Thursday 16 December 2010

Enabling your Joomla website to update your Facebook Status

This is something I've been battling with for a couple of months. There used to a fanpage application called 'Fwitter' which linked up to your Twitter account and recieved statuses from there. This meant that with the help of using a component that sends our article title and link to Twitter we could make a loop. Unfortunatly the Fanpage version of Fwitter ceased to work.

Thats left me hunting another solution.

I tried the Ping.fm route. This component claims to be able to do what we want but again I could get it to send to my profile but not our fanpage.

In the end i've had opt for a paid solution. I was already using 1st Movers Autotweet application - which is free and pings Twitter a status. However if you go for the pro version then you can also access Facebook Fanpage statuses. It's very easy to set up. A couple of things you should know before purchse though. Firstly the first person to go to the site after a message is being sent takes ages and then see's a blank page and secondly it takes about 30 mins odd for the message to go through.

if anyone knows a free solution to this problem then please let me know.

Monday 13 December 2010

JoomGallery not showing images on image view page

After making an Joomla Upgrade I've noticed that the main images on our Gallery aren't showing. After a quick search on Joomla.org and the general concensus is to turn off all your plugins and you'll find out if its a plugin conflict.

NOTE: If you turn off your USER plugin then you'll not be able to get back into the administration panel. Which means you'll need to get in through mysql admin and change the status in _plugins back to 1


In my case it was the Ninja Shadow Box plugin. Which to be honest I can live without.

Wednesday 8 December 2010

Getting Your Products Noticed on Google Shopping

Getting Your Products on Google Shopping


If you sell products online this has to be one of the most important ways to get your products listed. Why? Because if you're on Google Shopping it means you mean business. You're in shopping mode and ready to spend cash. I been using Google Shopping as a punter for quite a while now and this is normally how I use it.

> I've seen ( or already know ) the product I want. I've researched it, read reviews on the products itself and know I want to know if its anywhere else on the internet where it's cheaper.

> so I goto to Google Shopping - type in the full product name and do a search. Then list the products by price.

> If there's a shop thats quite a bit cheaper I will then take a look at the site to see if it I think it looks professional enough. And then google the Company itself to see if I can find any reviews on them. If everythings ok then I will proceed to make the purchase.

> However normally many things will be the same price, if theres only 50p or a pound in it then I will often go for the tried and tested sites that I know. Ie Amazon, Magicseaweed etc. Another thing I look for is Google provide a merchant rating. The higher here the more reliable and the more likely people will use.

So that raises the question on how to get that google Merchant rating up. Well there's 3 ways.

1. Install Goolge Checkout. Google customers will be emailed and asked to review after the purchase.

2. Write a review at RateItAll.com

3. Write a review at ReviewCentre.com


Its as simple as that. So now you just need to twist customers arms to get them to write nice reviews for you.

Wednesday 1 December 2010

December Keyphrases to be worked on

December Keyphrase promotions.  Every month I need to check that the main keywords for my clients websites are coming top and to select another keyphrase that needs improving and a third keyprhase that at the moment doesn't register at all. A selection of 5 key phrases is constantly monitored and a further 2 singled out for improvement on the basic SEO package and Littleripples.com


Hillside Glastonbury - Glastonbury B&B 1st , b&b glastonbury 2nd , bed and

breakfast glastonbury 4th
, glastonbury accommodation 4th, accommodation glastonbury 7th

improve glastonbury abbey

add  glastonbury tor


Glastonbury Properties - self catering glastonbury 6th , self catering somerset 4th glastonbury self catering 3rd, glastonbury accommodation 19th,
accommodation glastonbury 6th

improve  glastonbury accommodation 19th

improve glastonbury short stay

Mint Condition Valet : Bournemouth Car Valet 6th, Bournemouth Car Cleaning 10th, car valeting ringwood 5th , car valet bournemouth 14th, Bournemouth Car Valeting 12th

improve: Bournemouth Car Cleaning 10th

improve: Bournemouth Commercial Van cleaning


Escape Surfboards.biz - polzeath surf report 10th, cornwall surf report 11th, polzeath surf 5th , surf report polzeath 1st, surfboard repairs 11th

improve: stand up paddle boarding , paddle board

Escape Surfboards.com - surfboard sprays 14th, surfstore 5th, surf store 3rd , surfboard 4th, surfboards 2nd

improve: thruster surfboard

improve: buy surfboards

Monday 22 November 2010

facebook how to send email to fanpage fans

They moved this one.  so here it is just icase you can't find it. 

