Google Checkout is now Google Wallet
Google Checkout is now Google Wallet http://t.co/K8OVEmed
Keep your site from getting taken hostage!
All too frequently we hear from customers who have handed over the login details for their domain registrar (GoDaddy, NameCheap etc) only to have their web designer transfer the domain to another registrar that is outside the customer’s control. The end result is of course that the customer then becomes dependent on that web designer and must beg and plead (and sometimes even pay fees reaching into the hundreds of dollars) just to get control of their own domain again. In a similar vein, many web design companies that also offer (or insist) on hosting your site for you will not provide hosting control panel access. This is a red flag, because it makes it impossible to save a backup of your site, again making you dependent on that web designer / webmaster. Please, at all times make sure you maintain control of your domain name(s)!
If you must provide someone with access to your domain name management area, make sure you have a clear idea of what it is they intend to do with that access. If you’re using GoDaddy, you can assign someone as an AccountExec, so that they cannot change the account password on you. However, even with AccountExec access they’d be able to transfer the domain to another registrar if you’re not careful.
It’s your site: make sure you retain full control over it, even if you don’t want to manage it on a daily basis!
Google Dart … the new Google Buzz??
Google recently announced Google Dart, a new programming language intended as both a server- and client-side language that offers greater efficiency and better syntax and structure than JavaScript. Many folks believe it’s meant to replace JavaScript.
My initial reaction to the news: horror. OK, not quite, though the thought of JavaScript going into early retirement was a funny one. I don’t see that happening any time soon. I do recall Google Buzz and what a fiasco that was, though I badly *wanted* to like it. It was officially terminated / retired December 15th. Now of course there’s Google+, which seems to be gaining momentum. With Microsoft and other major players already poo-pooing Dart, it’s starting to look like another Buzz situation though for different reasons (Buzz suffered from concerns about its privacy settings. Perhaps Dart will return in another incarnation. To follow in the same trend as Google+ may I suggest something like Google♥ or Google→? The second doesn’t quite look like a dart, and the first might get confused for “Google Love” rather than “Google Heart” … but the name they pick(ed) is the least of their worries with this new undertaking IMHO.
Check out some of the discussion over at SitePoint.
Drupal Site for a Northern Virginia / Washington, DC Economic Organization
Drupal site for a Northern Virginia / Washington DC Economic Organization: http://t.co/USPUonJm
We maintain a large Drupal 6 site for a northern Virginia county government. This particular client is a county government organization and as such we cannot disclose their name on our site. Please contact us so that we can share additional details.
- Client: Withheld at client request
- Link: URL wittheld
- Location: Northern Virginia
new site: Farsi Film Training
new site: Farsi Film Training http://t.co/4WEIzfnd
documentary film non-profit project
FHI 360 required an e-learning site to train young aspiring documentary filmmakers throughout the Middle East. This is a placeholder site put in place until the e-learning site is complete. We built a simple contact form and a lengthy application form – all in Farsi. The Persian text runs right to left and as such we designed our template around that.
URL withheld due to confidentiality.
- Client:FHI 360
- Link:URL wittheld
- Location:Washington, DC
new site: USAID-funded Non-profit for Washington DC aid agency
New Drupal 7 site fort USAID-funded non-profit in Washington, DC: http://t.co/t8kMPWZQ.
We built a site for a public health non-profit called using Drupal 7. It is set up using the Drupal content management system so that staff can manage the site on their own. It features integrated blog RSS feeds from four separate external blogs. It also features integrated maps of projects, using a Drupal integration of the Google Maps API. The project is funded by USAID and is managed by FHI 360, CARE and Winrock International.
Name and link withheld due to client confidentiality. Please contact us to find out more about this project.
PayPal Payment Module (Joomla 1.5-1.7)
Simple configurable payment module
There are tons of commercial PayPal extensions available, but what if you just want to show a simple payment form that lets customers set the price, add a description and enter their name? This module does just that. Just install it, create a module and select “PayPal Payment”, then configure it as needed and assign it to a module position and menu item(s). You can also configure a return URL and “payment canceled” URL.
This has only been tested on Joomla 1.5 right now but may work fine on Joomla 1.6/1.7. ….. Updated so it now works on Joomla 1.6 and 1.7. OK, I only tested in on 1.7 but they are basically the same thing, and you should be using 1.7 anyway.
We created this module for DC Internationals, a language institute located in Washington, D.C. Check it out.
Each language has its own page and its own customized payment form. This was done by simply copying the module and assigning it to the various pages .. one per page.
