Joomla 2.5 Is Coming!

Joomla 2.5

Joomla 2.5 is coming, and Joomlashack is ready!

The next release of Joomla is just around the corner (slated for release before the end of January 2012), and soon after its release older versions will stop being officially supported by Joomla. We want to share with you our plans for supporting our products, and to answer the questions that many have starting asking about support for 2.5.

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Editing Options for Joomla's Contacts Component

Is your Joomla contact form not showing correctly despite what you've selected to show? It could be your global options are overriding your options.

This tutorial will show you how to edit your Contacts options.

If you're new to Joomla and want to see how to create these forms, read this guide: How to create Joomla contact forms.

Read more: Editing Options for Joomla's Contacts Component

Ordering Articles, Menus and Modules in Joomla

Reordering Articles, Menus and Modules in Joomla

This is a tutorial that will show you how to reorder articles, menu links, modules in Joomla 1.5 and 2.5. The same technique also applies to sections, categories, plugins and more ... in fact almost anything that you'd want to reorder in a Joomla site.

The process is slightly different in both versions so we've divided the tutorial in two sections: one for 1.5 and another for 2.5.

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HikaShop - Ecommerce for Joomla

HikaShop is a relatively new shopping cart for Joomla. It's becoming a strong competitor to Virtuemart, and we're starting to get more and more questions about it from students. HikaShop comes in both a free version and two levels of commercial versions.

Since HikaShop is fully integrated with Joomla, you can get started very quickly. However, you do have to learn some new ideas on how to enter products. In this tutorial we'll show you everything you'll need to get up and running with HikaShop.

You can also read our tutorials on other Joomla ecommerce solutions: Virtuemart, RokQuickCart, SimpleCaddy, K2Mart and building a custom cart.

If you want to go further, we have a 20 video training class on Hikashop.

Read more: HikaShop - Ecommerce for Joomla

The Ultimate Joomla Admin Templates Guide

template thumbnailThe current Joomla admin template called Blue Stork has improvements over the 1.5 version, but that doesn't mean it can't be improved as well.

Joomla 1.6 / 1.7 is the first version to ship with more than one design for the admin area - it included Hathor in addition to Blue Stork. Several template designers have also created templates that aim to make it easier to use, look more attractive and have additional functionality.

In this guide we're going to show you all of the options that you have for redesigning your Joomla admin area.

Read more: The Ultimate Joomla Admin Templates Guide

How to Use the Gantry Framework for Joomla

Gantry is a very popular design framework that is available for both Joomla and WordPress. It is built on a 12 column, 960 Grid System layout (you can find out more about grid systems here).

All Rockettheme templates and themes are now based on Gantry because it offers a wide-range of features that don't have to be re-written for each design. Because of this, not only Rockettheme, but also quite a few independent designers use Gantry to speed up their work.

Read more: How to Use the Gantry Framework for Joomla

New Designer, New Joomla 1.7 Template

ARGOS-Joomla-Browsers

We're excited to welcome designer Paola Gomez to the Joomlashack family.  Paola has over 10 years experience in graphic design including 5 working at the world-renowned and high-paced DDB ad agency.  Although not 100% her design, Paola worked extensively on this template.  It was a work in progress when she found it and she completed and polished into this elegant and minimalist business-themed template.  The result, as you can agree, is awesome. 

Meet Argos, our newest Joomla 1.7 Template. Argos is built using versatile and dynamic Wright Framework

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How to Use sh404SEF for Joomla

sh404sefFor years sh404SEF has been an important SEO extension for Joomla. It handles your URLs, your metadata and has even started to add features such as security, analytics and QR codes.

The purpose of this tutorial is to get you started with a quick setup and enough skill to manage sh404SEF successfully. A note before we start: this is a commercial extension.

Read more: How to Use sh404SEF for Joomla

SP Upgrade for Joomla 1.5 to 2.5 Migration

22944Now here's a strange coincidence ... while I was writing this tutorial, one of my sites got hacked because it wasn't updated. I had neglected to update my site because it involves downloads and uploads and who has time for that? Well I should have taken the time. I learned my lesson, and I'm getting ready for the future.

With Joomla 2.5 the upgrades are much easier, so I've decided to migrate all my Joomla sites to 2.5. There is a simple, new tool for making the transition, and it works - SP Upgrade. You may not need to do this today, but when that day eventually arrives, this tutorial will help you make this transition very smoothly. A note before we start: this extension is commercial. If you're looking for a free alternative, try our tutorial on jUpgrade.

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VirtueMart - eCommerce for Joomla

virtuemart-logo-142x142VirtueMart is absolutely huge. By some counts, it stands second in popularity amongst all eCommerce platforms.

Right now the VirtueMart team is getting ready to launch VirtueMart Version 2.0 for Joomla 1.7. So this is a great opportunity to give you an introductory tutorial.

VirtueMart comes with a lot of flexibility and there are also many additional extensions available. Get started with the following tutorial. Afterwards you can move on to more advanced features and extensions with confidence.

Read more: VirtueMart - eCommerce for Joomla