We eat, sleep and breathe Joomla!

So let's go back to the drawing board and look at what extensions you might need to pick up to duplicate the whole effect of a blog.

• Flexible Layout  
  
  Joomla is probably the easiest CMS to "skin" or "template" which means you can have your blog looking like anything you want.
  Conclusion: Out the box.
  
  
• Browser-based Editing
  
  One of the whole points of Joomla is to be able to maintain your site and edit your content in a browser.
  
  
• Automated Publishing
  Publishing is one-click with Joomla. You can even have items be published at a future date. Say you need to go out of town, and you write some blog posts to get published while you are out of town.
  
  
  
  
• Categories
  
  This just requires a bit of planning. When you are setting up your site, make a section called "blog" or similar to hold all the categories. Then make categories as you need them. Last step is to make a menu that has a link to each category. A module is automatically created at the same time, which you can place as needed.
  
  Conclusion: Out the box.
  
  
• Automatic Archiving
  
  I have yet to find an easy way to do this. The archive function in Joomla allows you to index content by date, but it changes the URL. That is very bad for a blog as you need persistant URL's for all those people linking to you.
  
  
  
  
• Search Engine Optimized Titles
  
  For OpenSEF. It's new Ajax admin interface is great and it seems to produce robust URL's. The clincher is the ease in which you can create redirects. If you have a lot of URL's that need to change, links from other sites. All I have to do is monitor my logs and when I see traffic coming in from old URL's its a 3 second (literally) job to set up a redirect to the new URL. No messing with htaccess here.
  The second part of the process was internal links. These are useful for SEO, but who wants to be found on a Google search for "read more". There is a mambot from Run Digital that changes that though, and makes the link much better. It also does it automatically.
  
  
• Comment Systems
  
  Luckily, at the time of revising how I was building my blog, a new comment component was released. I am using it on my site now and its great. The front end looks good, has a robust captcha and is easy to template. Its also got some nice extra features like hiding the comment form with Ajax. Its $12.50 for the basic version, but well worth the price.
  
  
  
  
• Trackback or Pingback
  
  Here is our first major issue. Currently there is no method of acheiving trackbacks on a Joomla blog built from its seperate peices. If this is an absolutely critical, must-have feature for you then you might need to be using the JD-Wordpress extension. If its more a question of "it would be nice if I had it", then its probably worth going with the seperate pieces solution and wait for this to be developed. In 1.5, this function will be much easier to add and there are at least two developers working on a solution at this time.
  
  
  
  
• Syndication Feeds
  
  Joomla has built in RSS syndiation, there is actually nothing to do here. Well, that's not quite the whole story. The RSS as it runs in Joomla is only of the Front Page (or home page). This means that if your blog is on an interior page, or you want to have multiple feeds, you need to find some help. Fortunately, there is a great extension from Run Digital that will do both of these, and its free.
  
  
  
  
• Email Notification
  
  Right now there is no way to have email notification to an emaillist when you make a blog post. There is a way round this. Several 3rd party (non-Feedblitz. You can have people subscribe to an email list and they actually get the introductory text from your blog posts emailed automatically to them. There is nothing you, as the blog author, need to do.
  
  
  
  
• Search
  
  Joomla has a powerful search function built in.
  
  

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Open the file: libraries/joomla/document/html/renderer/head.php

Search for the next piece of code:

$strHtml .= $tab.''.$lnEnd;

Add your statict text for example:

$strHtml .= $tab.''.$lnEnd;

The text into the

If you need obtain a great search results for the word "All about Canada" I recommend your put the static text before of the $document->getTitle();

Other important thing, is don't use symbols like ":", "-", "$", etc for the title.

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First you'll have to ask yourself the question: what do you really want to change? If you're just making one website, you have a great looking template and you only want to change some images on the template, then this article will be more then enough for you. If you want to change more, like how the titles look, changing the size of a part of your template, etc ... then this article will just point you in the right direction. In this case you will have to learn at least the basics of css and html. There are tons of online tutorials available for this. One I would recommend is the one of w3schools. That's a great site, I still use this quit often. You will find not only tutorials, but also a complete reference, lots of examples and even a quiz.