Joomla World Conference, San Jose
Joomla World Conference, San Jose – November 16-18 2012 http://t.co/M6Z7CEIN
new site: Mineralogical Society of Washington, DC
new site: Mineralogical Society of Washington, D.C.: http://t.co/hJanamio
Founded in 1942, MSDC meets monthly at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, on the national Mall in Washington, DC. Members range from total novices to true experts. We redesigned their site using Joomla, so the society can now edit their pages more easily.
Free Web Design and SEO Consultation
Free Web Design and SEO Consultation – as Advertised with the Loudoun County, Virginia Chamber of Commerce: http://t.co/fyzaRXXJ
Drupal 8 Roadmap
Drupal 8 has been in the works for some time now, and looks pretty exciting. We’re particularly excited about web services becoming part of Drupal core, rather than being something you can add on. We have built custom web services applications for Joomla & SouthWare e-commerce sites, but would love to be able to do that more easily in Drupal too.
Drupal 7.10 Released
Drupal 7.10 Released http://t.co/yCLyyGbs
Drupal 7.10, a maintenance release with numerous bug fixes (no security fixes) is now available for download. Several major bugs, including one causing errors with the 5.x branch of Drush, have been fixed this release. See the Drupal 7.10 release notes for a full listing.
Read more: http://drupal.org/drupal-7.10
Get ready for Joomla 2.5!
Joomla 2.5 (formerly codenamed 1.8) is coming out any day now, short on the heels of winning 2011′s Packt CMS award.
This is the next major release in the series, which started with 1.0 in the Mambo days, progressed to the now very stable 1.5, and on to 1.6/1.7, which were intended as a stepping stone to 2.5. We have seen conflicting reports of an early January or late December release date. Either way, there will be a period of months in which Joomla users plan their migration to 2.5. If you are not using too many extensions you could probably migrate fairly painlessly (a migration tool is reportedly in the works).
Search Engine Optimization Successes
We’ve been focusing on our search engine optimization (SEO) efforts a lot lately, and updated our SEO page to include some more success stories and examples.
Many of our customers’ sites are doing quite well in search results, with some in first place (not just page one) of Google. Our own site is on page one for “award winning web design”, and beats out the Web Association Awards site. We won a Web Award in September for our work on the Vineyard Arts Project site, done using the Joomla CMS(content management system).
Have a look at our SEO page and let us know if you could use some help on your site. We offer no-obligation free initial SEO consultations.
Emerald Education Systems – Drupal Site
Emerald Education Systems http://t.co/HvQQjplW - low vision rehabilitation site using Drupal 6 for a customer in Baltimore, Maryland. Integrated with online courses. Site also integrates feeds from another site, pplvr.com.
ATM Parts Distributor Site Using Joomla
ACG ATM parts, supplies, and repairs site with custom e-commerce using Joomla 1.7: http://t.co/drC8gZpV.
Features a custom e-commerce component integrating Joomla 1.7 with SouthWare, using web services.
Atlanta Computer Group specializes in ATM parts, supplies, and repairs. ACG uses SouthWare Netlink, for which we developed a custom Joomla application.
They use SouthWare for their enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, together with Netlink. Their previous site ran on a Windows platform, but they did not have a convenient way to editing their own pages while incorporating e-commerce into their site.
Working very closely with staff at Opus Integrated Business Systems (http://www.opus-is.com), we developed a Joomla SouthWare Netlink integration including component, plugins, and modules from the ground up. These use web services (SOAP) to connect to SouthWare / Netlink and display products, categories, pricing, and so on. Opus built the web services and some of the Ajax functionality, while we managed the Joomla integration and consumption of web services. The final site is fully SSL-encrypted and features seamless SouthWare e-commerce with Joomla as the framework and content management system.
Forcing Moodle admins to use English but regular users use another language
Add this to your theme’s PHP pages wherever you want this functionality. Add it above the <html> tag … in our case we force regular users to see the site in Farsi, but admin users see it in English. We also hid the language menu (comment out “echo $OUTPUT->lang_menu();”).
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');
}
}
?>
Magento strangeness
I’m building an e-commerce site with Magento 1.5.1.0 and could not help but notice that when you go to Manage Products, there is no way to filter by categories. There are tons of columns and filter options, except filtering by category. Pretty strange for an e-commerce system.
You can go to Manage Categories and view which products are in which category, but you can’t directly edit the products from there … you have to use Manage Products for that. In other words, you just have to type in some part of the product’s name and filter on that.
