Here’s the code:

<?php

function curPageURL() {
 $pageURL = 'http';
 //if ($_SERVER["HTTPS"] == "on") {
 if ($_SERVER["SERVER_PORT"] != "80") {
	 $pageURL .= "s";
 }//other way to detect SSL??
 $pageURL .= "://";
	 if ($_SERVER["SERVER_PORT"] != "80") {
	  $pageURL .= $_SERVER["SERVER_NAME"].":".$_SERVER["SERVER_PORT"].$_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"];
	 } else {
	  $pageURL .= $_SERVER["SERVER_NAME"].$_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"];
	 }
 return $pageURL;
}
$url = curPageURL();
$admins = get_admins();
    $isadmin = false;
    foreach ($admins as $admin) {
        if ($USER->id == $admin->id) {
            $isadmin = true;
            break;
        }
    }
    if ($isadmin) {
		if(
		!isset($_GET['lang']) ||
		(isset($_GET['lang']) && ($_GET['lang'] != 'en'))
		){
			if(strstr(curPageURL(),'lang=fa')){//if not home page
				$url = str_replace('lang=fa','lang=en',$url);
        		header('Location: '.$url);
			}
			else{//URL must not have an = in it, therefore it has GET vars and has a ? as well. It is possible to have a ? without ='s though, so we check for = and not ?.
				///header('Location: '.curPageURL().'?lang=en');
			}
		}
    } else {
        if(
		!isset($_GET['lang']) ||
		(isset($_GET['lang']) && ($_GET['lang'] != 'fa'))
		){
			if(strstr(curPageURL(),'=')){//if not home page
				$url = str_replace('lang=en','lang=fa',$url);
        		//header('Location: '.$url);
			}
			else{//URL must have an = in it, therefore it has GET vars and has a ? as well. It is possible to have a ? without ='s though, so we check for = and not ?.
				//header('Location: '.curPageURL().'?lang=fa');
			}
		}

?>

We wrote a quick fix for this. Open up the default.php template file for the FPSS layout you’re using. We used JJ-Oobs so we opened up /modules/mod_fpss/tmpl/JJ-Obs/default.php. Right after “foreach($slides as $slide):” insert the following

if($slide->link == 'URL'){
$slide->link = 'javascript:;';
}

We used a “javascript:;” URL rather than “#” because this way if you slideshow is far down the page, clicking it will not take you back to the top of the page … using “#” can conflict with named anchors but “javascript:;” does not.

http://www.theie6countdown.com/

Here’s how:

1. Sign up for Twitter and Facebooks accounts (in case you’ve been living under a rock the past decade).
2. Log in to your Facebook account and then visit http://apps.facebook.com/twitter/. It will walk you through the setup.

If you use or are considering using Joomla, check out Autotweet NG, which can send a tweet every time a Joomla article or K2 item is added. We have used this with K2, and the only complaint / bug worth mentioning is that copying a K2 item does not seem to create a tweet .. you have to create a NEW item and save it. Autotweet NG also offers a commercial version which has some pretty advanced Facebook integration (including posting images from K2), but if you just want text, the Facebook Twitter app will probably be just fine.

WordPress also offers a number of plugins that can send a tweet upon for each new post, or that can display your Twitter status as a widget. We use Twitter Tools.

Thanks to a post over at the K2 Forums, we customized our K2 installation so it is now possible to turn off the popup modal link on an item-by-item basis.

Download: k2-item-image-link-option.zip

Changed files;
administrator/com_k2/models/item.xml
components/com_k2/templates/default/item.php

The code in item.php is set up so items will show popup links on images by default, but if the item options have been set to disable the popup, it will not be linked.

I’m glad they provided the option to cancel, but what is the point of ordering online when I may have to wait up to a month and who knows, longer?

Clearly BN either does not track how many items they have in stock, or they do not care, and will try to fulfill the order once they have collected payment. This follows the philosophy of “money now is always better than money later” – which I would tend to agree with, but it’s not good when this alienates customers. A 30-day wait during the holiday season is unacceptable! In my case it was for a birthday, which has already passed.

JIT (Just-in-time) is great and has worked well for Toyota, but the customer should not be forgotten in all of this.

You can stop this from happening in a couple ways:

• You could make the phone number a graphic
• Insert some hidden code into the phone number that prevents the Skype plugin from detecting it as a phone number.

Example

Before:

Phone: (555) 123-4567

After:

Phone: (555)<span style="display: none;">.</span> 123-4567

The hidden period is enough to stop the Skype plugin from workings its magic / evil. This technique was tested using Joomla but will work anywhere.

