Ebooks

Joomla 2.5 is Hot!!!!

February 4, 2012, by masterkey No comments yet

Joomla 2.5 is out!

With the release of Joomla! 2.5, the user community has placed a large emphasis on making the CMS installation and updates management process as simple and straightforward as possible.

This will allow users to more easily and frequently migrate to the latest version of Joomla!, and take advantage of all the security benefits associated with running the newest code. We think Joomla! users around the world will really embrace this new process.

Joomla! 2.5 Released with Extra Features and Easy Updates

Joomla, one of the world’s most popular open source content management systems (CMS) used for everything from websites to blogs to Intranets, today announces the immediate availability of Joomla 2.5. Along with new features such as advanced search and automatic notification of Joomla core and extension updates, the Joomla CMS for the first time includes multi-database support with the addition of Microsoft SQL Server. Previous versions of Joomla were compatible exclusively with MySQL databases.

“Multi-database support is a huge step forward for Joomla, which is already powering more than 1.6 million websites worldwide. It ensures companies and organization, both large and small, will save even more money and time by adopting Joomla,” said Ryan Ozimek, president of Open Source Matters, a non-profit created to provide organization, legal and financial support to the Joomla project. “No longer will Joomla developers be tied down to a particular database or have to spend more money and time integrating other software to get Joomla to communicate with their database. This enhances Joomla’s scalability immensely.”

Other key features in Joomla 2.5 includes:

Automatic notification when a Joomla or extension update is available. When logged into the control panel, site administrators will instantly have access to new notification buttons that allows them to see and act on the latest updates. In addition to updates for the Joomla CMS, a second button offers third party extension notification updates.
A better natural language search engine to the Joomla core. Complete with auto-completion and stemming (for example if you type “running” in a search field you also see run), it is faster and more versatile than the standard search.

“We literally received thousands of pieces of input at ideas.joomla.org into what functionality should be added to Joomla 2.5, and overwhelmingly enhanced notifications and more elegant search topped the list,” said Mark Dexter of the Joomla Production Leadership Team. “In fact, the automatic notification for core and extension updates received the most votes for a feature that people wanted in 2.5. But we didn’t stop with just those two. Joomla 2.5 is a major overhaul with more than 24 new features that we have highlighted at joom.la/25features.”

Joomla 2.5 adheres to Joomla’s newly-adopted six-month release cycle that began with the previous Joomla CMS release of Joomla 1.7 in July, 2011. Downloading the latest version of Joomla is the best way to ensure organizational and personal security needs are being met since it will have the most recent updates to protect against the latest security threats.

Joomla 2.5 is truly a collaborative community-driven software project developed with the feedback gathered from more than 2.5 million Joomla forum posts, 540,000 Joomla forum members and data from more than 8,800 Joomla extensions. To download Joomla 2.5, go to http://www.joomla.org/download.html.

What’s new in Joomla! 2.5?

When you already upgraded your site from Joomla! 1.5 to Joomla! 1.7 in 2011 you probably use all the new features introduced with Joomla! 1.6 and 1.7. When you scroll down and read the list of new features compared to Joomla! 1.5 then you realize that 2011 was a very interesting year for Joomla!.

But let’s have a closer look on the new features for Joomla! 2.5.

New Features in Joomla! 2.5

The shiny new Joomla! Platform

The Joomla Platform Version 11.3 is now the base of the CMS.
That means many more possibilities for third party developers e.g. image manipulation with the JImage class and generation of HTML tables with the JGrid class. A new version of the JavaScript library MooTools is used (1.4). If you don’t know what Joomla! platform is about, read Write your own App using Joomla! Platform and the official annoucement of the Joomla Platform release.

Find more content with Smart Search

Search is “reinvented” in Joomla! 2.5 with Finder. The new finder component works with a search index (Figure 1).

Finder pre-searches your content. Search results are scored dynamically based on the context and frequency of search terms. The most relevant content will always be listed at the top of the results. It suggests alternative phrases (Figure 2) and its pluggable adapter system allows to install new search adapters which provide support for standard Joomla! content and many other types of documents. Custom search filters allows you to provide contextual searching when your visitor is looking at particular sections of your Web site.

