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Ten Things Every Joomla User Should Know

Thursday, July 7th, 2011

Joomla is a fantastic content management system, one of the best on the internet. All you need to do is add Joomla to a domain name and you are ready to go. But even the most experienced Joomla users have room for improvement. So here are ten things that every Joomla user should know about:

Joomla Template Overrides

Joomla may be a fantastic content management system, but there are times when you need to alter the main files for some specific purpose. Maybe you want to change the layout of the menu, or display the date in a different location.
The way to make these changes is through templates overrides. You will need a basic-intermediate knowledge of HTML and CSS programming to be able to make these changes, and don’t forget to back up your files before making any changes.
(more…)

Ten Things Every Joomla User Should Know Ten Things Every Joomla User Should Know Ten Things Every Joomla User Should Know Ten Things Every Joomla User Should Know Ten Things Every Joomla User Should Know Ten Things Every Joomla User Should Know Ten Things Every Joomla User Should Know Ten Things Every Joomla User Should Know Ten Things Every Joomla User Should Know

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Posted in Programming | No Comments »

Discovering Geolocation

Tuesday, February 15th, 2011

Geolocation is the ability to determine a physical location for a person or object. This is achieved through translating sets of information such as a computer’s IP address or GPS coordinates broadcast by a mobile phone. Geolocation either broadcasts an individual’s geographic location, or assigns a particular location to a fixed object such as a restaurant or library.

Discovering Geolocation

Geolocation might sound exotic (or extremely nerdy), but it is widely used. Google uses a version of IP-based geolocation to guess where you are in order to provide localised search results. Online advertisers have long used a similar approach to serve local ads (very useful if you are advertising a service that is based around helping people meet other people in their area). GPS-based navigation devices help you locate yourself in relation to your destination, while modern mobile phones can insert geolocation data (or “geo-tags”) into photos and videos. Geolocation data forms an important part of social networks like Twitter, Facebook’s new Places feature and geo-based social networks like Foursquare and Gowalla .

Why is Geolocation Important?

Geolocation is important if you run a small business that depends on local customers for its business such as a local cafe, or if you can improve your existing services by localising information for your users. An example of such a service might be if you operate a national chain of stores and you want to display levels of inventory to customers based on what is available in stores near to them.

How does Geolocation Work?

A common way is to determine the user’s location based on their IP address. There are free and commercial databases of IP address blocks available to assist in this process. While it is relatively easy to determine a country of origin from an IP address, it is more difficult to obtain accurate results at the suburb or city level. For example, large organisations with offices in different cities will often share the same set of IP addresses due to the way internal networks are normally configured.

Another way to determine a user’s location is to use the official W3C GeoLocation API. The GeoLocation API allows you to query a user on their location to varying degrees of accuracy based on how the user’s device determines its location, from triangulation based on nearby mobile phone towers to using latitude and longitude coordinates provided by a built in GPS chip. For privacy reasons, the GeoLocation API requires users to always explicitly choose to provide their location. An excellent example of geolocation at work is the Australian mobile web app “Movie Times“, which generates a list of what movies are playing nearby based on the location provided by your mobile phone.

Some mobile phone apps such as Foursquare will use a device’s built in location data on a regular basis once a user has allowed that application to access location based information.

How can Geolocation Help My Business?

If your business or industry depends on locality, geolocation will help you focus your marketing and promotion. Knowing the location of your site’s users allows you to serve advertising specific to their location. Some online advertising networks will also serve ads based on the location of viewers.

Applications like Foursquare and GoWalla introduce gaming to geolocation through encouraging users to use their phones to “check in” to venues and broadcast this information to their friends. This provides numerous opportunities for small businesses. Foursquare, for example, enables businesses to offer specials to users that check in to their venue, encouraging repeat customers and attracting new ones. A cafe near me regularly offers a free coffee with all purchases over $10 if you check in via Foursquare and show your check in at the counter while ordering.

Find Yourself . Today.

Although geolocation is still developing, it is a good time to begin experimenting with the different technologies and services on offer. Taking some low-risk chances in the early days gives you a good chance of establishing yourself in the market before your competitors even know the opportunities exist.

Discovering Geolocation

Discovering Geolocation Discovering Geolocation Discovering Geolocation Discovering Geolocation Discovering Geolocation Discovering Geolocation Discovering Geolocation Discovering Geolocation Discovering Geolocation

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Posted in Programming, Web Design, Webmaster | No Comments »

Virtual machines: the essential tool for all web developers

Thursday, December 9th, 2010

Creating web products that look the same for everyone on the internet is not easy. With different browser vendors, operating systems and even different versions of browsers competing for market share, designers and developers need to take account of many things when creating new products. An effective way to address the problem is through “virtualisation”.

What is virtualisation?

