The Joomlashack Blog
How to Use Google Maps Overlays in Joomla
- Written by Steve Burge Steve Burge
- Published: 18 February 2021 18 February 2021
Shack Locations is the best way to create a location-based directory in Joomla.
Version 1.5 is available now with a really cool new improvement in the Pro version. You can now highlight areas of a map with graphic overlays. This is possible because we've added an integration with Google's "My Maps" service.
This image below is an example of how this feature works. You can see red, green, and blue overlays highlighting different areas of the map. All of these were drawn with the tools in "My Maps".
How the Image Sitemap Works in OSMap
- Written by Steve Burge Steve Burge
- Published: 10 February 2021 10 February 2021
Image sitemaps help Google crawlers to better find images in your Joomla site. Google then indexes them and includes them in its "Google Images" search.
If you would like to help Google find and index images on your Joomla site, OSMap is your best tool. In this blog post, I will show you how the image sitemap works in OSMap.
OSMap does index all the content in your media library. That would be the wrong approach, because it might reveal private files. Instead OSMap looks for any images that are attached to your content.
Connect Matomo Analytics to a Joomla Site with Shack Analytics
- Written by Steve Burge Steve Burge
- Published: 04 February 2021 04 February 2021
One Joomlashack customer asked us how connect a Joomla site to "Matomo Analytics".
Matomo Analytics is a server-side PHP/MySQL analytics self-hosted platform. It aims to be an open source alternative to Google Analytics.
You can quickly install it using your hosting control panel. In this blog post, I'll show you how to connect Matomo analytics software to your Joomla site using the Shack Analytics extension.
Read more: Connect Matomo Analytics to a Joomla Site with Shack Analytics
How to Add Facebook Pixels to Joomla with Shack Analytics
- Written by Steve Burge Steve Burge
- Published: 03 February 2021 03 February 2021
One of our customers asked about adding Facebook Pixels to their Joomla site. The site had products that they were advertising with Facebook Ads. Once you connect Facebook Pixel to your site, you will be able to measure and optimize your Facebook advertising.
You can create such a connection without technical skills using the Shack Analytics extension. In this blog post, I'll show you how to do this.
Read more: How to Add Facebook Pixels to Joomla with Shack Analytics
Create Pop-up Windows in Joomla With Shack Toolbox
- Written by Steve Burge Steve Burge
- Published: 27 January 2021 27 January 2021
Rod Martin and the team at OSTraining were kind enough to create a video showing how to use our Shack Toolbox extension.
Do you need to create a pop-up window in Joomla? This window could show a chat box, a login form, or important information. A pop-up comes in useful any time you need to get your visitors attention.
In this video, Rod shows you how to create a pop-up in Joomla. He uses the example of a customer who wants to show a donation form inside their pop-up window.
Read more: Create Pop-up Windows in Joomla With Shack Toolbox
Check Out This Video Introduction to Tabs and Sliders
- Written by Steve Burge Steve Burge
- Published: 20 January 2021 20 January 2021
Rod Martin and the team at OSTraining were kind enough to create a video showing how to use our Tabs and Sliders plugin. This extension has over 100 reviews on Joomla.org, and it's one of our most popular downloads.
There are a number of "Tabs and Sliders" plugins for Joomla, but not all of them support templates that use the Bootstrap 4 framework. In this video, Rod demonstrates the Tabs and Sliders plugin and shows that it works just fine with Bootstrap.
Read more: Check Out This Video Introduction to Tabs and Sliders
Get Much Better Google Drive Embeds for Joomla
- Written by Steve Burge Steve Burge
- Published: 12 January 2021 12 January 2021
A few weeks, we updated OSEmbed Pro with support for the new Facebook and Instagram embeds.
This week's OSEmbed Pro update is equally significant. It has much better support for all Google Drive embeds including Docs, Sheets, Forms, Slides, and Drawings.
Our team re-wrote the underlying code to make the embeds much more reliable. There's also a new "Preview Mode" which presents a really clean view of your embeds.
Joomlashack's 2020 Review and Thank You
- Written by Steve Burge Steve Burge
- Published: 05 January 2021 05 January 2021
Thank you all for your support of Joomlashack.
Joomlashack started in 2005, but our team took over the site in 2016.
At the end of every year we write a review of what happened at Joomlashack. If you want to look back, here is our 2016 review, 2017 review, 2018 review and 2019 review.
Even before 2020, we've always avoided writing "everything is awesome" posts. We try and give you honesty and insight into Joomlashack's year. There are always plenty of ups and downs. You'll find plenty of stories of both success and failure in these posts.
How to Display a Joomla Login Form in a Popup Window
- Written by Alex Smirnov Alex Smirnov
- Published: 17 December 2020 17 December 2020
One question we had this week was from a Joomlashack customer who wanted to display a login module in a popup window. The idea is that visitors can log in without leaving the page they are on.
Our Shack Toolbox Pro extension is the perfect tool for this job. You will have a ton of design options to customize your popup.
In this guide, I'll show you how to display a login module inside a lightbox popup with Shack Toolbox Pro.
Read more: How to Display a Joomla Login Form in a Popup Window
JCal Pro Has New Export Options and Filters
- Written by Steve Burge Steve Burge
- Published: 19 November 2020 19 November 2020
JCal Pro 4.5 is now available.
JCal Pro makes it easy to display your events in a stylish Joomla calendar. This week's release has a lot of code clean-up and refactoring, plus two new features you'll see while using it.
The first new feature is the ability to create customizable .ICS files or RSS feeds of your JCal Pro events. The other new feature is an improved set of frontend filters, including the ability to see all the events at a single location.