Spread Joomla! to more Platforms by using more Databases

With Joomla! 2.5 it will be possible to run Joomla! on MySQL and Microsoft SQL Server. Drivers for PostgreSQL and Oracle seems to be very near (Getting Ready for Multi-Database Support).

Better Choices for Offline Mode

You can user the default offline message, disable it or create a customized message. Additionally you can select an image for the offline mode page (Figure 3). You have even a possibility to set the site to offline mode during installation so no unauthorized people can see it before you want them to.

User registrations with CAPTCHA

A CAPTCHA plugin using the reCAPTCHA service can be enabled (Figure 4). Once you sign up for free with reCAPTCHA and enter your keys, you can enable CAPTCHA on new user registrations. It could also be used by other extensions needing CAPTCHA.

Easier handling for simple Layouts

You can now attach an image for the intro text to use in blog and featured layouts, an image for the full article text and up to three links for the full
article layout. This means that your content creators won’t have to fuss with an image in the text and your article format will be cleaner and more consistent.

Mobile

The Beez core template comes with mobile enhancements.

Multilanguage

You can override the default language strings in a new manager in the backend (Figure 5).

User Notes

User Notes can be attach notes to users as well as assign tracking dates to the users. You can have multiple notes per user and the notes can be in different categories (Figure 6).

Clean Up

Filtering for Categories in Article Manager

That is simply useful. Since Joomla! 1.6 it was possible to filter categories in the article manager, but you did not see the articles of the subcategories. Now the filter logic include the articles of the subcategories too.

Linking New Menus with a Module

In Joomla! 2.5 modules are NOT automatically created for each new menu type. This is not a bug, it’s a feature
Not everyone used the core menu module, but used instead ones from a custom template or third party module. For that reason, menus did not automatically create a module in 1.6/1.7. This change confused people and created extra work. In Joomla 2.5, if there is no module associated with the menu, there is a link showing in the Menu Manager that you can click that will take you directly into a new module that you can create. You then have the choice of saving this standard menu module or cancelling out and using a different menu module.

Custom Text Filters are moved to the global configuration. They are filtering content for black and white listed tags based on your configuration and on role permission.

You can now choose to have the administrator get a new message when a user creates an account. This is useful when the New User Account Notification is set to Self. In that case the user receives after an email after registration with an activation link (Figure 7). After clicking that link the account is activated.

The extensive options in “Select a Menu Item Type” are not loaded unless you need them.

New Features compared to Joomla! 1.5

In comparison to Joomla! 1.5 the differences are huge and there is a long list of features and improvements.