Make a copy

A smart thing to do is to make a copy of the original template. This way you can easily compare your changes with the original template. Here's how you can do this:

1. Open the zip-file of the original template and open the file templateDetails.xml
2. In this file you will find something like template_name. Change this name to whatever you want to name your template
3. Open the file index.php from the zip-file
4. In this file, scan for the template name and replace it with the name of your template. You will probably find it as part of a path to the css file(s).
5. make a new zip-file
6. install this template

Now you should see your new template in the Template Manager.

Change the images

If you use a template, you will almost always want to change some of the used images and logo's with your own. It's easy to do this. If you open the zip-file of the template, you will see a folder called 'images'. This contains all images used in the template. So all you have to do is replace these images with your own, make a new zip-file and install that template. Of couse you can also overwrite the images directly on your server.

If you replace images, then the best thing to do is to replace them with images of the same size. It's less work to change your images to the right size, then it is to change the template to match your images.

As a sidenote I would say that in my opinion, replacing images should be made easier. It should be possible to replace the images directly in the Template Manager, so people without ftp access don't have to make a new zip-file and reinstall the template each time they replace an image

Changing the content

In Joomla templates, the content and the design has been completely seperated. The content is present in the file 'index.php', the design is in one or more css-files. The index.php contains (or should contain) not much more then a number of

Now you see the contents of the file index.php. You will find there lines like:

 This is nothing more then a element that will contain all modules on the left position. If you change name="left" to name="right", the modules on the right position will now be shown on the left position. Once you understand the html basics, you can change here anything you want.

 A nice experiment you can do is to look for the lines in the index.php file where you see css-files included. If you remove these lines and then check your site, you will see what I mean with content only. All you will see is plain text. If you don't understand the purpose of css-files, this experiment will make that crystal clear for you.

Changing the style

You can change the css files in the same way. Only this time you select 'Edit CSS' in stead of Edit HTML. Now you will see a list of CSS files. If you're lucky, there will be only one. A lot of templates however have more then one stylesheet. There are no real conventions on how to split the CSS code in different files and how to name them, so you will have to examine them to know what is part of a certain CSS-file. Just select one of the CSS-files and hit the 'Edit' button.

 Now you can change the style sheets any way you like. I won't go into more detail here, that's what the CSS tutorials I mentioned in the beginning of this article are about. Just one more tip: most browsers now have different tabs which makes it easy to switch between different sites. Use this when you're changing css-files. One tab where you change the CSS and one tab where you see the template. If you're not experienced with CSS, always do just one change and then verify the result.

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First, navigate to Mambots>Site Mambots and make sure "Load Module Positions" is published/active. If there is a red "x" beside this Mambot, click it to make the mambot active.

The mambot you just activated will allow you to use a syntax such as "{mosloadposition left}" in your content item(s) in order to render modules. So now, we want to create a custom module position for EasySSP.

Navigate to Site>Template Manager>Module Positions and in one of the blank fields, type "easyssp". We have just created the "easyssp" module position.

Now you can create a content item within a category or a static content item if you prefer, and within the wysiwyg editor box just type {mosloadposition easyssp}. Go back to the Module Manager as described in the second part of step one in the documentation and make sure the EasySSP module is published in the "easyssp" position.

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First, navigate to Extensions>Plugin Manager> and make sure "Content - Load Module" is published/active. If there is a red "x" beside this Plugin, click it to make the plugin active.

The plugin you just activated will allow you to use a syntax such as "{loadposition left}" in your content item(s) in order to render modules. So now, we want to create a custom module position for EasySSP.

To create a module position for EasySSP, you will need to open yourjoomlasite.com/templates/your_current_template/templateDetails.xml. You should see an array of predefined positions such as:

<position>left</position>
<position>right</position>
<position>top</position>

Add this to the array:

<position>easyssp</position>

Save the file and upload. We have just created the "easyssp" module position.

Now you can create a content item within a category or a static content item if you prefer, and within the wysiwyg editor box just type {loadposition easyssp}. Go back to the Module Manager as described in the second part of step one in the documentation and make sure the EasySSP module is published in the "easyssp" position.

