PHP

  • 10 GOOD reasons to choose Joomla over WordPress for your next website.

  • A fool- and SEF-proof link to homepage with core Joomla multilanguage

    What? Is not that simple as place a <href="index.php">Home</a> and you're done?

    Yes and no... The Joomla routing engine is smart enough, to redirect all such above links to the default menu item in most cases. But using the core multi-language engine in Joomla 1.7+ has created a little-bit different situation. Let me explain!

  • A hidden gem - the Modal script shipped with Joomla

    Sometimes you are looking hard elsewhere to find an useful, much needed extensions, just to find out, that the tool is already in your toolbox. This is the case with the modal script shipped with Joomla, which is a great tool (even with the known limitations) to add a basic lightbox function to your site without needing anything else, but a few lines of code.
    Here are few examples of what you can do with!

  • Add caching to your modules

    In several previous tips(like Turn caching on!, Caching reloaded, Give a boost to your Joomla site and couple of others) I urged you to turn caching on wherever is appropriate. Recently one of my readers had criticized me, because he tried to follow the tip, but on several modules he used simply he didn't found the option to turn cache on (or off) in module settings.

    Indeed, this might be a problem, since some modules does not have this option! this little detail don't need to stop you to do so!

  • Adding a new Joomla Super Administrator via phpMyAdmin

    Sometimes the Joomla site owners get a bit paranoic after a time, due to lot of hype about site security. Basically is nothing wrong with, a good site security is based on keeping your accounts secure. But what about when you are hired to do something in a Joomla site and you got ALL access (including FTP and database access) but you discover, that the Joomla account you received is only an Administrator. You can do a lot as an Administrator - but often not enough! Don't tell me, that this never happened to you - unless you are a Joomla rookie. What you can do?

  • Adding spatial navigation and tabindex to your custom forms

    Having correctly implemented spatial navigation in your custom forms is more important, than ever these days. Unfortunately Joomla's core JForm does not support adding the required info easily (for example by creating an XML file which will output the correct code.

  • Baba Yaga

    Baba Yaga is an entity that haunts the dreams of children and a common threat that parents use when their children misbehave in Slavic countries across Eastern Europe.

    But in the world of malware, BabaYaga is a form of malware that can update itself, use antivirus functionality and more. Much like the mythical creature, BabaYaga malware has the potential to haunt Joomla/WordPress or, in fact any PHP site administrators and IT support staff.

  • Blank page when accessing Joom!Fish

    It's weird and scary - in a perfectly functioning Joomla site I installed one of my favourite components, Joom!Fish - remember, I'm the multilang guy Tongue out - and all I got was a blank screen. Obviously, something gone south... but what?

  • Bypass the VirtueMart's built in currency converter

    Recently one of my clients needed an interesting feature: to have different, un-related prices for the products in his shop for each "currencies" he wanted to use. The quote signs aren't by mistake there, one of his "currencies" was for example Payments in USD from China... Interesting currency, what you think?

    At the first the problem seemed to be simple: since the existing VM framework let you define any kind of extra currencies, and also let you enter prices for products in all of your currencies, the logical step was to simply switch off the currency converter plugin, as was possible in VirtueMart 1.1.9 and earlier versions.

    But there is the first catch - this is no more possible.

  • Can't log in with admin, no error messages

    This error comes back time-to-time, especially after a Joomla site is moved from one server to another. The symptoms are simple - but frightening. You try to login to the administrator interface as usual, with your well known credentials, and the login box is reloading whitouth any kind of error message and withouth letting you in. No errors in browser console, no error in the logs, and no errors even if you turn the error reporting to maximum or the Joomla debug on. You can try even the tricks described elsewhere in this site to change your admin password - that won't help.

    Why? Because the cause(s) - yeah, there can be multiple causes - are different from having bad credentials! Let's see what you can do about!

    ATTENTION: these tricks are qualified as core hacks, so be careful: backup, wear your lucky hat, keep your finger crossed - and take any other security measures before you proceed - you can ruin your site easily with a wrong move.

  • Cannot modify header information - headers already sent

    This warning message is produced by PHP if a program attempts to send an additional HTTP header after the separator (and hence all the headers) has already been sent. In the HTTP protocol a server response consists of a group of headers followed by a body, separated by a single blank line (i.e. a line containing only a carriage-return).

  • Choose your extensions carefully

    Choose your extensions wisely - one basic rule when you develop a Joomla site. And same applies to you, weekend webmasters! Your site is a sitting duck, waiting for hackers (especially script kiddies. Well, easy to say it, but what can be seen as "wise" choice here?

  • Contact images in the contact Category table

    Would be nice to have the contact images in the contact Category table, don't you? Yea, and in fact is a relatively simple trick, since Joomla 1.5 and the template overrides being handy!

  • Crashed article editor

    Today one of my clients called me with this problem:

    When I click article manager or category manager in order to edit an article or category, I see a page with no textarea, no buttons, no menus

    Was a weird call, and proven to be a difficult problem

  • Create your next Joomla site locally with Ampps

    Like the majority of web developers I develop my websites and services locally before Ipublish them on the Internet. This makes sense in a variety of ways, from saving a lot of bandwidth to faster updating or improved security.

  • Customize your page using CSS tricks based on active menu alias

    There are lots of ways to make your page unique in Joomla, and there are interesting ideas on how to make your template even more powerful.

    One of tricks not very often used and widespread is relying in one of the tricks I published regarding to available PHP tricks you can use to enhance your template.

  • Debugging a translation

    You just finished a development of a new component/module/plugin, which has multilanguage support, or just finished a translation of such a Joomla addon and want to doublecheck the result, and don't know how to do it? Don't look further, Joomla supports some useful debugging mechanisms that can make it easier to locate untranslated strings and diagnose problems with language translations in installed extensions.

  • Debugging your own code

    If your read this, then you might have playing with some code already - and as you know, nobody is perfect... all we make mistakes. But how you can find yours?

  • Deprecated: Function eregi() is deprecated in...

    Do you have some old Joomla site (pre Joomla 1.5.6)? then is very likely you will got - or already have - a site running only halfway, full of errors saying

    Deprecated: Function eregi() is deprecated in somecomponent...

    or

    Warning: Parameter 3 to showItem() expected to be a reference, value given in /home/someaccount/www/www/joomla/includes/Cache/Lite/Function.php on line 100

     

    Yeah, you might allready guessed it, the PHP 4.* end of life-cycle is wreaking havoc in Joomla 1.0 sites and some early Joomla 1.5 implementations - or even newer sites, having badly coded third party extensions installed.

  • Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated - reloaded

    In another post about Function eregi() deprecated I provided some readily fixed Joomla 1.0 files to overcome issues related with upgrading to PHP 5.3 for Joomla 1.0 sites. But since a Joomla site is not built only from the core code, but there are other third party add-ons too, not only these older Joomla sites can be plagued by bad coding practices. The most problematic issues are related with templates. Most of the addons are fixed already, but you might have templates with unsupported functions. Here are couple of tricks wich might help you fix them!

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