Here is a list of the most important changes in Joomla 1.6 and 1.7

There will no longer be any sections. Categories can be nested as deeply as you would like
The access concept is totally rebuilt.
The existing user groups used in Joomla! 1.5 are still the same in Joomla! 2.5 but they can be enhanced and renamed. Unlimited access levels can also be defined there. User groups can be assigned to access levels and different groups can then be assigned to various access levels.
Multiprocessing
Copy and move operations, and the allocation of access levels can now be done in a batch process
Updates per mouse click
A simple feature. The system detects available updates and initiates them by clicking on the corresponding button.
Templates
There have been many changes in the area of templates. There are now two administrator templates and three website templates.
Template styles
Sometimes you may want to display a template with different options. You may want to create a page with a red background and another page with a blue one. Therefore, you will need template styles. Create as many versions (styles) of a template with different settings as you like and assign them to a menu link.
Template layouts
Sometimes you may want to display only the output of a component or a module in a different layout without hacking the template. That’s possible with template layouts.
Consistent user interface
A successful example is the general save dialogue.
Save: content will be saved, you remain in editing mode
Save & Close: content will be saved, you leave the editing mode
Save & New: content will be saved; a new, empty editing mask appears
Save as copy: content will be saved as a copy, you remain in the editing mask
Minimum requirements
The minimum requirements regarding your server environment and concerning your visitors’ web browsers have increased.
Browser: Internet Explorer, version 7 or higher, Firefox, version 3 or higher, Safari, version 4 or higher
Server: PHP: minimum version PHP 5.2.4, MySQL: minimum version 5.04
Legacy Mode
The legacy mode from Joomla! 1.5 is no longer necessary. Legacy mode allowed the execution of components originally developed for Joomla 1.0, which have ‘only’ been adapted to Joomla! 1.5. The procedure of adapting old components is offset by the development of ‘native’ Joomla! 1.5 and 2.5 components, which use the Joomla! Framework.
Search engine optimization
- You can now use unicode in URLs, which means you may now use special characters like ‘ö’ and ‘ä’ or Arabic or Hebrew characters in the URL.
- You can allocate meta text and keywords to categories.
- A title of a site will be displayed following the name of the website in the browser.
Modules can be published time-controlled. The assignment options to menu items have been extended.
Multilingualism
Joomla! core now offers the possibility to create articles, categories and modules in several languages. With the new language switcher plug-in module you can filter the entire site for the selected language.
New editor
Code Mirror is the new editor, which is supplied in addition to TinyMCE. It is not a WYSIWYG editor but offers a convenient way to work with ‘code-like’ content, which will be displayed in colour and a structured way.
Components
- The new redirect component enables redirections to URLs in order to avoid ’404 not found’ errors.
- The new search component provides an overview of the searched keywords and display results.
- The survey component has been eliminated.
New Release Cycle
Every 18 months, a long term release of Joomla! will appear.
Introduction of the Joomla! platform
Joomla! consists of two parts
- the Joomla! platform
- the Joomla! content management system

There are many more very nice little features like the possibility to place a background image into a module or to display articles with page breaks in a tab or slider layout.

Download

New Installations: Click here to download Joomla 2.5.0 (Full package) »

Update Package: Click here to download Joomla 2.5.0 (Update package) »

Source: Joomla.org

Good Bye Fireworks!!! Welcome 2012! HAPPY NEW YEAR

December 31, 2011, by masterkey No comments yet

GOOD BYE PAPUTOK!!

Welcome the New Year with The Safest Firecracker Experience.
Instead of lighting up firecracker, play this and keep all ten of your fingers.

DOH launch safest firecracker experience website and i want to share it with you.

Downloads all of then and play via computer or mp3 player

Here:

All you have to do is play this firecracker mp3′s on your computer and full/maximum volume speaker.

That’s it!

No smoke, No Pollution..

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Greetings from:

Webmax It Solutions
Websitedeveloper
Dbestwebdeveloper

Joomla! 1.5.25 Released

December 28, 2011, by masterkey No comments yet

The Joomla Project announces the immediate availability of Joomla 1.5.25 [senu takaa ama mamni]. This is a security release. The Production Leadership Team’s goal is to continue to provide regular, frequent updates to the Joomla community. Learn more about Joomla! developement at the Developer Site.

Download
Click here to download Joomla 1.5.25 (Full package) »
Click here to download Joomla 1.5.25 (Upgrade packages) »

Instructions

New installation and technical requirements
Upgrade from an existing Joomla 1.5 version
Migration from Joomla! 1.0.x

Want to test drive Joomla? Try the online demo or the Joomla JumpBox. Documentation is available for beginners.

Please note that you should always backup your site before upgrading.
Release Notes

Check the Joomla 1.5.25 Post-Release FAQs to see if there are important items and helpful hints discovered after the release.
Security

High Priority – Core – Password Change Vulnerability. More information »

Issues Fixed

None.

Making Money online DAY 12

October 22, 2011, by masterkey No comments yet

Day 12: First online income…

Well I checked the Adsense earnings for the bestfootballgoals site and so far I have earnt a easy £3+ which isn’t bad considering the domain only cost 99cents. Today we will start to look at how to increase the amount of traffic going to the site.

There are many theories about different traffic methods/types, just today I have read at least 10 different views on Google and what the Panda update has meant. There are several traffic methods that we can use, personally I am a great fan of social traffic. Nothing better than letting other people do the work for me! Without me going on too much, lets get started!

