The Joomlashack Blog
Does Joomla Support the MariaDB Database?
- Written by Steve Burge Steve Burge
- Published: 08 October 2020 08 October 2020
Recently, we've had several customers ask us about running their Joomla sites on the MariaDB database.
MariaDB is a fork of MySQL and is nearly identical to it. Yes, it's true that Joomla doesn't officially support MariaDB. However, many webhosts do use it. In fact, Joomlashack.com is running on MariaDB!
You Can Now Choose "Finish Publishing" Dates in OSCampus
- Written by Alex Kiash Alex Kiash
- Published: 29 September 2020 29 September 2020
Our OSCampus extension is the best way for you to build an online training site with Joomla. With the latest release, you can choose "Finish Publishing" dates for your OSCampus pathways, classes, and lessons. This feature was sponsored by Graham Jarvis from Advanz S.A. and written by Carlos Cámara, a Joomla developer. We appreciate their collaboration on the project.
With this new feature, you can release your online training blocks in a sequence. For example, you may want to create a series of classes and release them at weekly intervals.
Or if you need students to take your class by a specific date, you can unpublish it automatically on that day.
In this blog post, I will show you the new "Finish Publishing" feature in OSCampus pathways, classes, and lessons.
Read more: You Can Now Choose "Finish Publishing" Dates in OSCampus
Check Out This Video Introduction to Shack Article Manager
- Written by Steve Burge Steve Burge
- Published: 10 September 2020 10 September 2020
Shack Article Manager is one of the new extensions we released at Joomlashack in 2020.
Shack Article Manager is perfect for sites that don't want to allow users into the Joomla administrator area. You can allow users to write, edit, publish and manage articles from the frontend of Joomla sites.
I say this extension is "new", but the base of Shack Article Manager has been around since Joomla 1.5. The original version was called "User Article Manager" and it was really popular in early Joomla versions. Because so many Joomlashack users asked us to adopt this extension, we eventually agreed to take it onboard at Joomlashack.
Rod Martin and the team at OSTraining were kind enough to create a video introducing the features of Shack Article Manager.
If you like this video, check out OSTraining's other Joomla videos in the OSTips series on YouTube. This includes videos on Shack Article Layouts, Tabs and Sliders, and Shack Toolbox.
Read more: Check Out This Video Introduction to Shack Article Manager
Joomlashack is 15 Years Old!
- Written by Steve Burge Steve Burge
- Published: 01 September 2020 01 September 2020
It feels strange to write that title. But yes, Joomlashack is 15 years old this week.
This site was launched on September 2nd, 2005.
That's a long time for any software company to survive, particularly in the open-source world. In fact, this site could count as being older as it had a previous life as "Mamboshack.com".
We've celebrated 5 years, 10 years, and now here we are at 15.
How to Allow Frontend Article Submissions in Joomla
- Written by Steve Burge Steve Burge
- Published: 31 August 2020 31 August 2020
One Joomlashack user came to us and asked this question:
"I want to allow some users to create Joomla articles from the frontend of our site. But, I don't want them to see articles written by other users".
In this tutorial, I'll show you how to do this with the Shack Article Manager extension.
If you haven't used Shack Article Manager before, these two videos will be a good introduction. You can then follow along with the rest of the tutorial and set up your publishing workflow.
Read more: How to Allow Frontend Article Submissions in Joomla
How to Sell Subscriptions to Joomlashack Extensions
- Written by Steve Burge Steve Burge
- Published: 26 August 2020 26 August 2020
Over the last few years, we've managed to grow Joomlashack. Yes, we have some good extensions and templates, but one thing has made that growth possible: recurring subscriptions.
I am 250% convinced that the most stable businesses are subscription businesses.
Our 2020 aim at Joomlashack is to help you make the move to recurring revenue by creating a reliable subscription extension that's very easy-to-use.
Read more: How to Sell Subscriptions to Joomlashack Extensions
Shack HelpScout is Now Live at Joomlashack
- Written by Steve Burge Steve Burge
- Published: 26 August 2020 26 August 2020
We are happy to announce that Shack HelpScout is now available for Joomlashack members. This is the 32nd extension available at Joomlashack.
Yes, you read that correctly. Joomlashack Everything Club members now get access to 32 extensions, plus 20 templates and hundreds of Joomla training videos!
Help Scout is one of the most popular and user-friendly ways to provide customer support. With the Shack HelpScout extension, you can closely integrate Help Scout with Joomla.
Shack HelpScout enables you to display Help Scout forms and user conversations directly inside your Joomla site. Your users will never realize that their questions are being answered from inside Help Scout.
We have happily been using Shack HelpScout on Joomlashack for years to manage customer support.
Control Access to the Main Metadata Screen in OSMeta
- Written by Alex Kiash Alex Kiash
- Published: 18 August 2020 18 August 2020
This week, one of our customers asked how to give a Joomla user access only to the OSMeta component. They wanted to allow this user to update all the metadata on their site.
OSMeta is the best Joomla extension to efficiently edit metadata of your Joomla articles, categories, and menu items on a single screen.
In this blog post, you will learn how to create an OSMeta administrator with Joomla's built-in permissions systems.
Read more: Control Access to the Main Metadata Screen in OSMeta
How to Enroll Students in the Required Classes in OSCampus
- Written by Alex Kiash Alex Kiash
- Published: 29 July 2020 29 July 2020
This week one customer asked how to offer a student an OSCampus course only after they finished another course. The idea was to give students access to courses one after another one instead of to all of them.
OSCampus doesn't offer such functionality. However, if you have only a handful of courses you can do the job by manually deploying Joomla's core Access Control List:
- Create new user groups, for example, "Class 01", "Class 02", etc
- Create a new access level for each of the new group, for example, access level named "Class 01" for the user group "Class 01", access level "Class 02" for the user group "Class 02" etc
- Assign required access levels to the required classes
- Assign required students to access required classes when needed.
Now to allow student access to their next class, all you will have to do is assigning the student to the user group assigned to this next class.
Let's take a look at this process in more detail.
Read more: How to Enroll Students in the Required Classes in OSCampus
How to Create a Joomla Site for Online Events with JCal Pro
- Written by Alex Kiash Alex Kiash
- Published: 26 July 2020 26 July 2020
One of the questions from our customers this week was how to create an online events site with JCal Pro.
JCal Pro is the best Joomla extension for managing calendaring events. It offers simplicity, flexibility, a robust feature set, and gorgeous templates to fit virtually any Joomla site.
Creating an online events Joomla site with JCal Pro takes four steps:
- Install JCal Pro.
- Create required JCal Pro events.
- Enable events registrations.
- Set the events display.
Let's take a look at these steps in more detail.
Read more: How to Create a Joomla Site for Online Events with JCal Pro