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.

 

  

 

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>

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 !!

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.

joomla finding out if someone is logged in

I was just hardcoding a quick bit into my Joomla template. Which I'll hopefully make into a component when I have a little more time. What i needed was a bit of script that showed something if the user is logged in


$user =& JFactory::getUser();

if ($user->guest) {
echo 'message for guest';
} else {


$username = $user->get('username');

echo 'message for member';
}

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


joomla finding out if someone is logged in

joomla hard coded check for registration

joomla is user logged in

Joomla - Using MooTicker with Photoslide GK2 component

I'm was having a problem with running these two Joomla components at the same time.

Here's the solution:


> Go to your MooTicker module


> under 'parameters' change 'simple mooticker mootools library' to disabled.


> I then needed to change the browser speeds as well.

Book Review: Working Effectively With Legacy Code by M Feathers

Although this book's code examples are in C++ and othe languages that are not PHP, which is the code that I mainly work in, it is an excellent book that provides a lot of food for thought in how to deal with 'Legacy Code' and how to make improvements and add features to old code in a way that can be tested and not send a trail of destruction through out your code.
I actually even recommend this book if you aren't working on a Legacy system but your starting a fresh project of a decent size and haven't got much experience then this book will save you a lot of time and money as you are likely to see what mistakes to avoid before you make them.