<?php include(‘navbar.php’);?>

The tabs are highlighted for the current page, so if you are on “About Us”, the About Us tab should be highlighted. To accomplish this, I wrote a simple function;

A sample navigation tab would then look like this;

<a href=”consulting.php”><img src=”images/navbar-consulting<?php isactive(‘consulting.php’);?>.gif” name=”consulting” width=”104″ height=”35″ border=”0″ id=”consulting” onmouseover=”MM_swapImage(‘consulting’,”,’images/navbar-consulting-hover.gif’,1)” onmouseout=”MM_swapImgRestore()” /></a>

That simply uses the function to tell it which file name to match to the current page’s file name:

isactive(‘consulting.php’);

The end result is that on consulting.php, the HTML output for that tab would look like this:

<a href=”consulting.php”><img src=”images/navbar-consulting-hover.gif” name=”consulting” width=”104″ height=”35″ border=”0″ id=”consulting” onmouseover=”MM_swapImage(‘consulting’,”,’images/navbar-consulting-hover.gif’,1)” onmouseout=”MM_swapImgRestore()” /></a>

.. and that is done automatically using a single included file.

For 3-digit zip codes:

UPDATE zipcodes SET zip = CONCAT(’00′, zip) WHERE LENGTH(zip) = 3

This will turn ’123′ into ’00123′.

For 4-digit zip codes:

UPDATE zipcodes SET zip = CONCAT(’0′, zip) WHERE LENGTH(zip) = 4

This will turn ’1234′ into ’01234′.

Access Level Control (ACL)

It now features a robust ACL system, though some of the inheritance rules will take some getting used to. This is often cited as a feature Drupal has and Joomla lacks, but soon enough that will be a moot point. From my understanding there will be just one more beta in about two weeks, and then it should be time for 1.6!

Nested categories

Joomla always suffered from a rigid approach to categorization, with Sections and Categories. A section could contain categories, but there could be no sub-categories. This long-running annoyance has finally been been vanquished with Joomla 1.6. It uses only categories (no more sections!), and they can be nested as deeply as you want. I’m sure at some point someone will nest a category 666 levels down, and run into a terrible bug there … but in theory it should be fine, because a category would simply be assigned to a parent category .. the number of sub-levels should have no bearing on it.

Drupal has of course supported nested categories for a long time, where they are called Taxonomy. I think Drupal’s Taxonomy is still more advanced than Joomla 1.6′s category system, but for many, perhaps most users, just having nested categories is en0ugh. Those who want to do more advance PHP magic will naturally be more inclined towards Drupal anyway, and to words like Taxonomy.

The elimination of Joomla’s sections does mean that template code that relies on section IDs will have to be changed to be 1.6-compatible. It will have to check for category IDs instead. It also opens up an interesting possibility of (for example) using a database query to select only those categories that are nested within the current category. That could come in handy in displaying category ‘blogs’ or headlines in a more automated fashion than creating menu links. And speaking of menu links;

Menu Management

Joomla’s menu management has gotten very slick;

• Changing the menu type is now faster.
• Much more control over the menu items: meta data, page titles, robot rules, page class styling,  menu link title & CSS attributes.
• Module assignment from a menu item. You can still assign modules to menu items, but now you can also do this from the menu item itself, rather than having to edit the module separately.
• Batch processing multiple menu items
• Language filtering; show your menu item only for certain languages, or for all of them. Would be nice if you could select several languages and hide it on others, but that may be coming.
• Set template style

Redirect manager

Joomla 1.6 has a new component for managing URL redirects. Presumably this writes to the .htaccess file and created a 301 redirect.

Banner Manager

This is not too different from the 1.5 version, but features “Tracks”, which tracks clicks and impressions in date-filterable and CSV-exportable fashion. Finally we will be able to do some more robust reporting.

I am however baffled that banner clients still have no way to log in and view their banner’s statistics. I think most clients would want that, and offering that ability will help site owners gain more advertisers.

I wrote a Joomla 1.5 hack that got around this by using the “alias” field of the banner client to hold a username. That allows us to associate a banner client with a username, and then we can use that to display banner statistics to a given Joomla user (and only that user). Looks like I will have to port that hack to 1.6. Sigh.

It’s a wonderful invoicing tool, offering smooth integration with Basecamp, online payment for your customers, and even snail mail for those times you need to mail an invoice the old-fashioned way. Using Authorize.net you can also set up recurring payments.