Keyword/Article Generation

Many people spend hours working on keywords, I personally believe that it is better to allow google to tell you which keywords you should be using…

Once you start to get visitors from Google it becomes a lot easier to decide on the titles for new articles. In Statpress have a look at the Last Search Terms, and try and write another article with each one in the title. For example these are some of the last search terms bestfootballgoals is ranking for, please remember I have not done any SEO stuff at all.

football penalty drills – #7 in Google
football penalty kick drills – #2 in Google

I will be writing an article for the site called Football Penalty Kick Drills now… Thats what google thinks my site is about, so I will add it.

Images and Copyright – Staying Legal…

Something that I do not believe is ever covered properly is the use of images on your site. Not paying attention to this can cause you big legal problems, in some cases this can run into thousands of dollars (yeah I don’t agree with it but thats life).

Basically the golden rule of images is if you do not know who owns it, do not use it. With this restriction it may feel like you are stuck, however there are easy solutions…

Take a photo with your own camera, or create a graphic yourself in photoshop, you then own the copyright.
There are free stock photo sites that allow you to use images Royalty free, my favourite is Stock Exchange here http://rfurl.net/sxc and another is here http://rfurl.net/pdi
If my first options fail, I head on over to the Public Domain image sites page on wikipedia here which has close to 100 sources of images to use: http://rfurl.net/wpd

Remember to check the specific terms of each site, generally the US Government cannot own copyright to anything however in the UK there is Crown copyright for government images. Hopefully with these resources you have a good library of images to use across

Note: Before you are tempted to just use images check out this blog post by a company that was sued: http://blog.webcopyplus.com/2011/02/14/legal-lesson-learned-copywriter-pays-4000-for-10-photo/

Youtube…

Well we created our youtube account days ago, now it is time to put this to use, it’s so easy to create a video now that it is untrue. It is so easy that even youtube has got in on the act providing loads of awsome tools free for you! I will demonstrate one of the tools here, however I would recommend that you spend time to try out all the different tools avaliable.

First of all we need to find some images to use in our video, to prevent future copyright issues I recommend that you look on free stock photo websites like http://sxc.hu/
Goto the Youtube Create sction at http://rfurl.net/yc
Pick a tool, for this demonstration I will use Stupeflix – the only restriction in this tool is that the video has to be under 1 minute long.
Click the upload button to add the images you found into the tool.
Click the sound button to add a sound track to the video
Click the More button to add title slides (text slides between images)
Click the more button to add transition effects between the slides.
When you are done click the Publish to youtube button.
Select YouTube (FREE) in the list and click Export.
Allow Stupeflix access to your YouTube account… Wait for the video to be made.
Goto your youtube account menu (click down arrow next to your username at the top of the page) and goto your videos.
Find the new video in the list and click Edit, edit the title and description and put your website link at the end of the description.
Pick some Tags and change the video category. Click Save Changes.
You now have your first youtube video… Check it out!

The video is here…

The video for Best Football Goals is here, it took me under 5 minutes to make…

Note: Personally although this method is good, when i use videos I like to go even further. If you have $47 to spare I would recommend you have a look at these pre-made ready to use animated video backgrounds (http://rfurl.net/vidbg) which you can use with something like windows movie maker. They also come with sound loops which you can also use in your videos. I will cover this in a post for you guys later!

WordPress Security

Well I just got email offering to sell me a WordPress Security Guide for only $40, it had some pretty nice copy playing on peoples fear of loosing their work. However it assumed that the person reading it was pretty naive…

We have already covered how to backup your wordpress install which I would recommend everyone does on a regular basis. In addition there are some basic steps you can take to ensure that your website stays secure.