Virtualisation involves running a special program that simulates a real computer in software, called a virtual machine . The virtual machine acts like a container inside the operating system, isolating the program from the main, or host, operating system. For example, a virtual machine running on the host Mac OS X operating system enables you to run Windows software on a Mac computer by convincing the Windows program it is actually running on a Windows PC instead of the Mac.

The benefits of virtual machines

Web designers and developers create products that need to look similar and work as intended across different browsers and different operating systems. Cross-compatibility becomes expensive if you are expected to own both a Mac and a PC (or even a third computer if you want to test on niche operating systems like Linux ).

Maintaining compatibility with different versions of Internet Explorer introduces its own problems. It is only possible to have one version of Internet Explorer installed at a time. However, there are still many users of older versions of Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer 6 still has around 15% market share , and it is light years removed in functionality and support for web standards compared to version 8 or the upcoming version 9.

Mac users are able to take full advantage of the benefits of virtual machines. By using software such as Parallels, they are able to virtualise other operating systems, including Windows, as well as running Mac OS X.

Windows users are not so lucky. Licensing requirements prohibit running Mac OS X desktop on anything other than genuine Apple hardware. This means that technically it is against Apple’s terms of service to virtualise OS X. However, virtual machines on Windows do allow designers and developers to get around a different problem – testing against various versions of Internet Explorer.

Which virtualisation software should I use?

There are a range of free and commercial virtualisation programs available, each with its own benefits.

Parallels

Parallels has offered virtualisation products for a long time and has several products for both enterprise and consumer-level customers across the Mac, Windows and Linux platforms,. Parallels is well known due to its successful Parallels Desktop for Mac. For Mac users, Parallels is arguably the best choice for virtualisation, as even the previous version performed better than its nearer competition .

Parallels also offers Virtuozzo which creates isolated virtual environments (VE) or containers on a single physical server and OS instance. Digital Pacific offers Virtuozzo as part of its VPS hosting plans.

VMware

Like Parallels, VMware is a company of long standing. It also has products on Mac, Windows and Linux. VMware has released the free VMware Player. VMware Player is Windows only and has fewer features than the commercial product.

VirtualBox

Released by Sun Microsystems, VirtualBox is open source and runs on Windows, Linux and Mac. Free for personal use, it can host quite a few different operating systems including Linux and most versions of Windows (including Windows 7). While it doesn’t boast all of the features of its commercial competitors, it is ideal for quick testing on your desktop during the development and bug testing stage.

Windows VirtualPC

Windows VirtualPC is Microsoft’s virtualisation product and is available from Microsoft as a free download or as part of the higher end versions of Windows 7. Although promoted as a way of running old Windows software inside Windows 7, it can also be used to host other operating systems. In addition, Microsoft offers special editions of Windows running different versions of Internet Explorer which can only run inside VirtualPC. These versions have been released expressly for testing different versions of Internet Explorer.

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter which virtualisation solution you choose. The important thing is that you choose one and get started. With a virtual machine as part of your design toolkit, you can now have confidence that you can offer your clients and customers a truly cross-platform product.

Virtual machines: the essential tool for all web developers

Virtual machines: the essential tool for all web developers Virtual machines: the essential tool for all web developers Virtual machines: the essential tool for all web developers Virtual machines: the essential tool for all web developers Virtual machines: the essential tool for all web developers Virtual machines: the essential tool for all web developers Virtual machines: the essential tool for all web developers Virtual machines: the essential tool for all web developers Virtual machines: the essential tool for all web developers

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Posted in Programming, Web Design, Webmaster | No Comments »

The Most Popular Free and Open Source Shopping Carts

Monday, March 8th, 2010

A shopping cart is a system that is set up on a website with the sole focus of listing and selling products via the Internet. These systems will integrate into the main website and generally provide a back-end or dashboard area that lets the owner do all of the administrative work involved. This work includes: updating and modifying content; listing, organising and pricing products; printing invoices; and tracking inventory. A shopping cart gives you the ability to run an e-commerce business.

Most of the popular shopping carts today are actually Open Source. What this means is that the source code for the software is available for anyone to modify and enhance, which ultimately means that many people from all over the world are creating features and upgrading security all the time. Just like with many content management systems, such as WordPress and Joomla!, these shopping cart systems are put together in a way that many non-tech-savvy individuals can use them without getting their hands too dirty with code.

We have compiled an entire list of both free and open source shopping carts that can be hosted with Digital Pacific. A wide variety of our clients use these shopping carts to build an online business that allows them to sell products and services online.