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Creating Content Pages in Joomla<br>
In order to build a website you usually have a navigation bar containing a menu that links to specific pages.  In Joomla there is a menu system that allows you to link to specific articles. This tutorial will show you how to create a content page for your web site and link to it using Joomla’s menu system.<br><br>
Log in to the Administration Panel<br>
Click the Add New Article Button in the administration Panel<br>

This will take you to the Article :[New] screen<br>

First you need to fill out some dialog boxes. Enter the Title of the content page, in this example I have entered “About the Display Joomla Site”.  Make Sure that Yes is selected next to Published, this will ensure that your content will be active.  Select No next to Front Page, this is not for the front page of the site, but rather the About Page, so it will not appear on the front page.  I have left Section and Category set to Uncategorised.<br>
Insert your content into the text editor section and click the save button. This will take you to the Article Manager Screen<br>

Notice that your article is set to published and set to not show on the front page.  When you go to your front page, you will see that the article can not be seen from the front page, but also that there is no way to get to that article. We will now need to add a link to the menu in order to get to the article that we just published.<br>
Go to the Administration Menu and Select Menu and then Main Menu, this will take you to the Menu Item Manager : [mainmenu] Screen.  Click the New Icon on the top right of the screen. This takes us to the Menu Item: [New] Screen<br>

 
Because we are working with Articles, click Article in the list. This expands a list of options for how we would like to display the article. We would like just a single article to be displayed so click on Article Layout. You will then be taken to a screen where we can create a link to the Content Item that we created earlier.<br>
Insert a Title into the Title Box, Here I have inserted About Us. The title that you enter here will appear as a link on the menu and can be different to the title of your content item (or article)<br>

 
Next click on the Select Button, to the right of the Select Article Box, which is under the Parameters (Basic) section on the right side of the page, this will bring up a list of articles that are in your database. Select the Article that you created in the earlier steps.<br>

This will take you back to the previous screen. Click on Save. This takes you back to the Menu Item Manager : [mainmenu] Screen.  To see what the link you have created click Preview in the top right of the menu (the one that is just below the green bar at the top of the administration panel). This will open up your Joomla site to the front page, you will now see a new link in your menu named what you named it in the previous step. Click on the menu link you created and you will be taken to the new content page that you created.<br>
 

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In Joomla, there are several ways for you to administer modules on the site.  Modules display small amounts of content on every page of the site.   An example of a module on a site is a menu. It is available from every page of the site and contains the same content so that a visitor can navigate around the site. You can set access on levels so that modules can only be made available to users who are registered users of your site (for example). You can change the position of a module, and you can set the order of the module within the position you have chosen. You can hide or display the title of a module.
In this tutorial we will explore these options.

 
Click on the Extensions Menu on your administration panel screen and select Module Manager from the list of Options. Select any module from the list that you would like to explore the settings for. I have select My Special Offers module, which displays a Special Offer to my site visitors. Once you select the module click on the Edit button in the top of the menu bar, alternatively you can just click on the name of the module that you would like to edit. This will take you to the Module:[Edit] screen.
Title Option -  In the image below you can see my Special Offer Module on the Top Left of the screen. The Title is set to Special Offer, but the text also says Special Offer, repeating the wording which I don’t want. There could be a number of reasons that you do not want to display your title.

 
Select No next to Show Title in the Details Section on the Module:[Edit] screen. Click the Apply button in the top right of the screen.

 
To see your changes click Preview in the top right of the menu (the one that is just below the green bar at the top of the administration panel), this will open up your Joomla site to the front page. In the image below the title is no longer there, this has been highlighted in blue for illustration purposes.

 
In the example above, you can see that my Special Offer appears at the top and my Main Menu appears next. I would like to adjust this so that the Main Menu appears at the top left and the Special Offer is second. In order to do this select the order drop down box from the details section and move to where you want the module to go, in this instance, I want it to be below the Main Menu, so I selected the Main Menu order, which will set my Special Offer Order to that and move the Main Menu up. Click the Apply button in the top right of the screen.

 
To see your changes click Preview in the top right of the menu (the one that is just below the green bar at the top of the administration panel), this will open up your Joomla site to the front page. In the image below the Special Offer has been moved below the Main Menu, this has been highlighted in blue for illustration purposes.

 
The last setting that we would like to look at here, is the position of the module. Two of the positions available (left and right) are self explanatory, one will mean your module appears on the left of the screen (as in the image above) and the other will mean that your module appears on the right of the screen. I will now show you how to have a look at the template manager, so that you can see what the other position names mean in terms of your screen real estate.
Click on the Extensions Menu on your administration panel screen and select Template Manager from the list of Options. This will take you to the Template Manager screen.