For all the rage that Magento is, I cannot fathom how this could have been overlooked except intentionally. Yes, you can attempt to add a Categories column in (see this link) and surely there are commercial add-ons for this, but something like this should be one of the first core features in any e-commerce platform in my opinion. There are some who speculate that Magento was intentionally built to look good but be lacking in certain respects, to coax people towards purchasing add-ons and support. I can see why they would think that way.
Joomla Wins 2011 Packt Award for top CMS
Joomla Wins 2011 Packt Award for top CMS http://t.co/soIhdYPQ
Auto Metal Direct: car parts distributor using Joomla
Auto Metal Direct (http://t.co/1vFZf9ef) is a car parts distributor based in Atlanta. Their new site uses Joomla 1.7, and we built a custom Joomla extension integrating SouthWare e-commerce with Joomla using web services (SOAP). We developed a component, two plugins, and a couple modules. Meanwhile, the customer is now able to edit their own pages with ease, whereas before they had to rely on their webmaster for every change.
So long, GoDaddy
We have been getting fed up with GoDaddy’s advertising (questionable ethics with regard to objectification of women, shooting of elephants, etc) as well as the barrage of products they try to push on us, and are finally starting to transfer our domains away from them. We looked into both NameCheap.com and Moniker.com and both looked fine. We went for NameCheap.com in the end, for no particular reason other than that they seem to have gotten a bit more favorable press, or at least more press than Moniker.
In a similar vein, we are planning on moving our bank accounts away from certain unnamed corporate behemoths to a local community bank who may actually feel they have a stake in our success.
Multilingual Moodle
We’re working on two Joomla-Moodle multilingual e-learning sites for a non-profit customer of ours, in English and Persian.
Moodle used to have no built-in translation capability as best I can remember (back in 2003 …) but the text filter plugins in Moodle have changed that. Now you can enter <span> tags with lang attributes and a “multilang” class to enter content as follows:
<span lang="en" class="multilang">Some English text here</span><span lang="fa" class="multilang">Some Persian text here</span>
I purposely didn’t type in Persian above, since it may not display properly for everyone.
The idea with the above is that Moodle will then only show the currently selected language. That works, except for the course names, which are still untranslatable. For sites with just two or three languages you can just include both language versions in the course name, e.g. “Management 101 – Persian Translation Here”. Not ideal, but gets the job done. This was our solution in our 2003 run-in with Moodle and is still our solution today. There probably is a way to do this properly but it would involve much programming and redoing of Moodle’s title fields.
We’ll be using/building a Moodle theme that supports left-to-right as well as right-to-left languages. We are doing the same in Joomla.
We are using Joomdle to connect Moodle with Joomla. This works great for Joomla 1.5 and JoomFish 2. Joomdle has a development version that’s compatible with Joomla 1.7, but does not yet offer multilingual support, so we are stuck with Joomla 1.5 and JoomFish for now.
Joomla by default will show both <span> tags, so the template needs a little PHP love to hide the non-relevant language content. Here is what we came up with, which works great for just two languages:
<?php
//plethora mod
$registry = JFactory::getConfig();
$jfLang = $registry->getValue("joomfish.language", false);
if($jfLang->shortcode == 'fa'){
?>
<style type="text/css">
span[lang|="en"]{
display:none!important;
}
</style>
<?php
}
if($jfLang->shortcode == 'en'){
?>
<style type="text/css">
span[lang|="fa"]{
display:none!important;
}
</style>
<?php
}
//end
?>
We just inserted this at the end of the <head> portion of our template’s index.php file.
Drupal 7 Site for electronics manufacturer
We built a new Drupal 7 site for EIT, an electronics manufacturer based in Sterling, Virginia: http://t.co/L1jVOfPL.
EIT, LLC ($75+ M/yr) is located in Sterling, Virginia and has been providing complete electronic design, assembly and test services since 1977. EIT’s old site was built using static HTML pages and was becoming outdated. EIT staff needed a way to edit pages without involving web developers in every content change. In addition, EIT’s southern Virginia facility (in Danville) had its own site at eitsouth.com, the contents of which needed to be merged into the main corporate site at eit.com.
We designed and built a new site from the ground up using Drupal 7, configured in such a way that designated staff members could edit pages. The page editor supports content revisions, so that editors can roll back to a previous version at will. The design features an image slideshow on the home page and a customized header image for each area of the site. The Careers page allows the HR derpartment to add job openings that candidates can apply for on the spot, including the required EEO (Equal Employment Opportunity) form. Submitted form data is emailed to relevant personnel within the company, and can be exported to CSV or Excel formats.