Here are 9 of the most popular Shopping Carts hosted at Digital Pacific:

  1. Magento

    The Most Popular Free and Open Source Shopping CartsMagento’s slogan is that it is an “ecommerce platform for growth”, and this indicates that the type of businesses using the system are those looking to have the ability to become much larger without the need to change to a new ecommerce program down the road. Originally released in 2008, Magento has already had more than 1.5 million downloads, but that’s not hard to believe when the perks of this package include a very streamlined and powerful back-end and a fairly easy to theme capability. They even offer both a free and open source “Community Edition” and a paid “Enterprise Edition” of the software. While the Magento “Community Edition” is a powerful tool, the “Enterprise Edition” takes the website to a whole new level. Some features to note of the upgraded version are the ability to issue gift vouchers, as well as the ability to issue store credits.

    The downside to Magento seems to be its rather large size. Not only is it a huge download, but it is a little slower and tends to require a bit more power. We often recommend to our customers to go with a VPS hosting package in order to see the best results with Magento.

    Learn about Magento Hosting
    Demo: http://www.magentocommerce.com/demo
    Open Source: Yes – Magento Community Edition Only
    Price: Free
    Platform: Ajax / PHP / MySQL

  2. OsCommerce

    The Most Popular Free and Open Source Shopping CartsOsCommerce has a community of over 230,000 people, as well as a live shops showcase of 12,700 websites listed on their site alone. OsCommerce makes for a popular shopping cart system not only because of its free and open source nature, but also because of its out of the box functionality. In addition, there are over 5,900 add-ons that can give the online shop additional features depending on your specific needs alone. OsCommerce has been around since 2000, which means it has withstood the test of time and now has a large community that can aid in support and growth.

    The main downside of using osCommerce as your shopping cart of choice stems from its past criticisms of security vulnerabilities, but that more recently appears to be mended by its upgrade to MySQL 5 and PHP 5.

    Demo: http://demo.oscommerce.com/
    Open Source: Yes
    Price: Free
    Platform: PHP / MySQL

  3. Zen Cart

    The Most Popular Free and Open Source Shopping CartsZen Cart was released in 2007 as an off-shoot of the osCommerce system. The shopping cart features a list of useful integrations like accepting payments through PayPal, the setup of shipping and tax modules and even the use of different languages and currencies. Zen Cart is a fully open source program, meaning the price is free to those willing and capable of installing on their own. Even in the free version, it offers gift vouchers and newsletter management to shop owners.

    A downside to this shopping cart is the inability to truly customise certain features without editing some of the core files of the system.
    Learn about Zen Cart Hosting
    Demo: http://php.opensourcecms.com/scripts/details.php?scriptid=97
    Open Source: Yes
    Price: Free
    Platform: PHP / MySQL

  4. CubeCart

    The Most Popular Free and Open Source Shopping CartsCubeCart , like Magento, provides both a free (version 3) and paid version (version 4) of their shopping cart. Understandably, the paid version (that can run for $180) boasts added features and capabilities, such as the use of gift vouchers and alternate checkouts. However, both of the carts provide a powerful ecommerce package that manages to keep the HTML and PHP code separate. When it comes to those with less coding knowledge, this feature is a major plus. Perhaps that is one of the reasons CubeCart is used in over a million shops worldwide. A downside to this shopping cart is the inability to truly customise certain features without editing some of the core files of the system.

    The downside to using CubeCart stems from the fact that it isn’t an open source software, therefore not free to use at the more functional level. Unlike Magento, CubeCart’s free version is also not open source, which means that the features that are lacking in this model are put there for a reason by the company in order to coerce the user into upgrading. The free version, for example, lacks the ability to change text in the footer, or even to add new skins, which are pretty much key elements in creating a website’s look and feel.

    Demo: http://www.cubecart.com/demos/
    Open Source: No
    Price: CubeCart Version 3 – Free, CubeCart Version 4 – Paid
    Platform: PHP / MySQL

  5. PrestaShop

    The Most Popular Free and Open Source Shopping CartsPrestaShop , released in 2007, is a fully open source and free shopping cart platform for your ecommerce website. With only 33,000 shops using this software, it may not be as popular as some other carts, but it definitely has a full list of features that say it is here to stay. Moreover, the software claims to run without major headaches for shoppers, even for those on slower connections, because of its incredibly small size. This shopping cart is generally good for small to medium sized endeavours.

    Despite its size, there have been a few reviews out there claiming that the software’s back-end functions at a slower speed. In addition, it may lack some of the more advanced features of other carts like product bundling.

    Learn about Prestashop Hosting
    Demo: http://www.prestashop.com/en/showcase_demo/
    Open Source: Yes
    Price: Free
    Platform: PHP / MySQL

  6. OpenCart

    The Most Popular Free and Open Source Shopping CartsOpenCart boasts its support of over 20 payment gateways and more than 8 shipping methods. It is a free and fully open source shopping cart with the features to back up the claims of functionality. OpenCart says it can house unlimited products with unlimited categories in multiple languages and currencies. The organisation of OpenCart’s files is also another big plus for web developers.

