Steve’s Blog

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 #1 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 #1 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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Google Sidewiki … Friend or Foe?

sidewiki_logoI’m actually quite fascinated with this little tool from Google…  apparently its quite controversial and I can see why.

So far I’ve not really done a lot with it, other that leave complaints on websites to warn other people about dodgy dealings…  one of the main comments that sticks in my mind is a site where I bought my girlfriend some flowers and she did not get anywhere near the amount of flowers that were in the picture, I complained directly and got little worthy response, so decided to take action. I think people are usually more driven to complain using Sidewiki than they are to give due praise.  That’s just human nature I guess.

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Showing a Twitter Feed in a Drupal Block

In this tutorial we’ll show you how to place a Twitter feed inside a block. You can then display that Twitter feed anywhere around your theme. There are many different Twitter options out there but most have a couple of limitations:

  • They post tweets as nodes rather than in a block.
  • If they post to a block, they require very complex setups normally involving creating Views.
Thanks to Expedition Post, we’re going to suggest a much simpler way to show tweets in a block on your site. They’ve created a script that is very cleverly called “Twitter Block”.
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Bigger than Drupal vs WordPress vs Joomla

Sometimes it’s easy to get lost in the day-to-day decisions. Not just resolving problems with a particular client, or a bug just won’t get fixed. Not even whether you should be focusing on Drupal, WordPress, Joomla or something else entirely.

There are much bigger trends and decisions to make. If you’re reading this there’s a good chance you’ve already made a very smart career choice … building an Internet business.  It’s sad but I’m reminded why every time I leave the office.

We live in North Georgia, less than an hour’s drive from Atlanta. It’s a fairly prosperous area but I was able to take these photos along one small stretch of road just outside the town center. I could have kept driving and snapping all day, but you get the bigger picture … this recession is absolutely killing bricks-and-mortar business models. Even if it doesn’t feel like it every day, and even if you’ve made a few mistakes, the chances are you answered the big question correctly:

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Collecting More Information From Joomla Users When They Register

Joomla Registration FormThis tutorial is the answer to a question asked by a user in our support forum … “how do I collect more information from my members when they register?”.

The user’s problem is that the normal Joomla registration form gives you precisely 5 fields:

  • Name
  • Username
  • Email
  • Password
  • … and, er … Password again.

That’s it. If you want to collect people’s location, birthday, opinion or any more information about them you’re stuck. What we’re going to show you in this tutorial is how to collect more information from your users when they register.

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We’re Opening Up Alledia To Your News and Blogs

You may have noticed a countdown clock on the right of the site, ticking away each day. We’re counting the days until we make a major product launch on February 1st. It’s now 2 weeks before the launch and we’re rolling out an early change here at Alledia:

Open to Your Guest Posts and News

Yes, we’re opening up Alledia.com to your news and blog posts. Over the years we’ve had many guest blog posts here on Alledia covering topics from accessibility, events affiliate programs, RSS feeds, Virtuemart and much more.

Up until now it had also been an informal process. Someone would Skype or email me saying they had an idea for article. Now, we’re giving everyone the chance to submit their article.

What Kind of Posts?

Anyone can contribute and all reasonable blog posts and news articles will be accepted. Content can be recycled from other sites, but the more interesting and original it is, the more publicty we’lll give it.

  • In the blog section please feel free opinions and tutorials.
  • In the news, please feel free to post about events, book releases, product updates or anything else that’s relevant to Joomla, Drupal and WordPress.

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