When on your fanpage click on 'Edit Page'
>> then go to 'Marketing' on the left handside

>> and click on 'Send an Update' in the middle

Wednesday 3 November 2010

Making a Sitemap.xml for a website with Joomla Virtuemart

To make my sitemaps for websites I've been using the top ranking program http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ - however when trying to sitemap a website that is built with Joomla and uses Virtuemart then it seems to hang before completing. 

The solution for this I found is to use Xmap - to create a sitemap.xml for Joomla.  It also has additional extensions that you might want to install for your site also.  

You need to add the component and plugin and once set up then usage is pretty simple 

>> go to component on the component list in Admin

>> click on the the '+' next to add menu and add the menu's you want the script to search through

>> to find your sitemap.xml goto the 'options' dropdown on the right and click on preferences.

>> now under 'Sitemap's URL' you can right click and open the link in XML Sitemap input box. 

>> from here I've been going to source and copy and pasting to my sitemap.xml and then alerting google, Yahoo, Bing.  However i'm sure there's a better way to do this.  If you know it then could you let me know.  Thanks


Sitemaps I've made with this method are Escape Surfboards Sitemap - LittleRipples Sitemap

Friday 29 October 2010

Monthly SEO plan for Mint Condition Mobile Car Valet.

A new business in Bournemouth has been set up by Sean Brinkman in the field of Mobile Car valet.  As well as a basic site set up advertising his new businesses this will also be the first one that I be setting up on a 'Basic SEO advertising package'  with the aim to increase month by month the website standings on Search Engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing.

Every month I will be making a new site map for the site and submitting it to the forementioned search engines.

Tips: There should be some unique content on the front page of this site  at every month but ideally at least every week.  You can use your twitter and facebook feeds to deliver this content.

Month 1 : The initial pages are set up with meta tags information for these key words.
Set up of google analytics.
Here are the main pages




Month 2: Business Places set up on Google.

Month 3: Pages for an extended list of key words.

Month 4:  Is it worth expanding your net so that your keywords can be found in other languages. thanks to translation sites this work can be done quickly.

Thursday 30 September 2010

Display external remote HTML in a Joomla Template

This document is a little more general than having to be for Joomla.  It should work in any PHP environment.
What I'm wanting to do is have one file that I can change externally that I can display the HTML from on all of my sites .  Heres the code

 $filename = "http://www.yourdomain.com/linksfooter.php";
       $handle = fopen($filename, "r");    

$contents = stream_get_contents($handle);
fclose($handle);

echo $contents;
            ?>

Thursday 16 September 2010

lost XML-Sitemap password

On many of the larger sites I'm doing I'm using the unlimited version of XML-Sitemap.  However with this version when you login your presented with a username and password option. If you've lost/forgotten it then heres a solution

modify generator/data/generator.conf

find:
   < option name="xs_login" >........< /option >
   < option name="xs_password" >.........< /option >

Tuesday 14 September 2010

Joomla Image only menus

This is something you'd think would be supported in the standard installation of Joomla but it's not, and that's the abililty to be able to show images only menus.  For this the simplist way is to install this module -> Joomla image only menus

Job done :)

Thursday 2 September 2010

Failed attempts to get to download from an IMAP server to Outlook Express

Currently we have all out mail on an IMAP server but would like to be able to take it all somewhere else.  To achieve this the method I am using is to download it to outlook express and then save it from there.  

The only problem being when trying to do so I was getting this error

PLAIN * authentication failed. None of the authentication methods supported by your IMAP server (if any) are supported on this computer.



This is how I solved the problem 


Firslty I had a clean up of the computer and made a bit more space.  To know avail.

Secondly I used ctrl - alt - delete and shut down proccesses going on the background that where taking up a lot of CPU usage. 

