The Joomlashack Blog
Matomo: The Best Alternative to Google Analytics for Joomla
- Written by Steve Burge Steve Burge
- Published: 01 February 2021 01 February 2021
Over the last year or so, we've heard from more and more people who want to drop large, centralized services such as Google Analytics.
The most common reason is privacy. People want to stop sharing so much data with Google. I suspect this is partly driven by a new focus on privacy and data protection laws. But increasingly, many users just don't trust Google.
Another reason is simplicity. The Google Analytics interface is increasingly busy and people often want easier access to important trends.
Read more: Matomo: The Best Alternative to Google Analytics for Joomla
Building Modern Joomla Websites With The Cloud, APIs and CLIs
- Written by Steve Burge Steve Burge
- Published: 27 January 2021 27 January 2021
George Wilson is one of the lead developer working on Joomla 4. You may have seen his very popular video introduction to Joomla 4.
In this new video from the Joomlashack Conference 2020, George focuses on the tools we need to develop modern websites.
- How do you build Joomla websites on Amazon Web Services?
- How do you make Joomla work with Elastic Beanstalk and what are the pros and cons?
- Can you build automation workflows in Joomla?
- How do you use a CLI with Joomla?
Those are some of the questions answered in George's talk.
This is a developer-focused talk for people who want to use modern dev techniques with Joomla. By the end of the talk, you'll see how to create a fully automated Joomla environment with just 7 commands. This means you can spin up that environment again and again.
Read more: Building Modern Joomla Websites With The Cloud, APIs and CLIs
Pro Tips for Using Filezilla with Joomla
- Written by Steve Burge Steve Burge
- Published: 14 January 2021 14 January 2021
If you use Joomla, you've probably used FTP / SFTP software to access your Joomla files. And there's a good chance that your choice of software was Filezilla.
Filezilla is the most popular FTP application in the world. It's free to download and there's a Pro version for only $19.
In this video from the Joomlashack Conference 2020, Robbie Adair from OSTraining shows you how to super-charge your Filezilla skills. She has tips you can start using now to more efficiently manage your Joomla site.
How and Why to Use Dark Mode with Joomla
- Written by Steve Burge Steve Burge
- Published: 17 December 2020 17 December 2020
Nicholas Dionysopoulos from Akeeba has long been one of Joomla's most innovative developers. He has recently built a "Dark Mode" option into his extensions and website.
In the video below, Nicholas explains why Dark Mode is important and how you integrate it into your work. Nicholas' starts by explaining why Dark Mode is so helpful for some people visiting your site, particularly those with photophobia. He then talks us through the options for enabling Dark Mode:
- Let the user decide
- Let the browser decide
- Hybrid: let the browser decide and the user override.
How to Redirect Sitemap.xml to Your OSMap Sitemap
- Written by Nick Savov Nick Savov
- Published: 04 December 2020 04 December 2020
OSMap is the most popular way to create a sitemap for Joomla sites.
In another tutorial, we showed you how to submit your sitemap to Google Search Console.
In this guide, I'm going to show you a more general way to allow any search engine to find your site. Some search engines will look for your sitemap at particular URL: example.com/sitemap.xml. Sitemaps work perfectly without using this URL, but redirecting sitemap.xml to your actual sitemap URL is one small step can make it easier for search engines. All that's needed is to copy the URL and add one line to your robots.txt file.
This tutorial will show you how to do that, step-by-step.
Read more: How to Redirect Sitemap.xml to Your OSMap Sitemap
How to Create Layout Overrides for Joomla Tags
- Written by Valentín García Valentín García
- Published: 24 November 2020 24 November 2020
Joomla allows you to customize almost any feature through overrides.
Layout overrides are a type of override that enable you to customize small elements such as the article author or published date.
In this tutorial, I'll show you how to create a layout override for Joomla tags.
How to Solve the "Alledia framework not found" Message
- Written by Steve Burge Steve Burge
- Published: 11 November 2020 11 November 2020
We occasionally get reports of some Joomlashack users experiencing this error:
[OSSystem] Alledia framework not found
This problem is normally caused by not uninstalling a Joomlashack extension correctly. We use the "Alledia" framework to power many of our extensions.
Here's how to solve this message.
Read more: How to Solve the "Alledia framework not found" Message
You Can Customize Your Site's Emails in Joomla 4
- Written by Steve Burge Steve Burge
- Published: 09 November 2020 09 November 2020
Joomla 4 is making progress with regular beta releases. The latest version of Joomla 4 is Beta 3. You can read the release announcement here.
One of the major new features in Joomla 4 is customizable email templates. You will be able to control the content of the emails sent from your site. This is thanks to a new extension called com_mails.
10 Excellent Extensions, Recommended by Joomlashack Users
- Written by Steve Burge Steve Burge
- Published: 05 November 2020 05 November 2020
Our new Joomlashack group on Facebook has been growing quickly with some really helpful posts.
One question in particular got some great responses: "Do you have a really cool extension that you install on most sites?"
I specified we were not looking for famous extensions that everyone knows, but something that's almost a little secret.
My contribution was ImageRecycle. It automatically optimizes the size of our images when we upload them. ImageRecycle definitely makes our sites faster and other members of the group agreed, including Marcel who uses it on 60 sites.
If you have your own recommendation, let us know on this Facebook thread or in the comments below.
Read more: 10 Excellent Extensions, Recommended by Joomlashack Users
How to Use the User Actions Log in Joomla
- Written by Steve Burge Steve Burge
- Published: 04 November 2020 04 November 2020
One of my favorite new features in Joomla over the last couple of years is the "User Actions Log". This allows you to audit user activities. This core extension allows you to track who is doing what on your site. You can track who logged in, who created articles, who installed extensions and much more.
In this blog post, I will give you a tour of the User Actions Logs feature.