Joomla and more

How to add your address to Hikashop Order mails

Steven Zeegers — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 15:00:10 +0000

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,

%s

YOUR ADDRESS

MORE INFORMATION

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!

Sell Kunena forum access using Akeeba Subscriptions

Steven Zeegers — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 20:12:12 +0000

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.

Install the Kunena component.
Install the Akeeba Subscriptions Component
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!

How to remove Articles in a joomla! article

Steven Zeegers — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 20:24:40 +0000

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.

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!

How to upgrade Joomla 1.7 to Joomla! 2.5

Steven Zeegers — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 19:25:56 +0000

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

First of all, make a back-up of your site. Performing an upgrade is never without risks.
Make sure you’ve got the latest version of AdminTools installed.
Open AdminTools. It will prompt you that a new update of Joomla! is available. Click the button, and follow the instructions.
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!

Is your Joomla! site up to date?

Steven Zeegers — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 20:45:50 +0000

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

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

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.

Free download: “Joomla 1.7 beginner Guide” by Hagen Graf (joomla-and-more.com)
Upgrade to Joomla! 1.5.25 using AdminTools (joomla-and-more.com)

Upgrade to Joomla! 1.5.25 using AdminTools

Steven Zeegers — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 12:08:48 +0000

As we all know, upgrading your Joomla! website is an important thing to do. And with two security releases in a short time, it’s possible some of you forgot to apply all the updates.

If you’re not on version 1.5.24 of Joomla you’ll see that there are no upgrade packages available for your version of Joomla!. The only upgrade package available is the 1.5.24 to 1.5.25 upgrade.

In the worst case scenario you’d now have to upgrade all sites to 1.5.23 first, then upgrade them to 1.5.24 and then to 1.5.25. Which is quite the chore if you’ve got a few sites under your belt.

Not if you use Admintools, though…

Users of Admintools can easily upgrade their sites using the built-in “upgrade” functionality which offers you one-click upgrades. Nice and easy! But what do you do when the “Upgrade” option isn’t available in Admintools because there’s no upgrade package? Use the “Re-install option!”

Using the re-install option you can upgrade your site to the latest version of Joomla, without breaking your site. What happens, is that (all) the new files are written to your website, so you’ll have the latest version.

As always, we recommend you to create a back-up before upgrading.

Haven’t installed Admintools yet? Get it here for free.

Steps to follow

1. Go to Components > Admin Tools.

2. Click the button saying “Joomla! Core UPDATE FOUND

3. In the next screen, click “Reinstall 1.5.25”

4. In the following screen, click “Update Joomla!”

After Admin Tools does its thing, your website will now be upgraded to the latest version.

Note: Admin Tools also works under Joomla 1.7.

Update your domain name information, please?

Steven Zeegers — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 08:31:03 +0000

Every time I’ve got to order a hosting package for a client, who already owns the domain name I cry a little. Why? Because transferring their domain name usually takes longer than it should, because they haven’t kept their information up to date. Especially the most important part of the information – and to be honest the only part I care about – the e-mail address for the domain holder.

Below is an image of an e-mail conversation I had just last week. Please note that I’ve “recreated it” by exchanging mails with myself for various reasons.

Oh, it's been unused for 10 years?

As it turns out our client no longer had access to the mailbox it had used to register the domain name with. For over 10 years, no less!

Why is that a pain in the butt? Because when we request to transfer a domain name, an e-mail will be sent to the client’s registered e-mail address. And if that address no longer exists… well, things become complicated. We’ve got to convince the client to change the information themselves – but in most cases it turns out we have to ask for their username and password and do it for them, and then end up using one of our own e-mail addresses. This entire process can take some time, and while I always warn the clients of this very early – before we submit the transfer request – they still think it’s our fault. Obviously.

So please, people. If you own a domain name or multiple of them, please log in at the website where you registered them, and check what e-mail address you’ve used. If it no longer exists, change it. For your own sake. For future generations of website builders. For me?

Free download: “Joomla 1.7 beginner Guide” by Hagen Graf

Steven Zeegers — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 15:44:20 +0000

Joomla! 1.7 has been available for quite a while now. Hagen Graf has written a new book to cover Joomla 1.7 and I realize I haven’t linked to it yet.

The book, which is written in English (with different translations available) covers all the aspects of building and maintaining your own Joomla! website. The PDF version is free for everyone to download. Unfortunately it’s not ad free, but that’s a small price to pay for a free book. Other versions are also available, but the price might vary.

You can download the book as a PDF here.
You can find the page with links to other formats here.

How I caused and solved “Infinite loop detected in JError”

Steven Zeegers — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 19:18:52 +0000

I should have known better than to try and postpone moving a site from our development server to it’s live environment on a Friday afternoon, merely an hour before I’d stop working. As usual, that’s why things go wrong.

After creating the back-up of the development server, I uploaded it to the server and fired up Akeeba Kickstart. (Read an article here on how to use Akeeba Kickstart with your own distro, an new article will come soon) Because of a bad experience with the mysql server the day before, I decided to create a new database. I decided to be as “safe as possible”, and generated this cool fellow:

Xk;&7~F>sR9k=5ZVo2]q?>>~ka=a_#s3vDs”

I used Akeeka Kickstart to deploy the site on the live environment and this time I encountered no problems with the database. I was relieved. Until I tried to vied the site, and was greeted with the following message:

Infinite loop detected in JError

Solving this issue

I’m not claiming credit where it’s not due. An article in the Joomla! knowledge base explains perfectly what the cause of this problem is. To summarize, this file indicates that something’s wrong with your configuration file. Read the document for more information, it’ll set you on the right path.

As for me, the “problem” was… the password for the MySQL database. I’ve learned that, generally speaking, it’s not a good idea to end your password with a “. Or any other setting in the configuration.php file, as it turns out…

Coming soon: Videos.

Steven Zeegers — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 19:18:02 +0000

Here at Joomla & More we believe that we’ve done a good job at helping you solve your (Joomla!) problems, with our written tutorials. But somewhere this year, we’re going to try and take this site to the next level.

To do that we’ll be recording screencasts to accompany our posts when suitable / possible. Because of the restrictions of this website, this means we’ll also be creating a Youtube channel to host these video’s. Hurray?!

We’ll start recording our first videos around December, when we’ve got more time to get this new initiative started properly. To cover some of our costs, we’re considering to seek sponsoring for our videos but that’s not a given yet. (But just in case you’re interested… you know where to find us.)