SUCCESS :))

Sunday 29 August 2010

how do I run printhead cleaning program on the HP Deskjet F2200

hp f2200 clean printer head


After buying a printer cartridge for my HP Deskjet F2200 from PrinterBasics on ebay, I found that eventhough the printer reconised the cartridge it would still not print.

The buyer writes this in their help.


What if the printer recongnises the cartridge but won't print?


printerbasics: Try running the printhead cleaning program on these cartridges. This process will clean the heads and also push the ink through and should hopefully resolve this problem for you. We recommend that you do this 3 to 4 times for best results.


The question then is how do we do that?  here's the answer.


 I'm using Microsoft Word to print my documents.  So here's what I needed to do.


in Microsoft Word

>> click on file

>> scroll down and click on print

>> go to the features tab

>> at the bottom find the button 'Printer Services' click on it

>> in the 'device services' tab - go down to 'Clean the Print Cartridge'


>> I need to run this a couple of times to get the print to go through.

Monday 23 August 2010

Virtuemart Related Product problem and hacked solution.

It seems to be a common problem with Virtuemart that when adding or editing products if you go to the 'related products' tab - then use the drop down list to search for the products you wish to add - then you get either nothing or an incomplete list. 

There's a few solutions to try on this post https://forum.virtuemart.net/index.php?topic=42558.msg135503   however none of these worked for me.  As I am on a limited budget for the projects I have quickly knocked together a tool that help me apply all the related products I needed quickly.  with extra time it would be prefferable to intergrate this tool into Joomla itself. If anyone wants to sponsor me to do so then let me know. Otherwise this was a five minute ugly fix ;)  

I have a folder which I used to run batch mysql tasks needed for when I transffered over a store from 'ruby on the rails' - In this folder i have a config.php file in the folder 'includes'  -

in here you'll need to add your details for connection

#################config.php#########################

//Database connection info
$hostname = "localhost";
$username = "mysqlusername";
$password = "mysqlpsswrd";
$dbName = "mysqldatabasename";
MYSQL_CONNECT($hostname, $username, $password) OR DIE("Unable to connect to database");
@mysql_select_db( "$dbName") or die( "Unable to select database");
 

####################################################



then I wrote the following page - that lets me update a product.  

############################add_related_products.php#############################

include ("includes/config.php");

if (isset($_POST['add_related_products']))
{

$product_id = $_POST['product_id'];
$related_products = $_POST['related_id1'];
$related_id2 = $_POST['related_id2'];
$related_id3 = $_POST['related_id3'];
$related_id4 = $_POST['related_id4'];

if ($related_id2 !=NULL) {

$related_products .= '|'.$related_id2;

}

if ($related_id3 !=NULL) {

$related_products .= '|'.$related_id3;

}

if ($related_id4 !=NULL) {

$related_products .= '|'.$related_id4;

}



$sql = "INSERT INTO jos_vm_product_relations (product_id, related_products) VALUES ('$product_id', '$related_products')";

$runsql = mysql_query($sql);



echo 'this sql statement has been run -
'.$sql.'

';


}
else {

echo 'Add related products to another product fill in the following details
<br> <BR>';
echo '
<form method="post" action="'.$_SERVER['PHP_SELF'].'">';
echo '
<input type="hidden" name="add_related_products" value="TRUE">';
echo '
<input type="text" name="product_id" value="product id"<br>';
echo '
<input type="text" name="related_id1" value="related id 1"<br>';
echo '
<input type="text" name="related_id2" value="related id 2"<br>';
echo '
<input type="text" name="related_id3" value="related id 3"<br>';
echo '
<input type="text" name="related_id4" value="related id 4"<br>';
echo '
<input type="submit" value="Submit">
</form>';
}






?>


and it does what i need it to, so i hope this helps someone else. 





Monday 16 August 2010

virtuemart menu goes to wrong category

According to this post http://forum.virtuemart.net/index.php?topic=72696.0  the root of the problem here is known as the "multiple 'Itemid' issue." - in this post it describes this as being a confussion between the menu module of Joomla and virtuemart.  As soon as I read this I knew a quick solution for this would be to just use the URL's off the virtuemart catergory tree module that I'm using and manually put these urls in the menu - applying them as a external link item.

And now all is working fine.  As of yet I am not sure whether this problem may be something that will be a hiderance later.  We'll have to see.


