OSDonate - A Paypal Donate Button for Joomla

OSDonate

OSDonate is a Paypal Donate Button for Joomla 1.5, 2.5 and 3.

It's packed with features, it's simple to use, and it even hovers in a fixed position on the page! It's a great choice for anyone who wants their donation button noticed. It is especially useful for someone who wants a full page layout, such as Joomla developers who have a forum and can't put a donate button in a regular module position because of "lack of space".

Click here to download OSDonate.

Read more: OSDonate - A Paypal Donate Button for Joomla

Extend TinyMCE's Features in Joomla

This tutorial will reveal TinyMCE's hidden gem in Joomla: Extensibility.

Read more: Extend TinyMCE's Features in Joomla

How to Prevent Google Search Engine from Crawling Your Joomla URLs Using Robots txt

One of our students was having trouble removing URLs from Google and received this message:

"Your request has been denied because the webmaster of the site hasn't applied the appropriate robots.txt file or meta tags to block us from indexing or archiving this page. Please work with the webmaster of this site or select an alternate removal option from the webpage removal request tool"

So we created this tutorial for him, which shows how to edit Joomla's robot.txt file to block search engines from crawling certain URLs, as well as the whole site if desired.

Read more: How to Prevent Google Search Engine from Crawling Your Joomla URLs Using Robots txt

Find the Module Positions in a Joomla 2.5 Template

n this tutorial we will show you how to display the module positions of your template.

Let's get started!

Read more: Find the Module Positions in a Joomla 2.5 Template

Using OpenId and GMail Logins in Joomla

One of our students asked us how to use OpenID and GMail in Joomla, so we created this tutorial for him.

Most Joomla users don't know that the Joomla 1.5 core actually comes with OpenID and GMail plugins, but it does which makes it very easy to get things going. OpenID and GMail give your site's users a great way to login to your site and eliminates the need to remember one more username and password. For more information on either, check out https://openid.net/ and https://www.gmail.com/

Let's get started!

Read more: Using OpenId and GMail Logins in Joomla

How to Install Joomla 1.6 Tutorial

One of our students asked us how to install Joomla 1.6. He said he couldn't find any instructions or documentation about it. I did a quick check in the Joomla docs and sure enough, the documentation for it wasn't completed, so we created this tutorial for him.

Read more: How to Install Joomla 1.6 Tutorial

How to Link from One Joomla Article to Another Using Hidden Menu

One of our students asked us for a step by step tutorial of how to link one item to another using a wysiwyg editor, so we created this tutorial for him.

If Article is Assigned to a Menu Item

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If the article to which we want to link is already assigned to a menu item, then it is pretty simple to link to it.

First, click on the menu item (in our example, FAQ) to which you want to link.

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It is better to create relative URLs within your articles so rather than copying the whole url we are only going to copy everything after your root url. In most cases your root url will be www.yoursite.com/, however the site that I use to create tutorials and do testing is installed within a subfolder, the ostraining folder, so I only need the "faq" part of the url.

Second, Copy the relative url.

Hint: Don't include the forward slash "/" before the relative url.
Hint: If your url looks something like this index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=19&Itemid=2 and you want it to be simple and easy to read, you can follow our Ultimate Joomla SEF URL Guide.

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Go to the article in which you want the link to appear.

1) Highlight the text that you want to be a link to the article.
2) Click the create "Insert Link" button, which cause a pop-up to appear.
3) Paste your relative url in the url area.
4) Click Insert.

That's it! Just save the article and you are done! Of course, be sure to double check the link on the frontend.

If the Article is Not Assigned to a Menu Item

This is the step that gets most people. What if the article is not linked to a menu item? How do you determine its url? If you are not using sef urls, then you can figure out the url, however sef urls are best and sef urls are created via menu items.

So we have two choices:
1) Create a menu item in a current menu that is displayed in the frontend and follow the directions in the first have of this tutorial, however what if we don't want a menu item to be displayed in the front end?
2) Create a "Hidden Menu". This will allow us to get a url for the article and not display the menu item in the frontend.

