The best way to convert existing templates to the Joomla compatible format - Joomla Template Kit

Developing Joomla templates can be a real pain if you have to manually code every bit of line in your template to make it work with Joomla but this nifty little plugin for Dreamweaver can make things a whole lot easier for you. It's called the Joomla Template Kit and was developed by Media 65 who also are responsible for making some nice templates. Along with the Dreamweaver plugin, you also get some nice lengthy video tutorials explaining all the steps you need to go through in order to successfully convert existing templates into Joomla friendly versions. The whole thing is pretty effective since it integrates right into the Dreamweaver GUI and I liked working with it a lot!

The tutorial videos also explain how you can convert your templates into zipped files in order to redistribute them over the web. The latest version of the software at the time of writing this article was version 3.0 which can handle both Joomla 1.0.x as well as Joomla 1.5.x templates.

You can head over to this link and check out this handy dreamweaver plugin yourself. Note that in order to buy the package, you will need to register on the website.

Joomla! 1.5.1 Installation

Here is a nice video explaining how to install Joomla! 1.5.1

Reset your lost Joomla Password

I recommend you to backup your website database before following this tutorial. The stored passwords are in a one way MD5 hash format, so it is not possible to recover them, but instead, you can reset it. In order to reset your lost Joomla password, you will need to access your database by using phpmyadmin or any related utility. Once you open up your database using phpmyadmin, look for the Joomla table 'jos_users'. Once you find it, click on it to select it and then on the top middle of phpmyadmin, click on the 'Browse' link. You will now be presented with fields:

id name username email password usertype

Look for the username you want to have the password reset for. For the field you want to reset the password, click on the pencil icon to edit the field (its at the start of each entry row). Now you will be presented by all the editable fields on the next page. You have to edit the password field which may have a value of something like '1a52ed76f4df2f624e235c9a97deed3' (a long string of numbers and characters). We need to reset this to our new md5 hash. In order to do this, go to this website

http://pajhome.org.uk/crypt/md5/

Here in the input field, type in the new password you want for that field and then click on the md5 button. Once you do that, you will be presented with the new password md5 hash in the result field. Copy this hash and paste it over in phpmyadmin in your password field and then click the Go button. Once you do that, you can now log into your Joomla using the new password (not the md5 has but the password you set). I hope this helps!! Cheers!

How to Remove the Joomla Meta Tag Generator

I guess most of you must have been pretty annoyed with the following tag generated on Joomla based websites.

If you entirely want to remove this code, you can do that by editing the file called frontend.php inside the includes folder of your Joomla website and commenting out the following line

$mainframe->addMetaTag( 'Generator', $_VERSION->PRODUCT . " - " .$_VERSION->COPYRIGHT);

But in case if you want to customize the meta tag, you can add the following modification to it.

$mainframe->addMetaTag( 'Custom text here', 'and some more text here');

I hope this helped anyone who wants to customize their Joomla meta tag. Cheers!

Get rid of the annoying no tag post error in Joomla

Well it was really annoying for me to always head back to my website's Joomla backend to enter any embedded video codes because if I would do that from the front-end, it would always give me a forbidden access, no tag post error. Today I finally figured out what was causing the problem. It was the sh404SEF component that I had installed for search engine friendly URLs for my website. To enable front-end addition of blog posts which include javascript, open up your sh404SEF settings inside the Joomla admin console and under the security tab find the "Activate security functions" radio button and select "NO" and hit the save button. This should fix the problem for good! Yayy!

