RB Music - Uncovered & Rediscovered Hits » Web development

Send Emails from Joomla via WAMP/Localhost

Richard — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 18:59:16 +0000

This is something that has troubled me for at least a year or more…Joomla would refuse to send emails whatever you set in the global configuration file.

This is what I did to get it to work whether you need all the steps or not I’m not 100% sure, all I know is I can now debug from my local machine without having to dump everything on an external which quite frankly is a pain in the arse!

This is all set up with a Google mail account which seems to do the trick and using a WAMP envoirnment not tried it with any other email service. How to after the jump…

Step 1 – Edit you php.ini File

Click your wamp manager in the system tray.. click PHP then php.ini this will open up the file to edit.
Locate the following line of code “extension=php_openssl.dll” uncomment it (remove the ; which preceeds it)
Locate the mail function section and amend SMTP, smtp_port & sendmail_From to the correct email settings for your account.
If you are using Google mail this link might help
Restart your Wamp server

Here are some images to help you with the bit above!

Step 2 – Amend your email settings in Joomla

Mailer: SMTP Sever
Mail from: youremail@googlemail.com
From name: Your name
Sendmail Path: Empty
SMTP Authentication: Yes
SMTP Security: SSL
SMTP Port: 465 (“>check googlemail settings if one doesn’t work try other)
SMTP Username: youremail@googlemail.com
SMTP Passowrd: Google mail password
SMTP Host: smtp.gmail.com

Joomla Hacks & Hints

Richard — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 14:19:19 +0000

Joomla is annoying from time to time when you think something should be simple but it just complicates matters here are some hints and little hacks that can help you get the most out of Joomla.

Creating a logout link within a menu

Joomla by default won’t allow you to add a direct link to logout – instead the link takes you to the login page with a button to allow your user to logout resulting in a long winded process. Did a little searching and came across a solution where by you create a link to an external url in your menu to the following;

index.php?option=com_user&task=logout&return=aW5kZXgucGhw

The return value is a Base64 encoded string to index.php you can change this to redirect the user to any location once they click the link and logout,just copy the return location into the following site

Example
index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1&Itemid=2
Result
aW5kZXgucGhwP29wdGlvbj1jb21fY29udGVudCZ2aWV3PWFydGljbGUmaWQ9MSZJdGVtaWQ9Mg

Check user logged in within template

Want to include something in your template that only users that have logged then you can use the following code;

$checkuser = JFactory::getUser(); //include this in your template code near the top
if ($checkuser->get(‘gid’)>0){
//show whatever you want to a logged in user
}
else {
//the user isn’t logged in so show them something else
}
?>

Change Page Titles to include website name instead of item title

By default Joomla will set your page titles to the name of the content item/component so if you have a piece of news “We open our store” then this would be your page title.

I don’t like this I would much prefer the title to be the site name followed by the name of the item.

You can set your page titles up however you want with the following code

$mydoc =& JFactory::getDocument();
$mytitle = $mydoc->getTitle(); //get the title specific to this content item/component
$conf =& JFactory::getConfig();
$sitename = $conf->getValue(‘config.sitename’); //get the site name from the config file

$mydoc->setTitle($sitename.’ – ‘.$mytitle); //overide the title of the page
?>

Is Joomla the answer?

Richard — Sat, 02 May 2009 23:57:15 +0000

I have been working with Joomla for over three years now and recently my love for it as a CMS has started to fade. Now I’m not sure if its the CMS thats annoying me or the feeling that a bespoke solution to content management would make thing a whole lot easier?

One thing I do know is that for rolling out a quick site with some sort of content management then Joomla is the right route to take…once you get to grips with its templating engine within a few days you can have fully functioning website with content management that the client can update easily.

Most of the time you will find a client thinks “I need to manage my own content” but in reality only a small percentage of those actually go away and update their site on a regular basis (is this down the sometimes complex administration panel to a less computer literate?). In that sense are you missing a trick by using something so bloated as Joomla when all they want to do is add a news items every couple of weeks?

Do we really need to go to the trouble of setting up the system which out of the box does alot of things that the user is never going to use… its a bit like buying a car with all the added extras but you never use them!

Then comes the sceniaro where by a client wants something bespoke like a gallery/calendar etc … Joomla has plenty of components which easily install granted, but half the time they do a basic job and you end up having to hack the f*ck out of them to get them to work in the manner that the client expects.

So would it be quicker to build the bespoke CMS on a client by client basis in reality probably not… Most clients don’t have the budgets for some development team to sit for a few weeks developing something bespoke. I guess it comes down to a toss up of quickness of deployment and money, if those two things are a priority its hard to look past Joomla as a solution (maybe time to research some other options drupal etc?). Maybe more details from the client are required as to what they want to update before you jump onto the CMS out of the box.

Not quite sure where I am going with this post I love Joomla to bits for what it can do. It’s just recently I have felt that it has been holding me back from delivering some nice solutions to clients problems that could be solved with something built bespokly instead of being limited to the walls of Joomla!

Bell needs to speak up more!