Make sure you are using a secure cPanel username and password, and try and access this from only a computer you own.
Make sure your email that you use with wordpress is secure so that people can’t reset your password.
Make sure you have the latest version of WordPress installed.
Set your display name to be different from your Username (Goto Users->Your Profile on the menu).
Make sure you use a password that has both lower and upper case letters, numbers and is not in any dictionary.
Make sure you google the name of any plugins you use to see what people are saying about them, and keep the number of plugins you use to a minimum. Where possible try to use plugins from the official wordpress directory and not from random places online.
If something requires that you add html or change the code of your website make sure you understand what and why.
If you are using free theme’s from outside the wordpress official search function (such as http://wptmp.com) make sure you check the code for any eval statements or encrypted code.

Summary

Today’s post has been cut down a bit, I am planning to introduce a new tool to you guys, however I still have to do some final modifications to it before I feel it is fit to release. This is coming, and will be worth the wait. In the meantime I will not delay the Challenge because of it.

Let’s get back on track, Day 13 will follow in the next 24 hours…

WordPress vs Joomla vs Drupal. What CMS (Content Management System) is Best for you?

August 21, 2011, by masterkey No comments yet

When we talk about CMS ( Content management System ), the first thing that pops up in people’s minds are Drupal, Joomla, andWordPress. These three big names are the most well know CMS out there, but which one is right for you? In this article, we compare each CMS, so you can decide on the one that fits your purposes.

When it comes to choosing between Joomla, Drupal and WordPress, there are not many people who are able to make up their minds entirely; as all three are great open source applications and they are to some extent similar in their basic features.

In the end, its up to you

It’s difficult to recommend on CMS over the others without knowing what you plan to do with it. So basically, here’s a very basic outline of what each should be used for. This by no means defines that boundaries of what each CMS can do.

Blogging:
For everyday blogging, I’d say WordPress is the right choice. It’s very simple to use, and requires little configuration.
Communities:
To start a community with multiple users, I’d recommend Drupal and Joomla. Both are built with the idea of multiple users in mind, so you’ll have very nice groundwork for setting up a community.

For Developers:
Drupal has a very extensive API and is well documented. It’s very suitable for the more developer oriented out there.
Most User Friendly:
Out of all three, I’d have to say WordPress is the most easy to use. It’s very user friendly and has a multitude of tutorials and FAQ’s out there.
E-Commence:
If you’re looking to start a online store, I’d recommend using Joomla and Drupal. While both do not function as a store out of the box, with a few modules/plugins, it can become a fully functioning, very flexible, online store.

From http://designmess.com/ here is difference:
WordPress

WordPress is an excellent CMS when it comes to blogging and publishing your brain-work and thoughts. WordPress is currently being used by 202 million websites. This particular CMS is commonly used as a basic content management system. It has many features such as widgets which can be arranged without editing the HTML, Search engine friendly, multiple categories to a blog post can be created and allows tagging of blog posts and articles.

WordPress is developed and predefined as a blog so its set up is not a very hectic process. WordPress also has multiple Blogging options or profiles, in built Comments and Pinging service etc. Integrated with all these supportive features WordPress is not considered as a Developer friendly CMS and this CMS might bring more bugs with its new upgrades but the best part about WordPress is that it is easy to use and mostly people get a hang of it in no time.
Joomla

Joomla CoFounder Brian Teeman
Joomla provides a platform to publish the content on World Wide Web. It’s basic features are:

1. Caching
2. RSS feeds
3. Printable web pages
4. News flashes
5. Blogs Polls
6. Search
7. Language internationalization support

Joomla is Designer and Developer friendly as it offers a wider platform for developers to customize and introduce new features in the system and the capability to improve the look and feel of the website is surely widely accepted by designers all across. Joomla is capable enough to handle a vast community and has been in proper use since past 2-3 years.

As compared to WordPress and Drupal, Joomla still needs to do improvisation in lots of areas. Joomla needs to steal some of the User Friendliness from WordPress and flexibility from Drupal. Joomla is not XHTML Complaint and lacks the option to create multi-sites.
Drupal

Drupal Founder Dries Buytaert
Drupal is used as a back-end system for different types of websites. It can be used for a small FAQ site or may be a large corporate website. Drupal has the ability to incorporate features like:-

1. Registering and Maintaining user accounts
2. Creating and Handling menus
3. RSS feeds
4. Customization of a layout
5. Internet Forum
6. Single or multi User blog
7. Powerful template system

Drupal is every developers heaven as it requires plenty of hard code to be done and a nightmare for designers offering a very few options to improve the look n feel of a Drupal website. Drupal is also not a very user friendly CMS. Websites like MTV UK, BBC, the Onion, Greenpeace UK etc use Drupal.