Here is some PHP code you could insert in your template to achieve this (for Joomla 1.5);

Using this, you could for example control which graphics or CSS file are loaded depending on the section of the article/category.

Google Analytics uses JavaScript to determine whether the connection uses HTTP or HTTPS. Skype also uses an external JavaScript file, but forcibly loads it over HTTP, which is a problem for sites running on an HTTPS connection (SSL), because it will trigger “mixed content” and “potentially unsafe” content warnings in some browsers, depending on visitors’ browser settings. That can reduce customer trust, which in turn can have an impact on online sales or user stickiness.

If you need to use Skype buttons on a site that is accessed over SSL, beware.

Thankfully, I let Basecamp staff know about this usability glitch, and the VERY NEXT DAY they had resolved it! It’s nice to see that kind of responsiveness.

99designs.com has some things going for it that are attractive to customers, but I’m a little concerned about how they have designers competing. I wonder what kind of pay the designers get, and where they’re based. My understanding is the designers don’t get paid unless their design won the “contest”. This is spec work, which undermines and devalues this industry in my opinion. Why work with a disgruntled designer or one that doesn’t respect him or herself?

For example, to post a project, a client would pay a flat fee of $39, which should ward off frivolous project requests, and the winner of the design contest would be awarded the project budget via escrow. The trouble I have with this is that the final budgets, while reasonable for one designer (if on the low end), do not pay the “losers” of the design contest. I think this is wrong. In essence, 99designs.com is a competitor to elance.com and odesk.com, but presents its projects as design “contests” when in fact it is a way for clients to procure designs without needing bids. It’s spec work. I don’t think anyone should work for free, even the ones that lose the contest.

While a client might get a bunch of design options for little money this way, this process cut out the whole discovery phase of the project. For example, as a client you might want a new header and logo for your site. You can request this and receive many responses, and there’s a good chance one of them will strike your fancy. Normally there would be at least a small phase of getting to know the customer, their needs, business model, etc. That is entirely missing in the 99designs.com model. It might work in the end, but it’s exploitative. In some cases, designers on there are even under 18 (reference).

It’s a freelance marketplace masquerading as design contests … for little or no pay, and using child labor.

Of course, there are businesses out there that will use fake addresses just so they can get listed. Google verifies by mail OR by phone … and these days it is possible to order a VOIP number for any location. One can only expect that Google will stop that practice at some point. Even if they don’t, having potential customers go to a non-existent address is not going to make them very happy!

Check out Google Local. It is an underutilized part of SEO.

Example;

Lorem ipsum ei cetero legendos appellantur per, indoctum iudicabit ei duo, in per ignota persius perfecto. Duo ne alii summo consequuntur, vitae suscipit gloriatur cum ei, augue atomorum vulputate ea eum. Usu eu erant mediocrem, posse bonorum voluptatum et pro. Sea iisque gubergren rationibus cu, ne mea takimata mandamus laboramus. Duo utroque sententiae interesset te, luptatum scripserit suscipiantur et pri. Dicta verear appetere vim ne, nam eu alii ridens, aeque legendos ne mei.

HTML:

<p class=”firstparagraph”>Lorem ipsum ei cetero legendos appellantur per, indoctum iudicabit ei duo, in per ignota persius perfecto. Duo ne alii summo consequuntur, vitae suscipit gloriatur cum ei, augue atomorum vulputate ea eum. Usu eu erant mediocrem, posse bonorum voluptatum et pro. Sea iisque gubergren rationibus cu, ne mea takimata mandamus laboramus. Duo utroque sententiae interesset te, luptatum scripserit suscipiantur et pri. Dicta verear appetere vim ne, nam eu alii ridens, aeque legendos ne mei.</p>

CSS:

p.firstparagraph:first-letter{

}


Reference

Locate the superadmin user account. It will have a gid (group ID) of 25.

By default its username is admin, but the username may have been (should have been!) changed. It’s a good idea to change it, for security reasons. The “admin” username is the first one hackers will try.

Now, let’s change the password using phpMyAdmin. Edit the user using phpMyAdmin and find the password field. That is MD5-encrypted so we need to think of a new pw and MD5-encrypt it. It should look something like this example:

7da8c7fed439183092er69334b54fe01:UIBWsiwIlkk2wkHCUmC1XxD1tAd1uQgK

You need to generate a new MD5-encrypted password. Do that here:

http://www.iwebtool.com/md5

.. or Google ‘md5 encrypt’ for other similar sites.

Just enter what you want the password to be, and it will tell you the MD5 code for it. Copy that code and put that into the password field in phpMyAdmin. Save.