Friday 13 August 2010

Virtuemart product page showing thumbnails fix

I've used a couple of hacks to solve some problems that I was having with the Product display pages in Virtuemart. 

It seems to be the default of Joomla's virtuemart to show thumbnails images on the Product page.  However I wanted to show a larger image at say 350px wide.


Thanks to this post http://forum.virtuemart.net/index.php?action=printpage;topic=21161.0

I found out that the what I needed to change was in

components/com_virtuemart/themes/default/templates/product_details/

and it's the page 'flypage.tpl.php' that needed changing ( i also needed to do flypage-ask.php !!)

find $product_image

and replace it with
< img src="components/com_virtuemart/shop_image/product/%3C?php%20echo%20$product_full_image%20?%3E" width="350px" / >

CLOSE THE GAPS AROUND <  & > thou !!



obviously you can change the width to whatever you wish




virtuemart apply template to all pages

What I need to do is get virtuemart to always display in a set template.

There are actually a couple of ways of doing this. Firstly you could set up a fake menu and list all your pages there. You don't have to set a module for it, meaning it can't actaully be seen from the site. However it would mean you can access all pages when assigning from the 'templates' section.

Another solution that's simpler is to install this plugin.



once installed you can access it from Extensions/plugins then find 'SM2 Component Template'
on the right hand side you need to input
'yourComponent yourTemplateName'
under 'Plugin Parameters' and you're all good to go :)


Thursday 12 August 2010

Joomla Module 'mod_articlebymonths' problem. When clicking on a link I'd get a 404 error.

I have the module 'articlebymonths' installed on my Joomla! installation when clicking on a link in the monthly menu tree I'd get a 404 error. I noticed in URL it was trying to link to a component called 'component/contentbloglist' - this didn't exist in my component folder. So I got it from another installation that I do have 'article by months' working on and hey presto. all works fine :) - if you haven't got another installation and need this folder then contact me and I'll send it over

Tuesday 10 August 2010

Joomla Virtuemart Search problem

after installing Virtuemart it seems I could not search for any products.  I could however search for 1 letter of 2 letters but anything over that return a '0 matches' message.

thanks to this post:
http://forum.virtuemart.net/index.php?topic=62207.30

in the Joomla file libraries/joomla/databse/databse/mysql.phpI found a line which says:
$this->setQuery( "SET sql_mode = 'MYSQL40'" );
(around line 153).
UNDER this line I added:
$this->setQuery( "SET OPTION SQL_BIG_SELECTS=1" );

so it now reads:
$this->setQuery( "SET sql_mode = 'MYSQL40'" );
         $this->setQuery( "SET OPTION SQL_BIG_SELECTS=1" );
         $this->query();
 

Friday 30 July 2010

Joomla virtuemart The requested URL * was not found on this server.

This is a blog for the above problem for people who are trying to  set up virtuemart on their Jommla! installation.
Up until this point I had installed Virtuemart and it's demo  database and made a menu item that should go straight to a  catergory or product.



The first thing after getting the error message
'The requested URL * was not found on this server'  was to check  this call to the component to see if the store was working at  all?

Answer: YES - the store does work however when clicking on the  product links I get the requested URL not found message.


My next test was to turn SEF's off.  You can do this by going to  'site' on the top menu - go down to 'global configuration' and  head for SEO settings on the right hand side.  in your  administration panel.

ANSWER - in my case everything now works fine.  If it doesn't for  you then you probably need to install the main Virtuemart Module  and make sure its placed on all pages.  Check the manual section  '2.2. VirtueMart Installation' for more information.


This is not an ideal solution for me though as I do not want to  turn SEF's off so is there another solution that allows me to use  SEF's?


There is an extension called 'SEF router for Virtuemart (Joomla  1.5) Extension Specific Addon'  for VM - however this seems to  make no difference for me. 


What I don't understand though is that I'm using exactly the same  version etc as in my store for SEO Nort Cornwall and this site  works fine with SEF.  At this point I'm pretty stuck so am  thinking of starting the virtuemart installation from fresh to  see if that works.

Which doesn't work -  However I have a sneaky feeling it's because I'm working on a testing server, where a call to route doesn't work and I have to call index.php.  Therefore I am going to shelf this work- get the site working - go live and then solve this problem.  Hopefully therefore I'll have a solution here soon. 