Main Swing: Joomla CMS conversion for DC jazz band
New Joomla site for DC jazz band, Main Swing: http://t.co/pYeQ8wwI
Main Swing, a chic cutting-edge jazz band based in Washington D.C., performs swing, bee-bop, blues, latin-jazz, and popular dance favorites. Their previous site consisted of a single-page HTML file. We built a new site using Joomla, allowing their site to grow more easily, and enabling the owners to edit the pages on their own. We also added an mp3 player with playlist support.
Joomla site for electronic health records company
MDI Solutions has a Joomla site, which we revamped and improved for them: http://t.co/3tX02gQo.
MDI Solutions, a provider of electronic health records and data integration services in both North America and the UK, approached Plethora Design for some visual and functional improvements to their existing Joomla site. We implemented numerous design and SEO improvements, including changes to the fonts, menu system, XML sitemap, meta descriptions, and titles, and added links at the bottom of all pages for additional search engine optimization as well as providing an alternate way for users of the site to access information. We also adjusted the home page to accommodate a new page for MDI’s UK market, using modules as home page content.
Washington DC language program site using Joomla
DC Internationals – MESALI uses Joomla: http://t.co/83iAKdV.
MESALI / DC Internationals offers foreign language classes including Arabic, Pashto, Kurdish, Turkish, Urdu, Persian, and many more.
MESALI runs ads on NPR radio (WAMU 88.5 in DC), and approached us for help migrating to a better hosting environment and cleaning up the site overall. We improved the layout and styling of their Joomla site while migrating their tuition payment forms away from their previous host.
We also helped out on SEO. When we got involved they were hardly being found on Google. Now you can Google “arabic classes dc” and find them on page one. That took only a matter of weeks to accomplish.
Joomla 1.5 golf site
Real Deal Golf is a new golf-themed site using Joomla: http://t.co/yKzmFvc.
Realdealgolf.com is a golf community with auctions, deals, and maps. Users can customize their profiles, connect with other users, send private messages, locate other users nearby on the map (using a Google Maps integration), bid on penny auctions, and see daily deals for their area.
Front Page Slideshow Link Problem
Front Page Slideshow Link Problem http://t.co/dhKOgCA. We encountered an issue when trying to save slides that we did not intend to link; they were getting save with “URL” as the link. The solution was to manually enter “#” instead.
Front Page Slideshow Link Problem
FPSS is a great slideshow addon for Joomla, Drupal, and standalone slideshows.
They have a new version for Joomla 1.7, with a much improved interface. When it comes to linking slides, it seems you can choose to display links for all slides, or not. But what if you want links on some slides but not others? In such a case, if the user did not supply a URL, the link will say “http://www.yoursite.com/URL”. You could enter “#” or “javascript:;” as the URL, but one cannot expect non web developers to remember to do this. The user should not be required to take additional action just to NOT link a slide.
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.
Joomla site wins Web Award
Our Joomla site for the Vineyard Arts Project (vineyardartsproject.org) won a Web Award in September 2011: http://t.co/UPOsUdp.
Founded in 2007, Vineyard Arts Project is a non-profit, tax-exempt organization whose mission is to foster, develop, and promote the live arts as experiences central to education and the community of Martha’s Vineyard. Its founder and artistic director is Ashley Melone, whose most recent credits include ballet coordinator for Darren Aronofsky’s film Black Swan, for which Natalie Portman won an Oscar.
Having designed their original site in 2008, we were asked to redesign it with an emphasis on upcoming programs. As with the previous site, the site features beautiful photos of dancers in motion, but we opted for a light and airy look: white, light blue, and orange. The layout was built as a custom Joomla template, and is iPad and iPhone compatible.
The original site also used a custom Joomla template, with a Flash home page based on photos of various Vineyard Arts Project dancers. This minimalist gray / orange design was accentuated by the warm colors in the home page photo, and put the viewer’s attention squarely on the content, whether it be photos or text. The new design maintains that, but using a light color scheme and more emphasis on user participation through social media.
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- new site: Interferometrics, Inc. http://t.co/FNJa8P8t
- new site: Virginia Martial Arts Academy http://t.co/jiSTMqZE
- Create and Update Content Without Programming Knowledge http://t.co/IFfTyiJd
- Google Checkout is now Google Wallet http://t.co/K8OVEmed