Category: Joomla

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Joomla! 1.5 Top Extensions Cookbook

Joomla! 1.5 Top Extensions Cookbook

Over 80 great recipes for taking control of Joomla! Extensions

Overview of Joomla! 1.5 Top Extensions Cookbook

  • Set up and use the best extensions available for Joomla!
  • Covers extensions for just about every use of Joomla!
  • Packed with recipes to help you get the most of the Joomla! extensions
  • Part of Packt’s Cookbook series: Each recipe is a carefully organized sequence of instructions to complete the task as efficiently as possible

Detailed Information

Language : English
Paperback : 460 pages [ 235mm x 191mm ]
Release Date : October 2010
ISBN : 1849511802
ISBN 13 : 978-1-84951-180-3
Author(s) : Suhreed Sarkar
Topics and Technologies : All Books, Cookbooks, Content Management (CMS), Joomla!, Open Source

In Detail

Joomla is an award-winning open source content management system and satisfies all your website needs. It can be extended to add features not present in the default system. Many people using Joomla! build their site easily but when they think of extending their site to the next level, with so many extensions available, they face hurdles.

Get over these hurdles with the help of Joomla! Top Extensions Cookbook. This book contains top Joomla! extensions to add maps, image galleries, slideshows, udi and video players, security, forums, shopping cart, guestbook, and other mind-opening functionalities to your site. This book provides step-by-step recipes to enrich and expand your site using Joomla! extensions the way you want to.

This book will begin with teaching you how to control access to your Joomla! site and ensuring your site’s security. You will then move on to learn migrating your website to a newer version and integrating Joomla with phpBB. You will also learn how to improve communication among your site users, collecting feedback from visitors by adding a guestbook, adding Ajax contact form, building database applications without coding, and more. As you reach the end of the book you will learn how these Joomla! extensions allow watching users in real time, adding Google map, improving advertising, adding e-commerce functionalities, and better previewing of the contents we created.

A step by step guide for extending Joomla!’s functions using most popular extensions for Joomla! 1.5

What you will learn from this book :

  • Implement access control list by creating groups and assigning permissions to groups
  • Create backups that can be restored on any other Joomla! site and relocate a site to another server without any hassle
  • Add an Ajax contact form with custom fields using AiContactSafe extension and add Ajax search to Joomla! site using PixSearch extension.
  • Import hundreds of users from a CSV file enabling them to log in without registering themselves using UserPort extension
  • Integrate phpBB with Joomla! so that users from phpBB can access Joomla! and vice versa without further registration and by a single login using JFusion extension
  • Send tweets automatically upon publishing articles in Joomla!
  • Add project management functionalities to your Joomla!-based sites and get notified about new contents from time to time (for subscribers)
  • Add attachment to an article in a much easier way using Attachment plugin
  • Build a document repository for Joomla! using DOCMan extension for sharing files through your site or if you want to provide downloads
  • Add a Google Map in content articles to find your place.using Google Maps plugin
  • Display PDF documents inside Joomla! content items using Embed PDF plugin
  • Watch your visitors in real-time using JoomlaWatch extension
  • Improve banner ads on your site and add classified ads to Joomla! Site
  • Use Google Adsense with Joomla! contents
  • Preview the page on which you just altered the contents instead of preview button taking you to home page by default

Approach

It is a cookbook which means it contains step-by-step instructions to use joomla extensions to achieve the optimal site. It shows you how to perform specific tasks in Joomla! using the popular extensions available in Joomla! extensions directory. It will also help you choose right extension for performing a specific task in Joomla!

Who this book is written for

If you want to build a basic Joomla! site and are looking for information on the use of Joomla! extensions and their customization, this book is for you.
Prior knowledge of using extensions is not expected but basic knowledge of setting up a Joomla! site will be required. Knowledge of PHP and database skills will be helpful but not essential.

Manually Translating Your Joomla! Site’s Content into Your Desired Language

In the previous article we saw how to translate a site’s content using Google’s translation service. The full process is automated and the machine does the translation. However, machine translation is not always good and can sometimes be misleading. To avoid your content getting lost in translation, or in the absence of a translation service for a specific language, like Bengali, you may like to manually translate the site’s content.

In this article by Suhreed Sarkar, author of Joomla! 1.5 Top Extensions Cookbook, you will learn how to translate your site’s content manually into your desired language using the Joom!Fish extension. It allows you to translate the articles, modules, banners, menus, sections, categories, and so on into your desired language. It also shows a language selection module for visitors to choose a language from the site’s frontend. Many other components and modules can be translated by installing their respective content elements.