Thursday 29 July 2010

flash mx cant see Color Alpha in motion create

just a quick one if you got the same confusion as I did on following a simple fade in fade out tutorial in Flash MX .

Basically the instruction on the tutorial state after 'converting the symbol to a graphic' and then 'creating a motion tween'  you should then be able to scroll down the page to 'properties' where there will be a dropdown selection for 'color' .  I couldn't find this however.

The solution is at this point i'd needed to reselect the item. ( it may help to lock the background as well )

Thursday 22 July 2010

My Top Ten Joomla Extensions.

 Here's my top ten joomla extensions I'm using at the moment. 

Components

Flexbanner: Advertisment management program. - see it in action here Online Surf Magazine -


JComments - Let people comment on your articles.
See it here.  Polzeath Surf Report

FB Fanbox -
Show your facebook fanpage off.  You can have your status and show a few of your fans faces Polzeath Surfboard Hire

Modules -

Easy Twitter - Display yours or other peoples twitter feeds. 

Check ASP World Tour Twitter / Tweets


Articles Anywhere -

you need this.  From a Design point of view means you can show pretty much anything anywhere!!
I use this loads in this newquay directory



GK3 News Show  - handy little module to showcase articles from a category.  Does much more than this too.  Check Retro Surfboards



Adsense abd TPN Inserter - Monetise your site and add google adsense

Check Longboard Surfing Tweets / Twitter 


Plugins


Twitter Status -
Automatically update your twitter status when you add articles.


Google Maps -

Show Google maps on a page Woolacombe Directory -


AND ONE MORE FOR LUCK!!!!

Redlinker - A great SEO tool so you can make all key words link to a certain page. Check Surfing blogs


Wednesday 21 July 2010

Not able to get into Joomla! admin from a Smart Phone !

I've recently brought the LG in Touch Maz GW620 Smartphone.

one of the main reasons was so that I can update my websites and blogs while out and about.
My websites have been built with Joomla!  However when trying to access the admin area I get this message
'Data connectivity problem!
The Page contains to many server redirects'

I have found away to be able to get into write my blogs and add news items, however if you want full access to your admin area then this is not your solution.  If you do find a solution to that if you could come back to this page and let me know that'd be awesome.

My solution:

Was to install this module on my Joomla installlation.

Content Submit -  http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/news-production/content-submission/5178

which is a front-end login so you can add articles. It is designed so you can assign other authors to write on your site. So this is an additional use for the extension.

Monday 19 July 2010

Getting Listed on Google Products / Shopping

What is Google Shopping and why get listed on Google Shopping ?
 You may or may not have noticed the button for 'Shopping' on the top of the google search page. 


This is powered by Google Base.  
Say for example if you were buying some new surfboard fins and liked the 'FCS K2.1 PERFORMANCE CORE'  
You can search this in Google Shopping Google Base and you would get a list of all the online stores that sell this product.   You can then change the order of the listings to see which product is cheaper etc. 
 There are even Ipod Apps where you can scan barcodes and this will then check google base for other products the same online. Movie App - It's pretty likely they'll be many more things like this appearing over time. 
 SO YOU NEED TO GET LISTED GOOGLE BASE THEN!  HOW DO YOU DO THAT?

We'll you can either do it yourself - check http://www.google.com/base/  .  It's can be a bit tricky though if you're not used to xml sheets etc, so the second option may be more appealing to and that is to pay some else to do it like myself.
For only £9.99 a month you can have upto 100 products listed.*   If you have more than 100 products then please contact me.  As far as I know this is the best price on getting listed on google base / google shopping that I can find on line.  
Check Escape Surfboards listings for and idea of how all your products will look on line  Surf Shop on Google Shopping  

If you'd like to have this service for your website use our shopping cart here ADD YOUR PRODUCTS TO GOOGLE SHOPPING

re information on how we can promote your online website business.  



Saturday 17 July 2010

Get short easy to remember Facebook Fanpage URLS


The default of Facebook fanpages is that when you start one you get a URL like this


however if you want something shorter and more cool like. 


then all you need to do is visit this page

www.facebook.com/username  and you can assign short names to your fanpages. 


