Joomla Blog

Joomla 1.6 is coming towards the end of its beta phase which means it will soon be available as what is known as a "Release Candidate". This will not be the final version, but at this stage it is likely that there will not be any major changes. The latest status report suggests that 1.6 will be released before the end of this year. The main changes with this new version are more flexible access control and unlimited levels of categories. However some major changes were necessary to implement these features and as such, it will not be possible to simply upgrade your site from 1.5 to 1.6. Here are my thoughts on some questions that you might be asking.

In a previous article, you learnt how to use an extension to automatically resize images. Here is another approach that is worth exploring.

One of the greatest frustrations for developers using content management systems is spending hours getting a website looking perfect and then handing the reigns over to the client, only to have them do something ... I can think of a few words here but let's go with "unwise".

One of the nice things about web pages is that they can be as short or long as you like. However, long pages can be intimidating and your readers might find it difficult to find the information that is relevant to them. Consider displaying some of your content in "tabs" or "slides" using the following extension.

If you have a lot of extensions it can become difficult to find your most frequently accessed pages in Administrator. Art Admin Shortcuts is a free extension that allows you to create quick icons and keyboard shortcuts to your favourite pages. Here are the steps to get this working:

Joomla uses sessions to monitor whether or not a user (including you) is still on your website. If the session time expires, any data that has not been saved will disappear. This is frustrating if you are writing an article, and forget to save (or apply) it before the end of your session. All your input will be lost.

Are you tired of starting a new article or editing an existing one and waiting for all those icons to appear in your HTML editor? Dramatically speed up this process, along with other Administrator tasks, by installing Google Gears and a free extension. This week's tip only has two steps:

A well developed website should work well on all devices. However the mobile platform presents specific challenges such as bandwidth and browser size. One option is to build a dedicated mobile version of your website, but you would then need to update your content on two sites. Here are two alternative solutions for mobile-friendly Joomla sites.

The time is going to come when you forget the Administrator password for one of your sites. Or you might be unlucky enough to have your site hacked and the password changed. Now although there is no method to reset the password using Joomla via the web, there are a couple of methods you can try.

This post includes a video tutorial.

If you have a big site, it's the little things that can make a difference. If you manage a site that constantly needs changes to the article sort order or if you need to quickly unpublish an article, you know it can be a pain to click the appropriate icon in Administrator and wait for the page to refresh. You can speed up this process using technology called AJAX.