Joomla! 1.5 Top Extensions Cookbook
Over 80 great recipes for taking control of Joomla! Extensions

  • Set up and use the best extensions available for Joomla!
  • Covers extensions for just about every use of Joomla!
  • Packed with recipes to help you get the most of the Joomla! extensions
  • Part of Packt’s Cookbook series: Each recipe is a carefully organized sequence of instructions to complete the task as efficiently as possible
    The reader would benefit from the previous article on

Joomla! 1.5 Top Extensions for Using Languages

    .

Getting ready…

Joom!Fish is the most popular extension for building multilingual Joomla! websites. Download the latest version of Joom!Fish from http://joomlacode.org/gf/download/frsrelease/11315/45280/JoomFish2.0.4.zip, and install it from the Extensions | Install/Uninstall screen. It installs one component, two modules, and several plugins.

How to do it…

After installation, carry out the following steps:

    1. From the Joomla! administration panel, click on Components | Joom!Fish | Control Panel. This shows the Joom!Fish :: The multilingual Content Manager for Joomla!screen.
    2. Click on Language Configuration. This shows the Joom!Fish Language Manager screen, and lists all the installed languages.

    3. In the Active column, enable the checkboxes to activate the required languages. If you don’t see an image for a language, type the image’s URL in the Image filename field. Then click the icon displayed in the Config column. This shows the Joom!Fish Language Manager – Translate Configurationscreen.

    4. In this screen, you can translate some common phrases, for example Offline Message, Site Name, Global Site Meta Description, Global Site Meta Keywords, a help site URL, mail settings, and so on. Type in the translations and click on the Save button in the toolbar.
    5. Now click on Translation, select Bengali in the Languages drop-down list, and select Categories in the Content elementsdrop-down list. This shows the translatable categories.

    6. Click on a category name and you should see the Translatescreen, with the original text and a textbox to insert your translation.

    7. Type your translation in the Translate fields, enable the Published checkbox and then click on the Save button in the toolbar. Follow the same process for translating other categories. When finished translating all categories, select Contents in the Content elements drop-down list on the Translatescreen. This shows the list of available articles for translation.

    8. Click an article title to translate. This shows the Translatescreen with the original text and textboxes for translation.

    9. Type the translations in the Translation fields, enable the Published checkbox, and click on the Save button in the toolbar.
    10. Similarly, change types in the Content elements drop-down box and translate other content including Modules, Menus, Contacts, Banners, and so on. When finished translating, click on Extensions | Module Manager. This shows the Module Manager screen, listing the installed modules. From the list, click on the Language Selection module. This shows the Module: [Edit]screen:

    11. Select Yes in the Published field and select a module position from the Position drop-down list. From the Module Parameters section, in the Appearance of language selector drop-down list select how you want to display the language selection box. You can choose from Drop down of names, Drop down of names with current language flag, ul-list of names, ul-list of names with flag, ul-list of images, and Raw display of images.
    12. Preview the site’s frontend and you should see the site in the default language, with the language selection box at the specified position.

    13. From the language selection module, click another case, in my case Bangla, to show the site content in that language.

    14. Visitors to your site can now switch to any active language through this language selection module. Note that the URL of the site now appends language code, for example, http://www.yourjoomlasite.com/index.php?lang=bn, where bn stands for the Bangla language.

There’s more…

Note that in Joom!Fish, you can translate almost anything—articles, modules, menus, sections, categories, and so on. These translations are done through content elements. You can see any component or module by clicking on Components | Joom!Fish | Content Elements.

You can download content elements for new extensions from http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/extension-specific/joomfish-extensions and http://joomlacode.org/gf/project/joomfish/frs/. After downloading content elements, click on the Install button on Content Elements screen. This shows the Joom!Fish::Content Element Installer screen.

Click on the Browse button, select the content element file, and then click on the Upload File & Install button. This installs the content and you can translate the content for that particular component or module.

Summary

This article covered:

  • Manually translating your site’s content into your desired language

Further resources on this subject:

Joomla! 1.5 Top Extensions Cookbook

Joomla! 1.5 Top Extensions Cookbook
Over 80 great recipes for taking control of Joomla! Extensions

  • Set up and use the best extensions available for Joomla!
  • Covers extensions for just about every use of Joomla!ba
  • Packed with recipes to help you get the most of the Joomla! extensions
  • Part of Packt’s Cookbook series: Each recipe is a carefully organized sequence of instructions to complete the task as efficiently as possible

via packtpub.com

This article is an excerpt from my recently published book Joomla! Top Extensions Cookbook.