ITS AS EASY AS THAT :))












Friday 2 July 2010

Making GK3 News Show ( mod_news_show_gk3 ) wider

There's two elements we need to do to make the GK3 News Module (Joomla!) bigger.  Firstly the width is preset in the module itself.

OPEN  modules/mod_news_show_gk3/tmpl/view.default.php


FIND

table mstyle; ?> class="gk_news_show_table" id="module_unique_id; ?>">


DELETE mstyle; ?> 



Now we can set the width from our template.css  ( or wherever you want to put it from inside your template )


for example 

#newsshow1 {
width:100%;
}


you can change the class id from inside the the module administration. 
Hope this helps you.




Wednesday 23 June 2010

Joomla Module Frontpage not showing latest article

On the frontpage of Escape Surfboards Media Pages - http://www.escapesurfboards.biz I've used the Joomla module Mini Front Page ( mod_minifrontpage ) to display the latest blog entry for the Surf Reports category.
However I was getting a problem with the article not being the latest entry. A small change to the mySql statement in the helper file for this module has sorted this problem out in this scenario.


OPEN modules/mod_minifrontpage/helper.php


FIND line 95 - which should be the ORDER BY command.

I changed this to

. "\n ORDER BY a.id DESC "



this now works for me.








Surf Report:Polzeath Surf Reports

Blogs - Surfboard Manufacturing Blogs, SUP Blogs, Kite Boarding Blogs, Retro Surfing Blogs

Gallery - Polzeath Surf Pictures, constantine surf photos, UK surfing pictures

Videos - Surfing equipment videos, surf technical videos, surf equipment videos

Technical - Polzeath Ding Repair, custom kite boards daymer, surfboard artwork cornwall

 

 

 

Friday 11 June 2010

Getting rid of  à from Mysql Searchs.

Getting rid of  à from Mysql Searchs.


I was returning a search from a MySQL database and in my results I'm getting these signs around £ signs 'Â Ã' .

The way to get rid of this was to change the collation of this table in MySQL. It was latin and after changing it to Utf8_unicode_ci .

Tuesday 1 June 2010

stop editPlus overtyping

Today when I turned started to use my EditPlus software I found I could not use the return button as I could before. Insted of creating a new line it would just drop to the line below. Also when editing it would overtype.

I could not find any information on this from google searches. So after solving this problem have created this blog in the hope you will find it and save you some time.

The searches I made in Google where.

Edit plus overtyping

stop editplus overtyping

editPlus return button not working

editPlus turn off overtyping


I could not find anything of use here or in the softwares documentation so had to cover every option I could in the menu.

What you need to do it is turn off the 'auto indent' under the 'Document' menu item on the top menu.



Hope this helps you out.

Wednesday 19 May 2010

Joomla - Customizing Mini Ad Spot css

I was commissioned to create a menu item that would display a few adverts - that would be

a image for a company > each one on different coloured backgrounds and they would need

to display randomly.

On this version of Joomla I already had Flexbanner - which is a VERY flexible advertising

manager this would do what I needed except for the last part. I couldn't seem to

randomise the adverts. If you know an answer to this let me know.

After checking out a few Advertising problems and finding problems with them, in a few

instances 'security' issues seemed to be weak - I found Mi

ni Ad Spot



This does exaclty what I needed only I needed to write a little css hack so that the

backgrounds displayed properly.

Here's what I need to change. NOTE! YOULL NEED TO GET RID OF SPACES AROUND THE < or >'s


>> Download the module to you harddrive

>> OPEN modules/mod_miniadspot/tmpl/default.php

>> on line 72, 76 , 81

FIND


< div style="float:left; display: inline; " >

CHANGE TO

< div class="miniad" style="float:left; display: inline; " >



!! note: now you could either just paste the ccs below into your template.css in the template your using. However if like me you use more than 1 template on your site you'll need to call it up from inside the module.


OPEN

modules/mod_miniadspot/mod_miniadspot.xml


FIND:

helper.php

ADD UNDERNEATH:


< filename >css/style.css


CREATE a new folder in modules/mod_miniadspot/ called 'css'

CREATE a new file named 'style.css'

paste this code or similar into it.



