The Joomlashack Blog
Joomlashack Will Require PHP 7 When Joomla 4 Arrives
- Written by Steve Burge Steve Burge
- Published: 16 June 2021 16 June 2021
Over the last couple of years, the Joomla community has been moving to PHP 7 as a minimum requirement.
Leading extension developers such as Peter from Regular Labs and Nicholas from Akeeba have already dropped PHP 5.6 support on their extensions. Joomla itself is prompting users to update to at least PHP 7.3, with messages like this:
Read more: Joomlashack Will Require PHP 7 When Joomla 4 Arrives
OSMap Now Supports Phoca Gallery and jDownloads
- Written by Steve Burge Steve Burge
- Published: 16 June 2021 16 June 2021
OSMap is one of the first and most successful extensions here at Joomlashack. Every day, over 200 people download and install the Free version of OSMap.
Why do so many people use OSMap? It's because a Joomla sitemap will help Google and other search engines find and understand your site's content.
If you're using other extensions, there are many plugins available that integrate with OSMap. Today, there are two more because OSMap now supports Phoca Gallery and JDownloads. These are two of the most popular free extensions in Joomla.
OSMap Pro previously supported K2, Kunena, Mosets Tree, SobiPro, Virtuemart, OSCampus, and Shack Locations.
OSCampus Now Has Much Better LMS Statistics
- Written by Alex Smirnov Alex Smirnov
- Published: 10 June 2021 10 June 2021
OSCampus is the best way to build an online training site with Joomla.
OSCampus is incredibly robust and is already used by thousands of people every week. OSCampus runs the video training on OSTraining, and its architecture is the basis for Joomlashack University and the official Joomla.org training site!
In the latest release, you'll find a revamped "Statistics" area with much better statistics on your classes and students.
In this blog post, I'll introduce you to the new OSCampus statistics in the Joomla administrator area.
Check Out This Video Introduction to Shack User Switching
- Written by Steve Burge Steve Burge
- Published: 18 May 2021 18 May 2021
Rod Martin and the team at OSTraining were kind enough to create a video showing how to use our Shack User Switching plugin.
Shack User Switching allows you to test any account on your site, without compromising the user'sN passwords. With one click, you can browse your site and see exactly what your users see. This is a safe and useful way to troubleshoot problems for your site's users.
Read more: Check Out This Video Introduction to Shack User Switching
OSCampus Has a New Drag-and-Drop Certificate Designer
- Written by Steve Burge Steve Burge
- Published: 22 April 2021 22 April 2021
OSCampus is the best way to build an online training site with Joomla.
This extension is incredibly robust and is used by 10,000's of people every week. OSCampus runs the video training at OSTraining.com, and also the official Joomla.org training site!
OSCampus has a new and powerful drag-and-drop designer for certificates. This is a great way to reward your users when they finish a class. You can create as many certificates as you need, and then assign them to different classes.
Read more: OSCampus Has a New Drag-and-Drop Certificate Designer
Use Links to Automatically Fill a Shack Forms Field
- Written by Steve Burge Steve Burge
- Published: 19 April 2021 19 April 2021
Imagine that you create a link that says "Click here to book a trip to London". When your visitor clicks the link, they go to your booking form and "London" is already selected in the form.
This sounds pretty awesome, right? It makes things really easy for your visitors and increases the chance that they will buy from you.
In this tutorial, we'll show you how to modify links so you can automatically make form selections for your visitors. We'll be using the Shack Forms extension.
Read more: Use Links to Automatically Fill a Shack Forms Field
Shack Open Graph Has Improved Facebook and Twitter Support
- Written by Steve Burge Steve Burge
- Published: 14 April 2021 14 April 2021
When you share Joomla links on Facebook and Twitter, those sites don't find the correct information ... unless you use Shack Open Graph.
This extension adds Open Graph and Twitter Card tags to your site. These tags help Facebook and Twitter pull the correct image and description from your site. Each social network requires different images sizes. For example, the header images on our blog posts are 2000 px wide and 900 px high. But our Facebook images are 1200 px wide and 630 px high and our Twitter images are normally 1200 px high and 675 px high.
In this week's release of Shack Open Graph, it's even easier to make your site look good on social media.
Read more: Shack Open Graph Has Improved Facebook and Twitter Support
How to Send Shack Forms Data to Specific Users
- Written by Steve Burge Steve Burge
- Published: 24 March 2021 24 March 2021
Shack Forms Pro is one of the top Joomla extensions. One of its users asked how to send user-submitted data to certain recipients.
By default, it will be sent to the site administrator you set in Joomla's Global Configuration.
But what if instead of the site administrator you would like to send the data to other recipients? We will show you how to do that in this tutorial.
Introduction to Custom Fields in Shack Locations
- Written by Steve Burge Steve Burge
- Published: 24 March 2021 24 March 2021
Shack Locations is the best way to create a location-based directory in Joomla. You can create advanced directories with custom maps, markers, infoboxes and hundreds of locations.
In this guide, we'll show you how to add details to your locations using custom fields.
By default, a location page will display the following information:
- The Google map of the location
- The "Get Directions" search box of the location.
However, with custom fields, you can add a lot of extra, helpful information. For example, you can add these details using fields:
Simple Renew Has Improved Checkout Options
- Written by Steve Burge Steve Burge
- Published: 10 March 2021 10 March 2021
Simple Renew is the simplest and most reliable way to build a Joomla membership site.
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.
Simple Renew is the extension we have used to power Joomlashack.com for over 5 years.