See if you can log into Joomla and get the full features now using the username you just edited over in phpMyAdmin.

Note that Joomla’s passwords are MD5-encrypted *and* salted, meaning that they have a colon and then a second MD5 string after that. But using an externally generated MD5 string and pasting that in will work, at least for Joomla 1.5.15.

Add this in your template PHP code;

Now you can use if statements like this;

if($sectionid == ’4′){
echo “this article is in section 4!”;
}

You can use this for customized navigation, for example, keeping certain buttons highlighted when you’re viewing articles within a certain section. It can be used to display a module only if you’re in a certain section, but it’s useful for more than just modules. Enjoy.

Displays a random video for a specific user. Lets you set the video width and height, control whether to show a “more videos” link or not, and control the wording of that link. Also allows you to display a single YouTube video instead of a random one. It uses the Google Data API for YouTube to grab the user’s video IDs and pick one at random.

Requirements: Joomla 1.5 and Zend 1.9+ (supported by most Apache servers). This has been tested on a LAMP machine (Linux/Apache) but in some cases – Windows servers, perhaps, or if your host doesn’t allow PHP scripts to use the ini_set() function – it may be necessary to manually set the include_path directive in your php.ini to something like ‘include_path = ..:/usr/lib/php:/home/account/public_html/modules/mod_randomyoutube/Zend/library’.

The above assumes your php.ini include_path is /usr/lib/php, but that will be different for every server, so check phpinfo() for that. In the Joomla backend, go to Help > System Info, PHP Information.

JRequest::getVar(‘Itemid‘);

//(detects current page’s Itemid)

Or to detect the URL of a specified menu item:

$menuitem = “34″; //this can be set manually or by your script
$item = JFactory::getApplication()->getMenu()->getItem( $menuitem );
$url = JRoute::_($item->link . ‘&Itemid=’ . $item->id);

However, the above method means that you must already know the Itemid, since the menu id *is* the Itemid. So it’s only good for detecting the URL.

So how do we find out an appropriate Itemid for URLs created on the fly in the backend?

After scouring a lot of posts on the Joomla forum and elsewhere, and also after reading all the available documentation, I got frustrated and just wrote a quick and dirty query:

$queryitemid = “SELECT * FROM #__menu WHERE type=’component’ AND link LIKE ‘%com_eventlist%view=eventlist%’ ORDER BY id ASC LIMIT 1″;
$db->setQuery($queryitemid);
$itemid = $db->loadResult();

if((!itemid) || ($itemid == ”) || ($itemid == NULL)){
//echo “resorting to backup Itemid detection<br>”;
//if default ‘eventlist’ view not found in menu, look for other menu items and use the first one (lowest itemid)

$queryitemid = “SELECT * FROM #__menu WHERE type=’component’ AND link LIKE ‘%com_eventlist%’ ORDER BY id ASC LIMIT 1″;
$db->setQuery($queryitemid);
$itemid = $db->loadResult();

}

if(($itemid != ”) && ($itemid != NULL)){
$itemid = $itemid;
}

else{
//if EventList is now in a menu, use the Itemid set in the plugin parameters.
$itemid = $this->_params->get(‘itemid’);
}

I used a LIKE query to select the “eventlist” view type for the com_eventlist component. I could have avoided use of LIKE by doing a more complex query, and I’m not sure it would have offered much of a performance gain over this LIKE usage. Maybe if this were a script that’s being run a lot, but this only runs when someone adds an event or venue.

• v. 1.5: added French language definitions
• v. 1.4: added PHP date() formatting for date & time. Fixed venue addition bug, also allowed for display of venue within event tweet. Removed unused “user layer”.
• v. 1.3: you can now display the event date and time in your tweet.

Solution #1 would be to edit your site’s PHP.ini file and set this:
allow_url_fopen = On
It may currently be set to allow_url_fopen = Off, but needs to be on.

See this link for a full description of what to do;
http://www.logaholic.com/support-center/index.php?x=&mod_id=2&id=8
Note that you may need to add this line inside your /httpdocs/php.ini file as well as inside /httpdocs/administrator/php.ini, and you may need to create those php.ini files and FTP them to the server.
On some servers, a PHP.ini file is only allowed in certain locations, like /etc/ or /cgi-bin. But in most cases it should be in the folders I described.
That may fix it.

Solution #2
It means in your case the Twitter links will have to use the actual site URLs rather than TinyURL ones, but it should work.