Versatility

WordPress makes some effort to help you build the site you want, but Joomla is the clear winner here.

WordPress is built for bloggers, featuring comments, tagging, and virtually everything else your blog needs out of the box. Simple. Easy. Straightforward.

Joomla is the better choice if your site is almost anything but a blog. The tough learning curve is partly a function of the advanced features that Joomla provides. You’ll have to spend some more time with it, and Joomla is obsessed with goofy looking contact forms and FAQ pages, but your non-blogging site will thank you.

However, there are definitely some differences as far as strong and negative points are concerned. One particular application cannot be termed fit for all uses. If we have a look at these applications one by one, we would probably be able to determine as to how each of these applications differ from one another.
What’s good and bad about Joomla?

Joomla – Positives

Joomla is a perfect application if you are looking for a powerful content management system. Joomla is not very complicated as far as the usage is concerned and moreover the installation of the script is fairly easy as well. As far as the administration is concerned, it is very graphical and intuitive. Moreover, the theme selection is pretty impressive as well. If you are looking for a heavyweight general CMS system, then Joomla is the right application for you.

Joomla – Negatives

The negative aspects of Joomla are that the Web 2.0 implementation is pretty archaic and the community focus is less than perfect, meaning updates can be long in development. Some of the more general technical problems are no permissions control, lack of decent scalability, and no multisite options. The categorizing options are very few and the SSL implementation requires further work. Joomla needs SEO and SEF extensions and there are some security risks involved in this if the SEO rules change quite often. The speed of the application is not really a big concern, although it should be noted that Joomla is the slowest of the three applications.

* Related Ref: Best Joomla Hosting.
What’s good and bad about Drupal?

Drupal – Positives

Drupal is wonderful as far as blogging requirements are concerned and moreover the installation is pretty simple as well and one need not be a technical wizard to get things functioning. The SEO capabilities of the application are quite frankly awesome and those who require lots of traffic for their websites could be well off if they use this application. The best part about Drupal is the web 2.0 pure version, SSL that comes as a built in feature, better scalability and permissions which are quite granular.

Drupal – Negatives

The only problem or the only negative with Drupal is the lack of themes. When you compare the themes of Drupal with the other systems, it has lot of catching up to do.

* Related Ref: Best Drupal Hosting.
What’s good about WordPress?

WordPress– Positives

WordPress is an application or system which is well-suited for creating a blog, coupled with different themes and plugins to extend functionality. Like the other two systems, WordPress is also very easy to use and install. Almost everyone will be able to install WordPress easily, and moreover the administration of the application is fairly simple as well. If you compare WordPress with Drupal or Joomla for that matter, the themes are great and the selection of available themes is wide. The SEO potential is good as well. The content upon a WordPresssite have unique pages which are SEO friendly with configurable title and URL as well. If one goes by what the users of this system have to say, then WordPress could be one of the best content management systems that are available for blogging. It has web 2.0 along with permissions control and is entirely expandable.

WordPress – Negatives

The downside as far as WordPress is concerned is that it does not have multi-site and SSL features as standard. Moreover, the scalability is pretty limited as well.

From : http://www.topwebhostreview.net/blog/featured/joomla-vs-drupal-vs-wordpress/

Joomla was created from the ground up as a CMS, while Wordpres was designed as a publishing platform that has developed gradually into a CMS, offering each unique capabilities.
Both platforms work well for managing a website, WordPress is the best option for small to medium business and Joomla is fantastic for a website that requires multiple user privileges or custom database work.

Ebooks

Joomla 2.5 is Hot!!!!

What’s new in Joomla! 2.5?