Using Joomla for personal sites defiantly a thumbs up for using it there. For business use I am yet to decide?

Jshop custom sql within a template

Richard — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 21:01:30 +0000

It’s been along while since I posted anything tech related.. mainly down to it being low down my pecking order of interests right now though its still good fun. Like today I wanted to do my own thing within a jshop template… add my own template variables from a custom sql query. What I wanted to do was add a hidden section and then add sections within there to hold some banner images thus allowing content management by the client and the section wouldn’t be included in the main loop. Here’s how…

Add some custom php in the top of your template…




		global $dbA;

		$result =  $dbA->retrieveAllRecordsFromQuery("select * from jss_sections WHERE parent = 23");

		$this->theVariables["sectionRotate"] = $result;

?>

Line 2 is where you do your custom query to pull what ever you fancy from the database

Line 3 include the returned array into a custom variable.

Do a loop through your custom variable and output however you wish!



<#loop:sectionRotate#>







<#/loop#>

If you want to see the whole array to see what your working with obviously you can use;




print_r({*sectionRotate});

?>

JS Lint

Richard — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 20:08:20 +0000

JSLint is a JavaScript code validator which will check the syntax of the code you have written. Now more often that not when I write my code I leave a comma in where its not needed or miss a bracket which is usually fine in Firefox. But when you try the code in Internet Explorer it throws a wobbly. If I find I am having issues with IE then I put my code through JSLink which highlights any issues with your code. When you have over 100 lines of JS and you know you are hunting down one comma this can be tricky – but this site takes the guess work out of the process.

The other thing to note if your JS doesn’t work in IE and you have any ‘console.log’ lines within your code then removing these will stop IE throwing a wobbly as it doesn’t have any support for this nor does Safari or Firefox unless you enable firebug or having some form of debugger enabled.

Web sites are funny things

Richard — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 16:16:34 +0000

Before christmas at work we produced about five holding pages for a client these were identical sites just templated up for each of the stores/new logo etc they all had a simple form on them however…

The form was laid out as of the image to the right. A text box with a small button underneath stating “register email”. Now you would think it was obvious to enter an email address here but it seems not here are some of the entries we received from this form.

fish
jobs
Crewe
Stoke
Sledges – funnily enough around the time of the snow!
Circus
flea repelent
drinks bottles
african land snails – wtf

This just proves how when working for the web you have to really make things so so obvious to a user or they end up using things in the incorrect manner. Now you could validate the email addresses but you think its only a simple form how can it perceived otherwise – but obvioulsy that isn’t the case.

Maybe a user sees a textbox and automatically thinks arhhh a search – hence the results above. Intresting? … or not?

Mootools form validation with mootools.floor

Richard — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 11:59:25 +0000

Latest javascript mission was to get some nice validation for a holiding page I was creating I wanted something quite simple but ended up coming across a class called mootools.floor which cover all your validation needs e.g. email check, compare two field etc there are a long list of possibilites in the documentation

It includes support for AJAX form submission plus countless other features. The other plus point is the tooltips can be styled completely using CSS so this will fit into any site with a bit of tinkering. It also supports custom validation just write your own javascript function of what you want to validate. It really is a nice tool. It’s fairly easy to get up and running but once you get past the simple parts of this class it can be fairly tricky to get your head around – but once you get your head around it, its really nice to use!

See the demos of this in action

Documentation

Loading graphic generator

Richard — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 20:36:09 +0000

Earlier I was looking around for a loading graphic for my pre-loading image rotator and on my Google travels came across ‘Ajaxload‘. This website will create custom loading graphics on the fly.

Pick from a selection of different types of graphics enough to suit every site. Pick a background colour using the colour pick or supply hex code or go for transparent. The same applies for a foreground colour. Lets go for white background colour and the blue of my site for foreground as an example. Hit generate and it pops up in the box below hit download and there you have it a custom loading graphic…

Ajaxload – Ajax loading gif generator

MooTools preloading image rotator class

Richard — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 20:25:20 +0000

Following on from my previous post about a pre-loading image rotator I have decided to create a mooTools class for it so it can be used easily over and over again.

This class will pre-load an array of images and then begin to fade between them useful if you want to load particularly large images and let your users know that the images are on there way.

An example of the class in action can be found here

To download the example for your own use it can be downloaded here

This has been tested in Firefox 3, Opera 10 and Internet Explorer 7… Feel free to comment on any suggestions for improved functionality! Enjoy!

Mootools Popups

Richard — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 22:52:50 +0000

On most project I tend to use this somewhere or other a “slimbox” type of popup you know the ones. Well here are two takes on this effect allowing for images/iframe content and ajax calls.

Squeezebox

http://digitarald.de/project/squeezebox/

I’d rate this over smoothbox it tends to throw back some JS errors when I used it although it could be down to conflicts I have not got round to checking it out yet… Works with Moo tools 1.2

Smoothbox

http://gueschla.com/labs/smoothbox/

I think this is an older version development wise however it still functions perfectly apart from the JS errors it might just be me!