So, in /plugins/system/eventlisttwitter.php, around line 103, find:

function _createTinyUrl($strURL) {
global $mainframe;
$tinyurl = file_get_contents(“http://tinyurl.com/api-create.php?url=”.$strURL);
return $tinyurl;
}

…. replace that with this:

function _createTinyUrl($strURL) {
global $mainframe;
if(ini_get(‘allow_url_fopen’)){
$tinyurl = file_get_contents(“http://tinyurl.com/api-create.php?url=”.$strURL);
return $tinyurl;
}
elseif(1==3){
$ch = curl_init();
$timeout = 5;
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_URL,’http://tinyurl.com/api-create.php?url=’.$strURL);
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,1);
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT,$timeout);
$data = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
return $data;
}
else{
return JURI::base();
}
}

If modifying the code is too daunting, uninstall and then reinstall the plugin, using the attached plugin zip file. It’s also on my site at http://www.plethoradesign.com/downloads/.
The above modified code should work for you even without touching php.ini, so it may actually be the easiest solution. If your host doesn’t support PHP’s CURL libraries, the Twitter link will simple link to your site, rather than the individual event. Otherwise the event URL will get cut off because of Twitter’s limit of 140 characters.

See it in action here: http://www.novamineralclub.org/calendar. Click on the Google Earth icon at the far right above the calendar.

Download here

Download it here »

Version 1.0 – July 30, 2009. Joomla 1.5 native only. Comes with language translation capability, but only English is included by default. GPL / open-source.

Download it here

Special thanks to Tomasz Dobrzyński, upon whose Twitter Status plugin this was based.

The reverse is also true. You may have so many events that it would be silly to cram them on one long page, one after the other. You may even need to set up some event categories, for example academic calendar events versus cultural events.

There are several Joomla solutions (including a couple extensions) that I have used for both ends. In order from simple to complex:

• Simple Joomla article that is manually edited. Requires no additional customer training, but only works for small numbers of events.
• Get a free Google Calendar and embed it. Learn to live with the lack of full control over its styling.
• EventList extension (schlu.net). This is a great open-source extension that displays upcoming events in a very straightforward way. It also lets visitors register (though not pay for) events. With this you can offer visitors RSS feeds and iCal formats of your calendar as well. iCal (.ics) files can be imported into Microsoft Outlook and Google Calendar, and many other calendar applications. It does NOT offer a traditional month/week view except as a module, but that should be fine. Take a look at this recent calendar I did for the Brooklyn Music School.
• JCal Pro, the aptly named Events Calendar (a.k.a. JEvents), for displaying a month, week, or more at a time. JEvents also integrates with DT Register and Community Builder to allow for paid event registrations.
• Take a look at the calendar extensions at Joomla’s site.

Without CSS3:

With CSS3:

Note that the second textarea element has a thicker white border, different background color, and different text color. It is easily possible to assign different border colors and radiuses to different elements. It is important to set a background color, even if it is to be the same as the page background color. I have found that if you don’t, your rounded borders may not be displayed.

Sample HTML/inline CSS code:

<form>

<input style=”-moz-border-radius: 5px;-webkit-border-radius: 5px;background-color:#444;color:#fff;border: 1px solid #CCC;” name=”subject” type=”text” />

<textarea style=”-moz-border-radius: 10px;-webkit-border-radius: 10px;background-color:#222;border: 2px solid #fff;color:#fff;” name=”subject”></textarea>

<input type=”submit” value=”submit” />

</form>

<!–[if lt IE 7]>
<style type=”text/css”>
img, div {
behavior: url(<?php echo JURI::base().”templates/”.$this->template; ?>/iepngfix.htc);
}
</style>
<![endif]–>

Download iepngfix.htc

I have used this successfully on numerous sites. There are actually some Joomla plugins that achieve the same thing, however I prefer retaining manual control over these things right in the template. If IE6 gives a JavaScript popup warning about DIV elements, you can try to change the above by removing the DIV from the CSS code. Reload and see if the layout has been broken or not.

Lou Reed, Laurie Anderson, and Karole Armitage

In 2006 I designed a brand-new (and, incidentally, award-winning) site for a New York dance company called called Armitage Gone! Dance. At that time it was designed using Dreamweaver templates, and it was maintained using Adobe Contribute. I recently converted it to Joomla.

Check out the new video and photos of Armitage Gone Dance’s 2009 Think Punk event. Among those in attendance were Lou Reed, Calvin Klein, David Salle, Karole Armitage, Jeff Koons, and Rufus Wainwright. I like to follow my customers’ growth, and hold out hopes of being invited so I can get to meet some of these people … if you’re reading, Lou, contact me.