Lets get started with #2.

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Menus >> Menu Manager

 

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New.

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Fill in the information appropriately.

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Save.

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Menus >> Hidden Menu

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New.

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Articles >> Article Layout 

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Enter the Title.

 

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Select Article.

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Click on Article

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Apply.

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Now we have our alias which we can use for our link!

Copy the Alias.

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Go to the article in which you want the link to appear.

1) Highlight the text that you want to be a link to the article.
2) Click the create "Insert Link" button, which cause a pop-up to appear.
3) Paste your relative url in the url area.
4) Click Insert.

That's it! Just save the article and you are done! Of course, be sure to double check the link on the frontend.

Hint: Make sure the article is set to uncategorized.

How to override offline mode in Joomla without requiring a login

As you may know, you can set your Joomla site "offline" by setting "Site Offline" to "Yes" in the Global Configuration. This is a great feature that enables you to build or troubleshoot your site in offline mode, restricting access only to backend users who login through the login form displayed on the offline page.

The only limitation to this feature is that you have to be logged in to see the frontend of the site, so you cannot test the site from the perspective of a user who is not logged in. For example, if you want to test registration, AEC or Ambra Subscriptions integration, or any number of other things that might require you to see the site from the perspective of a non-logged-in user, you cannot do that because offline mode requires you to log in to see the front end of the site.

I have developed a Joomla plugin called Offline Override that enables you to put the site in offline mode, and enter a keyword to override offline mode without requiring a login. You simply install and enable the Offline Override plugin, create your secret keyword (no spaces) and enter it in the plugin's parameters. Then, when your site is in offline mode, you can override the offline mode by adding "?keyword=VALUE" in the address bar for the frontend of your site. For example, if your keyword is "joomlarocks", you would go to https://yoursite.com/?keyword=joomlarocks. The override only lasts the length of your session and you must re-enter the keyword in the address bar (https://yoursite.com/?keyword=joomlarocks) the next time you open your browser.

How to Migrate or Upgrade Joomla 1.5 to 1.6

Joomla 1.6Ever since the release  of 1.6, there have been a lot of questions as to how to migrate or upgrade.

This guide will take you step-by-step through the general procedure of how to migrate to Joomla 1.6.

Please read through all the material as this is not a light undertaking.

Short Background Information

Countless hours have been spent by many volunteers from around the world to put Joomla 1.6 together. Although much of the code is the same from Joomla 1.5, much of it has been written from the ground up, and the changes are comparable to the changes from Joomla 1.0 to 1.5.

Jupgrade ExtensionBecause the changes from Joomla 1.5 to 1.6 are so large and because of the massive effort put into getting Joomla 1.6 to where it is today, there is no core upgrade path, this is indeed a migration.

In planned future releases of Joomla (which will be released every 6 months), the changes from version to version will be more incremental and a core upgrade path is planned. Now that Joomla 1.6 is finally here and stable, a community initiative led by the developers of Joomla is turning towards jUpgrade (a 3rd party Joomla extension on the JED originally developed by Matias Aguirre) for help and to help.

Many of Joomla's developers (who are all volunteers that freely contribute their time) are volunteering to put the finishing touches on jUpgrade.

jUpgrade allows you to migrate from Joomla 1.5 to 1.6.

Lets get started!

Read more: How to Migrate or Upgrade Joomla 1.5 to 1.6

How to Backup a Joomla 2.5 Site

This tutorial will take you step by step how to backup your Joomla 2.5 installation using Akeeba Backup.

Download Akeeba Backup

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Download Akeeba backup from here.

 

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Download now.

Install Akeeba Backup

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Extensions >> Extension Manager

 

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Browse >> com_akeeba >> Upload & Install

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Success!

Backup

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Components >> Akeeba Backup

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The general settings are fine and there is no need for any modification unless you are trying to do something more advanced.

Backup Now.

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Fill in information appropriately. Then Backup Now!

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Patiently wait for completion. Do not exit this screen until finished.

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Success!