How to Create a Google News Sitemap for Joomla Sites

How to Create a Google News Sitemap for Joomla Sites

Google News is an excellent source of traffic for many sites.

To help them find your articles, Google wants you to submit a specially-formatted sitemap which has custom news tags and only lists content added in the last 2 days.

I'm going to show you how to create a sitemap for your Joomla site that Google News will accept.

Read more: How to Create a Google News Sitemap for Joomla Sites

OSMap: Removing Links From a Joomla Sitemap

OSMap: Removing Links From a Joomla Sitemap

OSMap is the best and easiest way to create a Joomla sitemap.

When you install OSMap, it automatically creates a sitemap for you.

For more advanced users, it's possible to edit your sitemaps to include or exclude certain URLs. You may want to do this for visual purposes (you want a short and clean sitemap) or for SEO purposes (to exclude certain URLs from Google's index).

Read more: OSMap: Removing Links From a Joomla Sitemap

Converting a WordPress Site to Joomla

How to convert a WordPress site to Joomla

This tutorial will show you how to move an existing WordPress site over to Joomla. This will work for many WordPress versions up to 5 and will work for Joomla 3.

We also have a tutorial showing how to move in the opposite direction, migrating from Joomla to WordPress.

Read more: Converting a WordPress Site to Joomla

How to Change the Default Language in Joomla

When you create a new install of Joomla, you have to choose a default language.

For example, if you choose English (UK) as the default language, your site will use that language in the backend and frontend.

In this tutorial, I'll show you how to change that default. I'll show you how to set up a new language pack in Joomla and set that as the default.

Read more: How to Change the Default Language in Joomla

Joomla Legal File Types and Maximum Upload Size

Joomla Legal File Types and Maximum Upload Size

By default, Joomla only allows you to upload certain file types. Also, it only allows you to upload files of a certain size.

For example, these are the file types that a normal Joomla site allows:

bmp,csv,doc,gif,ico,jpg,jpeg,odg,odp,ods,odt,pdf,png,ppt,swf,txt,xcf,xls,BMP,CSV,DOC,GIF,ICO,JPG,JPEG,ODG,ODP,ODS,ODT,PDF,PNG,PPT,SWF,TXT,XCF,XLS

Read more: Joomla Legal File Types and Maximum Upload Size

How to Fix 1054 Unknown Column 'client_id' in 'field list'

How to Fix 1054 Unknown Column

When you run an update from older versions of Joomla, you may see an error.

If you go to MenusMain Menu, you may see this error:

1054 Unknown column 'client_id' in 'field list'

This is a problem with Joomla's database update, but it is easily fixed. In this tutorial, you will learn how to quickly fix it.

Read more: How to Fix 1054 Unknown Column 'client_id' in 'field list'

How to Reorder Joomla Articles, Modules and Menus

How to Reorder Joomla Articles, Modules and Menus

Joomla has a drag-and-drop for re-ordering articles, categories, modules, menu links and plugins.

The drag-and-drop feature works perfectly, but it can be hard to spot for new Joomla users.

There are two ways to activate drag-and-drop re-ordering:

Read more: How to Reorder Joomla Articles, Modules and Menus

How to Add Google ReCaptcha to Joomla Contact Forms

How to Add Google ReCaptcha to Joomla Contact Forms
Back in 2014, Google reinvented it's ReCaptcha spam prevention system.

Previous versions of Captcha tried to prevent spam by presenting users with distorted letters and numbers. This system was more painful for users than it was for spammers.

The new Google system is known as No Captcha ReCaptcha. This new system is way more user-friendly and only requires the user to click in a checkbox.

In this tutorial, we will show you how to enable this spam prevention solution on your Joomla site. If you want to take a step back and learn how to create forms, read this guide on how to create Joomla contact forms.

Read more: How to Add Google ReCaptcha to Joomla Contact Forms

How to Find The File for Joomla Template Overrides

How to Find The File for Joomla Template Overrides

Template overrides are wonderful because they are allow you to safely redesign almost any part of your Joomla site.

Here at OSTraining, we teach people how to create template overrides in Joomla.

However, for Joomla template beginners, it can be difficult to find the right file. If you're looking at the front of your site, how do you know which file is controlling the layout?

This tutorial will show you an easy way to find the file you need.

Read more: How to Find The File for Joomla Template Overrides

How to Stop Joomla Sending Passwords in Emails

How to Stop Joomla Sending Passwords in Emails

One of our members contacted us today and asked about web site security. They asked whether it was a good idea for Joomla to send passwords by email.

Our answer was "No!". You really should stop Joomla from sending passwords inside emails.

The image below shows a typical Joomla registration email, with the username and password included.

Read more: How to Stop Joomla Sending Passwords in Emails