New Classes, DOCman issues and MP3 Gallery solution

The new quarter for my Masters program here in Sweden has started and this quarter seems to be hella tough! The course R&D Strategy seems to be the toughest amongst all of the MEI program courses! Apart from that I implemented a sweet embedded MP3 player using flash and php on my customer's website. I used the free Jooma extension called Mp3 gallery and modified its code a little to suit my requirements. The problem I was facing was that there were multiple types of files inside the DOCman upload folder and I only wanted to filter it to mp3 files for the mp3 gallery plugin because at its default settings, it reads and lists all the files inside the DOCman uploads folder and even tries to add zip files and txt files to its playlist which basically sucks! So here is the modification in line 40 of the mod_mp3gallery_playlister.php file add the following code

$ext = substr($file, strrpos($file, '.') + 1);

Replace the if-statement below this line to this one

if (($filetype == "file") && ($ext=="mp3")) {

and now change the default folder $dir = "your DOCman uploads folder";
where of course you specify the path for your uploads folder, by default it is dmdocuments/
Another thing is that you might want to remove the .htaccess file in that folder (the docman uploads folder) if you want the files to be played because otherwise they won't!

Children of Bodom and a Finished Project

Ah, it feels great to have finally finished my project. I'm listening to Children of Bodom and trying to relax myself after days of hard work. I honestly wasn't expecting it to be this hard, but it was. The thing about bypassing the PHP upload limit was particularly challenging. On opening an inquiry ticket from the website support, I discovered that they were using suPHP which made things a whole lot simpler for me and I just had to upload a .htaccess file with a one line command in it along with a php.ini file with the required upload and cap parameters. Another thing which caused a lot of dismay was the incorrect absolute path inside the DOCman Joomla module which was causing all the uploads to fail. The rest of the design process, although cumbersome, went fairly smoothly and I am happy with the results. The Rockettheme Equinox was used as the template and was modified a little to match the colour scheme requirements of the site.

Here is the finished version,
Renovare Clinic

Earning Money Ain't Easy!

Yup, its true! I worked pretty darn hard today, almost 14 hours or so, but still there is some work left in the project. I added some nice extensions to my project in Joomla. These include

DOCman
JoomlaXplorer
SH404SEF
JEvents

All of them have been really useful, for example with DOCman I have a frontend file upload/download manager for the Joomla website. It also has modules which helped me place specific category downloads on specific pages.

JoomlaXplorer is a backend FTP client which works right inside the Joomla Administration system. You can set folder and file permissions/upload delete files from your Httpdocs directory, without the need of running a separate FTP program.

SH404SEF makes your website SEO compatible without the need of renaming htaccess.txt file to .htaccess.

JEvents is an event calender which you can use to mark any important upcoming events.

MacBook and McDonalds

Well the title pretty much sums up the news of the day, I read about the latest tech gadget by Apple which is just a 0.16 inch thick notebook, actually it is the thinnest notebook in the world but it misses out on something essential...an optical drive. Apart from that the specs are pretty impressive. It has a 13.3 backlit LCD screen and has a very nice backlit keyboard as well. Other features include Wifi support, a core duo processor (I could go on)...oh as soon as I was typing this entry...my interviewer has come online...so wish me luck cause its interview time!!! =P

Yes I am back...and in a terrible mood. The client wanted me to set up a website so I decided to host a Joomla website one of the subdomains, unfortunately, to my demise, my stupid webserver only allowed a single database per website. I set up a sub domain inside Plesk and tried installing Joomla...to my horror, I couldn't create a new database, so I accidentally populated my main website's database...which has caused major bugs on gamezealot.net!!! =( So I had to remove all of the freaking files because most of them had permissions set on them which I had to fix by hand. I have sent a request ticket to my webhosts and I hope they will allow multiple databases for my website for now, otherwise its no use I'm afraid as I won't be able to demonstrate anything to my client and he'll probably ditch me from the project and hire someone else...=(

Ah yes, where does McDonalds come into the scene? Well a Moroccan friend of mine had come over back to Gothenburg to continue his studies at Chalmers with me so we first decided to have a cup of coffee and later ended up at McDonalds to have some burgers. To my surprise, I could neither finish my chocolate muffin at the coffee shop, nor the burgers at McDonalds. This all shows how much I have changed after just six months from leaving my homecountry and coming here for my Masters degree. I remember I could gulp down 2 Big Macs in a row and countless Chicken Tikkas, Kebabs and what not! I hardly eat anything here! =( Not good!!!