 
The template manager screen shows you what template is used to determine the display options of your Joomla site. The default template for Joomla 1.5 is rhuk_milkyway. Click Edit on the top right hand section of your screen or click the name of the template, this will take you to the Template:[Edit] screen. For the moment we do not want to change anything on this screen we just want to view the position placements of the template. Click on the Preview button on the right of the screen.

 
This will show you a preview of the site template on the screen. In this view, you can see boxes with red writing in them, these boxes show you the positions of various used and unused screen space. You can choose to place your module into any of these options using the same steps that we used above, but changing the position in the position dropdown box in the details section.

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Creating a Poll for your Site
There are 2 steps you need to complete in order to create a poll and display it on your Joomla site. First you need to create a poll component and then you need to create a module in which to display your poll. Once someone votes in your poll the results are available for viewing, the poll component displays the results to visitors when they click on the results button in the module.

Step 1 – Create a Poll Component

First go to the Administration panel and select Components and then Poll from the menu.

 
This will take you to the Poll Manager screen. Click the New button on the top right of the screen. This will take you to the Poll: [New] screen. In the Details Section enter a title for the poll, this is what you would like visitors to vote on. I have entered “How did you find Creating Your First Poll?” Because we don’t want people to just vote over and over again, Joomla imposes a time limit wherein a visitor can only vote once during this amount of time. This time limit can be adjusted by changing the value in the lag box under details. I have left it at the default which is set to 86400 seconds, which equates to 24 hours. Set published to Yes. 

The options section on the right, is where you enter what you would like your visitors to vote on, so if this were an election, the options would be your nominees. I have entered some options for visitors to vote on.

 
Click Save in the top right section of the screen. This will take you back to the Poll Manager screen, even though the poll is listed and it is said to published, it will not yet be visible from your Joomla site. To get your poll onto your site, you will need to create a module to display  it.

Step 2 Create a Module to Display Your Pole

Go to Extensions and select Module Manager from the dropdown menu.

Click New on the Module Manager Screen and you will be taken to the Module:[New] Screen. Here there are a lists of modules that are available, because we want to create a module that will display our poll,  select polls on the right hand side then click the next button in the top right of the screen.

 
This will take you the Module [Edit] Screen. In this screen we need to select our poll from the select poll drop down list on the right side of the screen (underneath module parameters). We also need to enter a title for our poll, this will be displayed above the poll in the module. I have entered “Tell Us what You Think?”

 
Click Save.
This will take you back to the Module Manager Screen, where you will be able to see your newly created module and that it is now active.
To see your new poll module click Preview in the top right of the menu (the one that is just below the green bar at the top of the administration panel), this will open up your Joomla site to the front page. In the image below the poll module that we just created appears below the menu on the left hand side of the screen, it has been highlighted in blue for illustration purposes.

 
Select one of the options and click Vote.  The site visitor will be thanked for their vote (at the top of the screen) and the Poll component will display the current results of the poll.

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You may have noticed that Joomlashack is now running on Joomla 1.5. We did a stealth migration yesterday.

We had one problem we needed to address, and it took a while to figure out, so we thought we would share the solution for others.

Our old site used Joomla 1.0, as I have mentioned before, we wanted to make sure we did a 301 redirect of the Joomla URL's so Google would quickly pick up the new ones and pass the pangerank to the new pages. The problem however was that our 1.0 site used the raw URL:

http://www.joomlashack.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=37

We rapidly discovered that mod-write unfortunately will basically ignore all the php parameters here. You can't get rewrite to pay any attention to them.

After some research, some help and lots of trial and error we found that we could make a redirect like this:

RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index\.php\?option=com_content&task=view&id=37(.*)\ HTTP/
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ http://www.joomlashack.com/get-free-joomla-templates? [R=301,L]

Its ulgy, but it works!

We also found that the redirects need to be placed in the htaccess file before the main Joomla code (exploits and core sef).

Now we just have to figure out another Pagerank dilution problem.

• www.joomlashack.com/index.php has a page rank of 6
• www.joomlashack.com has a page rank of 9
  

We'll need to redirect just the index.php without breaking the rest of the core SEF function in Joomla.

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1. In the administration panel, go to Menus >> Main Menu.

2. Select the Home link.

3. Expand the option list, Parameters (System), on the right.

4. Change the field, Page title.

5. It’s done =)

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