UPLOAD THESE FILES

Thursday 6 May 2010

Getting permission problems with noixACL - Joomla Extension help

if you've noixACL installed on your Joomla CMS installation then you may end up banging your head against a wall when you go back into your admin area and find that you can't add articles etc. At this time you'll probably search the settings and try and sort it out. If you manage to sort this out on a perminant basis then let me know because my solution is to

>> choose 'Access Control' from the components drop down.

>> goto 'adapters'

>> then turn off the adapter for the item that your working on

>> then turn it on again.

yeah it's not ideal but a temporary solution until I work it out properly.

Thursday 15 April 2010

Setting your Facebook up receive twitter updates.

Here's the deal, So you have a website that when you write a new article it then automatically sends the title and and a Short url to Twitter, which then also sends the same status update to your facebook fanpage. Saving you time, energy and money.

Well with Joomla it's easy, all you need is AutoTweet - This will status your Twitter account. This is installed onto your Joomla installation

Next you'll need to add 'Twitter Fan Page Sync' this is done from your Facebook Fanpage. You can get this app here Twitter Fan Page Sync

Have Fun!

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_CONST, expecting T_OLD_FUNCTION or T_FUNCTION or T_VAR or '}' in *plugins/system/autotweet.php on line 26

I got this error message when using the Plugin Autotweet on a new installation of Joomla! 1.5

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_CONST, expecting T_OLD_FUNCTION or T_FUNCTION or T_VAR or '}' in *plugins/system/autotweet.php on line 26

The problem had occured because I had not set up my webspace to be using PHP 5.

The Solution:

open up the file htaccess.txt in your editor.

add the following line to the top

SetEnv DEFAULT_PHP_VERSION 5

now save as .htaccess

and upload.

THATS IT !!!!

hope this works for you.

Friday 9 April 2010

Database transfer has put ’ , ‘ , “, Â, ”, –, …, ’ in my text.

Here's how I got rid of these from my database.

On this project I am working with Joomla 1.5 but the following instrunctions are fairly Generic and could be used with other mysql database problems with a little adaption.
The theory of the mysql find and replace is this

UPDATE tablename SET fieldname = replace(fieldname,"valuetofind","valuetoreplacewith");

Note: in this scenario I need to replace with apostrophe's ( ' ) . when doing this they need to be escaped. ie \'

Here are the commands I ran in my phpMyAdmin area.

UPDATE jos_content SET introtext = replace(introtext,"’","\'");

UPDATE jos_content SET introtext = replace(introtext,"‘","\'");

UPDATE jos_content SET introtext = replace(introtext,"“","\"");


UPDATE jos_content SET introtext = replace(introtext,"Â"," ");

UPDATE jos_content SET introtext = replace(introtext,"”","\"");

UPDATE jos_content SET introtext = replace(introtext,"–","-");

UPDATE jos_content SET introtext = replace(introtext,"…",";");


I also had to check the titles of the articles to do this replace 'introtext' with 'title'



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Wednesday 17 March 2010

Facebook Fanpage not showing status on others news feeds / wall

The problem:

I was updating statuses to my Facebook Fanpage and they weren't showing up on other peoples news feeds. This only happens when you add links, however this might not be obvious to you at the time ( it didn't occur to me until after I had fixed it )

The solution:

>> goto 'edit page' under your fanpage image
>> go to 'Links' app
>> Click application settings
>> Click the Additional Permissions'
>> tick publish content to my wall

solution can be found here also http://littleripplesproject.blogspot.com/

Thursday 4 March 2010

Joomla - Showing a module position in a module.

I've made a simple module that shows a modulepostion in a module.

The advantage of this being that I could assign a whole load of modules to different positions and then get a module to display them dynamically.

For example...

On my business pages I have all the pages being called by the 'locid ' which lets me know what location I'm displaying. I then have different 'Twitter'Modules for each loacation. For each one I have typed in the Module Position manually. In this format 'locationLOCID' - where i have written LOCID this is where i input the actually locid that references the location in my database.
I can then call up the module using
{modulepos }
and the twitter for that location will be displayed.

