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Coming soon: Videos.

03 Nov
Coming soon: Videos.

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.)

 
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Posted by on November 3, 2011 in Other

 

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Two ‘NoNumber’ Tutorials published on Toralko

18 Oct

Just because we haven’t posted something here at Joomla & More doesn’t mean that we’ve slacked!  In the past week, I’ve written and published two tutorials for Nonumber extensions:

  • Nonumber Extension Manager: Covers how to use this very important extension.  It allows you to install and update all other Nonumber extensions so this is the first extension any Nonumber fan will want to install.
  • Nonumber What? Nothing! (The Ultimate Guide): This guide reveals the secrets of What? Nothing. Not sure what it’s supposed to do? Not working as expected? Then read our extensive and detailed guide!.

In the past we used to publish our guides as PDF’s, but from now on we’ll likely post them online at www.toralko.net. Joomla & More will still be the place to go for Joomla! tips, fixes and suggestions.

 

 
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Posted by on October 18, 2011 in Joomla

 

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This is what happens when you don’t RTFM

17 Oct

Merely moments ago, I banged my head against the nearest wall.  While my head still slightly hurts, I decided to share with you what happens mere moments ago.

I was just working on a website of mine, when I started to make a series of mistakes.  Well, two according to my twitter stream, but it seemed to be much worse.

I was creating a new Super Administrator account when I noticed I got a 403 error after saving. While I recognized the error screen from Admin Tools, I went to look for the solution elsewhere. Until kind Tweeps pointed out that I was “probably using Akeeba Admin Tools” and had an option enabled.

But it got worse.  After I tinkered with Admin Tools without reading the Fine Manual; I noticed something strange in my website. What ?! My URLS’ were broken! Certainly that had to be the fault of the SEO component I was using. I changed things. Nothing. Aaaaargh!

Then I noticed something else. Why was “Joomla” removed from all my menu items? At that point I had already stopped using my brain and came up with a brilliant conspiracy theory: it had to be because of Joomla! 1.5.24!

Once again, people who had read the manual told me to “think, you non-manual reading n00b.” Well, that’s what I would have told myself.  Had I perhaps enabled an option in Admin Tools, which removes “Joomla” everywhere in my site.

“Ehm, no, why would I do that?” (I did, and quickly went to check this, and made the necessary change. Suddenly, my links and menu items were “fixed” again.)

What have we learned today?

  • If you’re using Admin Tools (or any extension of which you don’t know what it does), RTFM
  • Breath! Think! Track back, what did you just do / screw up?

I plead guilty on the charge of “Not reading the Fine Manual” and “Tinkering with stuff of which I didn’t know what it’d do. May the judges be mild. ;)

 
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Posted by on October 17, 2011 in Various Articles

 

Hosting from Hell: ‘Joomla! Hosting’ in action.

23 Sep

Those who follow my rants on Twitter, can’t possibly have missed it.  The past few weeks, I’ve had my share of hosting woes.  Clients with cheap hosting which broke Ninjaboard, Unsafe setups, poor customer support – I’ve seen it all.  So, for therapeutic reasons I present to you our new series: Hosting From Hell.  This section will be dedicated to terrible hosting experiences.

Call to action:
Got your own negative, terrifying or dramatic hosting experiences?  Send me a mail (See: Contact), and I’ll publish your story.

‘Joomla! Hosting’ from hell

You can’t ignore that Joomla! (and WordPress and Drupal) are the cat’s meow (borrowed from @nikosdion).  Hosting companies know this, and many try to sell their hosting as “Joomla!” hosting. The main actor in this story takes it a step further:  If you order “Joomla! hosting” from them, they’ll setup your site for you.  Sounds like a sweet deal, right?  What could possibly be wrong with this?

I was alarmed when we tried to deploy our own ‘Distribution’ on another package by the same guys.  Akeeba Kickstart alarmed me that a bunch of folders were unwritable.  Once I managed to setup the site anyway and I started to work on the site a bit, I noticed that all the folders were unwritable because we had set the folder permissions properly.

How not to setup permissions

This made me wonder.  If I had no problems, how was it possible that we had no problems with another site – one where they had installed for my boss?.  Using the always usefull Akeeba Admin Tools, I checked on the folder permissions they configure for their install.  I’ve made a screenshot to share the joy with everyone interested…

That’s right. They install the site, and then set all folder permissions to 777 to make Joomla! “usable”.  Once you use AdminTools to set the permissions to safe settings, the site breaks into a thousand pieces – because all folders are now unwritable.

Virtually all folders are “Onschrijfbaar” or unwritable (except one, with perm’s set to 777 to test)

I’m well aware that you can use the FTP layer, if needed, but you shouldn’t have to.  Hosting companies should know better than to recommend users to set their folder permissions to 777 or – even worse – set them to 777 theirselves.  Why, you ask?  You can read this excellent post by the developer of Akeeba.

We’re still waiting for their reply, to our support request in which we asked why we’ve got permission problems despite “setting the standard folder permissions.”  No reply so far… ;-)

Note: I left out the name of this company because I don’t want yet another PR person to call me, asking “you mad at us, bro?”

 
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Posted by on September 23, 2011 in Hosting from Hell

 

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OpenTranslators and the Love Triangle

17 Sep

If you clicked the link to this post because you wanted to make some kinky love connection – sorry.  What I can offer you, is the opportunity to start collaborating, and engage in the Joomla! Community.   Oh, and the triangle thing?  Those are real.

OpenTranslators – what is it?

OpenTranslators is a project that grew from within the Joomla! community.  The goal of OpenTranslators is to bring extension developers and translators together; so these extensions can be translated in the many languages our team members speak.  Why would we want to do that?  That’s where the love triangle comes in!

The love triangle – why you should join.

Joining OpenTranslators is fun and rewarding, but if that’s not enough for you, let’s look at the three parties that profit from a translation (assuming you’re the translator)…

Interested to read the full article?  Read it on Joomlareporter.net

 
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Posted by on September 17, 2011 in Joomla, Joomlareporter

 
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