Steve’s Blog

Printer-friendly Versions of Drupal Articles

In this tutorial we’ll show you how to add a “Print This Page” button to Drupal. The main reason you’d want to do this is as a courtesy for your readers. Many still print things they read online and you don’t want them to waste that expensive printer ink just to print your logo and theme as well as the article.

This is a themed tutorial because our sister newsletter with WordPress tutorials is covering the same topic this week: Creating Printer-friendly Versions of WordPress Posts.

Without this solution you’d likely need to create a separate CSS file with styles specifically for the printed page.  Fortunately the Print Module makes this much easier. It will automatically create a printer-friendly version of each page. As an added bonus and it can also do “Email to a Friend” and “Download as a PDF” link (if your server has the correct features).
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Creating Printer-friendly Versions of WordPress Posts

In this tutorial we’ll show you how to place add “Print This Post” button to WordPress. The main reason you’d want do this is as a courtesy for your readers. Many still print things they read online and you don’t want them to waste that expensive printer ink just to print your logo and theme as well as the post.

This is a themed tutorial because our sister newsletter with Drupal tutorials is covering the same topic this week: Creating Printer-friendly Versions of Drupal Articles.

Without this solution you’d likely need to create a separate CSS file with styles specifically for the printed page.  Fortunately the WP-Print plugin makes this much easier. It will automatically create a printer-friendly version of each post.

Continue reading “Creating Printer-friendly Versions of WordPress Posts”

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5 Useful JCE Features That People Miss

It’s no secret that Joomla’s default editor lacks quite a few features. We often recommend that people upgrade to Joomla Content Editor (JCE). You can click here to find full instructions on how to install JCE, including a video.

What we’re going to cover in this tutorial are 5 really great features of JCE that people often don’t realise are there:

1) Cut and Paste Images Into Different Folders

One common complaint about Joomla’s default Media Manager is that you can’t move images around. Once you’ve uploaded an image to one location, you’ll need to delete it and re-upload it if you want it in a different folder. JCE allows you to do that:

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LiteJazzRegions

Joomla is a Hotbed of Innovation. Be Proud.

Since we expanded into Drupal and WordPress training quite a few people have asked variations on these questions:

  • “Are you abandoning Joomla?”
  • “Do you think Drupal and WordPress are now better than Joomla?”

The simple answers are no and no. Last summer we discussed how smart companies were now supporting several CMS platforms and gave some reasons why. I like to think we’re just following our own advice.

I’ve another reason to add … Joomla companies are remarkably dynamic and entrepreneurial. Looking back over the last few years, Joomla has been a remarkable hotbed of innovation, particularly when it comes two areas, business models and design:

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3 Reasons to Hire a Content Writer

Building an online reputation begins with your website. It is the first place people go to “check you out,” even if you have been highly recommended by clients or peers.  So, crafting an effective and powerful message in conjunction with an aesthetically pleasing site, a well-organized site and one with a clear call to action sometimes means hiring a good writer.

There are a bunch of reasons to hire a good content writer, but I will only mention the three I think are most pertinent to web site progress.

  1. You hate to write!  That’s a no brainer in my opinion.
  2. Your website project has come to a screeching halt!  Your web developer has told you that he/she cannot move forward without your content and you don’t have time to deal with that right now.
  3. You have run out of creative ideas! If you are working solo – this just happens unless you have collaborative partners.

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Our Joomla Training Classes Are Now Available Online

Remember that big countdown clock on the side of our site … this is what it was leading up to:

We’ve become the Joomla training company by running 100’s of training classes in over 30 cities from Alaska to London, including 18 classes in the last week of January alone. However, we still get plenty of emails like this:

  • “Will you be holding any classes in North Dakota?”
  • “Any chance of a Joomla session in Australia?”
  • “Do you offer Joomla training in the Middle East?”

We could never go to all those places in person, so we’ve made the logical decision to put our classes online.

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Joomla Websites Always Showing Today’s Date

Here’s a little fix we came across today while trying to find out why blog posts on this site had started always showing today’s date. Even if a post was written in 2006 or 2007 it would show a 2010 date. Thanks to Anthony from Joomla Bamboo for helping me find the fix.

The problem is with overrides and you’re likely to find them in this folder: / templates / your-template-name / html / com_content / article / default.php

The correct date line is going to look similar to this:

<?php echo JHTML::_(‘date’, $this->article->created, JText::_(‘<div class=”month”>%b</div><div class=”day”>%d</div>%Y’)); ?>

I’ve highlighted the two elements that need changing: JText::_( before the opening div and an extra ) at the end. The original line is likely to be found in templates that were created around Joomla 1.5.13 and earlier. It’s more likely to look like this:

<?php echo JHTML::_(‘date’, $this->article->created, ‘<div class=”month”>%b</div><div class=”day”>%d</div>%Y’); ?>

Because commercial and custom templates often don’t get updated along with the Joomla core, errors like this can remain on a site.

And yes, this post was really written in 2010.

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101 Ways to speed up your Joomla site

Well currently 12 16 ways but with your help we will make it 101!  I’ll update the post as and when we get more ways to speed up your joomla site.

What with Matt Cutts recent (ish) interview with Web Pro News, he mentions that google will be taking page load times into consideration when they rank your website. What does this mean for all the joomla users?  Can joomla keep up?

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Showing Different Drupal Themes on Different Pages

This tutorial was written written after a request in one of this week’s Drupal classes: “How do I show different Drupal themes on different pages?”. The answer is a module called “Sections”:

Installing Sections to Your Drupal Site

  • Step 1: Click here to download the latest version of “Sections”.
  • Step 2: Extract the files into a folder on your desktop. The folder will be called “sections”.
  • Step 3: Login to your site’s files via FTP and navigate to /sites/all/. If there isn’t a folder called /modules/ here, create one.
  • Step 4: Upload the “sections” folder to /sites/all/modules/
  • Step 5: Go to Administer >> Site building >> Modules. Check the box next to “Sections” and click Save Configuration.

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Approving Joomla Users When They Register

This tutorial is similar to last week’s in two ways: becaue it’s the answer to a question asked by a user in our support forum and also because it deals with managing people signing up on your Joomla site.

It has one important difference however … it’s much shorter! This week’s tutorial explains how to approve Joomla users when they register. You might have a school website and only want to approve parents or students. You might have a club website and only want to have members join your site. This tutorial will show you how. We’re

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Add a Sitemap to Your WordPress Site

Why Add a Sitemap?

I’ll be honest and say that I don’t believe sitemaps improve your ranking in search engines. However, they do make sure more pages get indexed and that they get indexed more quickly. This article presents evidence that the difference is astounding:

  • Google with a sitemap: 14 minutes
  • Google without a sitemap: 1375 minutes
  • Yahoo with a sitemap: 245 minutes
  • Yahoo without a sitemap: 1773 minutes

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Changing the Logo on a WordPress Theme

Perhaps the most common question WordPress we get from beginners is: “How do I change the logo on a theme?”

This tutorial is the answer:

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