To do this though I first needed to install the 'Modules Anywhere' Joomla Extension. Joomla Modules Anywhere Extension

Joomla Hack to get GoogleMap Plugin to work in Modules

I had a plugin installed that means I can call Google maps from inside articles, but what I needed to do is call them up from inside a module.
The GoogleMaps plugin for Joomla! can be found here GoogleMaps plugin for Joomla!

If you like me need to call these maps from inside a module then this link is where you will find the hack for doing this. Hack to get GoogleMap Plugin to work in Modules BE WARNED!! running a hack like this will mean that if someday we run a Joomla update and the index.php page is changed, as it is a core file then this hack will need to be installed again.
No doubt on this day coder like you and me will have long forgotten out this hack and will wonder why our google maps aren't showing!! which is why I've written this blog hoping I may type in one of the following phrases and find my own documentation :D

googlemaps not working joomla
joomla google maps not working on upgrade
joomla google maps dissapeared on upgrade
Joomla GoogleMaps plugin not working
Joomla GoogleMaps plugin broke on upgrade


Thursday 25 February 2010

Joomla Business Listings / Directory Extension - Component and Modules

I've developed a new 'Business Listing' component and some modules etc.  To achieve a decent looking Directory section as I couldn't get my head around SOB12.


with the help of 'Extension Development' - I've pretty much achieved what I wanted to do.  Although thanks to budgets / deadlines etc it's not all wrapped up as tidely as I'd like. And a bit hacked in areas.

However I would like the code to be available to others working in similar projects as they may like to carry the project forward.

If anyone wants details of what I've done then msg me.







Here's some screen shots of what it's going to look like.

 

  

 

Wednesday 24 February 2010

Changing the width of Tweets in Joomla extension 'Easy Twitter Status'

This change is for the Joomla module 'mod_easy_twitter_status' .

My problem here was this. In the The Easy Twitter Status Module http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/social-web/twitter-display/8700 the way to change the width here is to change the value in the css ->li.easytwitter.

However this means whereever you use this module the size will be the same.  However my design specifications meant I needed to have different sizes for some of the tweets.

Here is the solution.

> first of all we need to add a new parameter

OPEN modules/mod_easy_twitter_status/mod_easy_twitter_status.xml

BEFORE

< / params > < / install >


ADD

           


> At this stage you can now change the values if wished in the modules section of administrator



OPEN modules/mod_easy_twitter_status/mod_easy_twitter_status.php

>> find the style class li.easytwitter
DELETE the width value



FIND:
$easyTweeterStatus['show_follow'] = $params->get('show_follow');

UNDERNEATH ADD:

$easyTweeterStatus['width'] = $params->get('width');

FIND:


  • ADD AFTER:

    style="width:px;




    AND THATS IT. UPLOAD YOUR CHANGES>








  • Saturday 16 January 2010

    Joomla Category Blog View displaying Intro Text only problem

    what I'm trying to achieve is to have a blog style page with only intro texts on it. And then if users want to read the whole blog they'd need to click on the read more link. 

    Through the settings in the menu item for my blogs page I thought it would be fairly easy by setting these parameters

    > Set leading items to 0

    > Set the amount of intro text items I want

    > Set For each feed item show to introtext

    and then make sure these settings aren't overridden in the article.

    For some reason I couldn't get this to work.  After finding this post http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f=428&p=1269827

    I came up with this hack to stop my frustration and wasting time

    OPEN

    components/com_content/views/category/tmpl/blog_item.php

    FIND:

    $this->item->text;

    REPLACE WITH:

    $this->item->introtext;


    if you are using this component anywhere else you may want to wrap it in a else statement and set a parameter to activate this change.  Because I time contraints I'll add this if I need to !!

    Saturday 9 January 2010

    Self Assessment Tax - do i pay shippley or Cumbernauld

    Just in case anyone else is asking the same question.  I couldn't find the answer on the HRmc website and also couldn't get through on the phones because of the snow.

    On the website they write
    'Please refer to the back of your payment reminder to check which of the Accounts Offices below is relevant for you.'

    however when checking the back of reminder I saw no reference to Shippley or Cumbernauld.  The answer though is to cross reference the 'account number' they have on the back of the reminder under 'direct payment' against the accounts office table they have on ther hmrc website.

    Hope this helps someone.