared) hosting setup. The solution’s name? AdminTools bij Akeeba. If you have the latest version of AdminTools installed, you can safely upgrade your site to Joomla! 2.5 with only a few clicks.

How it’s done

  1. First of all, make a back-up of your site. Performing an upgrade is never without risks.
  2. Make sure you’ve got the latest version of AdminTools installed.
  3. Open AdminTools. It will prompt you that a new update of Joomla! is available. Click the button, and follow the instructions.
  4. Your site will now be upgraded to the latest version.  AdminTools is designed to work around most of the problems cheap hosting could cause, so you should experience no problems with the upgrade.

Note: If you’re rather safe than sorry, perform the step above on  a copy of your website, so you can see what happens. You can use AkeebaBackup and Kickstart to clone your site and create a “test” environment for your upgrade.

When you’re done, you can enjoy the new features of Joomla! 2.5, but even more important: you’re on the right (LTS) tracik for at least 18 months. Enjoy!

 
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Posted by on February 13, 2012 in Joomla

 

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Is your Joomla! site up to date?

19 Jan

Do you have a Joomla website for yourself or your business? If someone else built it for you, it’s important to be sure that it’s up to date. Any content management system that is not up to date, is at risk of being hacked. They don’t build these updates for nothing, you know…

Checking if your website is up to date is easier than you might think, as the version number is displayed in the administrator side of the website. The position of the version number depends on which version you were using.

Screenshot of Joomla! 1.5

Screenshot of Joomla! 1.5

If your administrator panel looks like in the image above, you are using Joomla! 1.5.  This is an older version of Joomla! for which updates no longer be available soon.

You can find the version number in the top right corner. If the version number says anything other than 1.5.25 it’s really, really outdated. In this example, it says “1.5.15″ – which makes it ancient.

Please note that 1.5.x will no longer receive any updates soon. If possible, have your site upgraded to the latest version.

Joomla! 1.7 in action

Joomla! 1.7 in action

If your administrator panel looks like above, you are using Joomla! 1.6, 1.7 or 2.5.  To find the version number, you need to look at the bottom of the site.

If the version number says 1.6 you’re using a version which will no longer be updated. The same applies to 1.7.  We suggest you to upgrade to 1.7.3 . When Joomla! 2.5 is available, we suggest you to upgrade to that version instead. This should be easy, when you use the built-in feature or Admin Tools.

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Posted by on January 19, 2012 in Various Articles

 
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