    Besides all of these perks, there is some caution to take as a few reviews speak of the number of bugs out there in the system. It is a good idea to take a look around the support forums to get a better idea of what to expect with the shopping cart.

    Demo: http://www.opencart.com/index.php?route=information/demonstration
    Open Source: Yes
    Price: Free
    Platform: PHP / MySQL

  7. Ubercart

    The Most Popular Free and Open Source Shopping CartsUbercart is a completely free and open source shopping cart, but it must be run in conjunction with the content management system, Drupal. The main draw of this system is the ability to build a community that revolves around the shop or product being sold. This occurs because of the shopping cart’s features to allow the selling of registrations and downloads in addition to tangible products, all while working into the normal website and Drupal features.
    Although powerful, the main drawback for Ubercart is the fact that it can only be integrated with a Drupal CMS, which for new users can require a steep learning curve in order to gain full functionality.

    Demo: http://demo.ubercart.org/
    Open Source: Yes
    Price: Free
    Platform: Drupal – PHP / MySQL

  8. AgoraCart

    The Most Popular Free and Open Source Shopping CartsAgoraCart is yet another open source and free shopping cart system that Digital Pacific customers use to create an online shop. First released in 2000, AgoraCart has a long life-span, yet lacks the followers that other shopping carts have, even given the features it offers. AgoraCart shops can manage product bundling and pricing, discounts and digital goods to name a few. Additionally, web developers and designers appreciate the easy-to-work with and enhance platform.
    The downside of this product starts with the fact that additional modules can only be accessed if paying for a membership.

    The downside of this product starts with the fact that additional modules can only be accessed if paying for a membership.

    Demo: http://www.agoracart.com/demos.htm
    Open Source: Yes
    Price: Free
    Platform: PHP / MySQL

  9. VirtueMart

    The Most Popular Free and Open Source Shopping CartsVirtueMart is a very popular free and open source shopping cart solution with over 2.5 million downloads worldwide. Like UberCart, this cart must be used in conjunction with a content management system, that being Joomla!. VirtueMart offers a full range of features including the ability for shoppers to register and track their transactions. An unlimited number of products can potentially be supported in these carts, but it is generally recommended for sites that get no more than a medium-sized traffic.
    Although powerful, the main drawback for Ubercart is the fact that it can only be integrated with a Drupal CMS, which for new users can require a steep learning curve in order to gain full functionality.

    The downside to this robust cart is the fact that it must be used in conjunction with Joomla!, which for some with little knowledge of these products can cause more confusion than help. Other items of concern include some reviews that actually comment on bits of messy code in areas.

    Demo: http://virtuemart.net/home/demo
    Open Source: Yes
    Price: Free
    Platform: Joomla – PHP / MySQL

    As with any software, it is important to consider your needs in relation to the software and its features before making a final decision. Here are some points we urge our customers to evaluate before going further:

    • Are there postage and payment modules available for the shopping cart that target both Australian and overseas customers if need be? A good place to check is with the community forums on the product’s main website.
    • Have you tried the demo for both the admin and user side to see if the shopping cart meets your goals as an online shop owner?
    • Are you capable of updating the software when necessary in order to protect yourself against security vulnerabilities? Just as we noted before with content management systems, many of which are also open source, there is the need to keep them updated with the latest versions to get the most functionality and protection as possible.
    • Is your web hosting capable of handling the software? The main concern here is to make sure there is a MySQL database available as all of the systems above run using one. All of Digital Pacific’s hosting plans (except personal basic) offer MySQL Databases.

    As you can see, there are numerous shopping cart systems out there that can help you get an online shop running in no time. However, they each appear to have their pluses and their minuses, so the best method for selection is to take a look around at the demos to see which one works for you and your business.

    Do you use one of these shopping carts on this list? If so, leave us a quick review about why you recommend it (or not) by submitting a comment below!

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    The Most Popular Free and Open Source Shopping Carts The Most Popular Free and Open Source Shopping Carts The Most Popular Free and Open Source Shopping Carts The Most Popular Free and Open Source Shopping Carts The Most Popular Free and Open Source Shopping Carts The Most Popular Free and Open Source Shopping Carts The Most Popular Free and Open Source Shopping Carts The Most Popular Free and Open Source Shopping Carts The Most Popular Free and Open Source Shopping Carts

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Posted in Programming, Support, Web Hosting, Webmaster | 7 Comments »

Five Fantastic Add-ons for Firefox

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

Five Fantastic Add ons for Firefox Firefox is definitely Digital Pacific’s web browser of choice, and we gladly recommend it to any of our customers. Like Internet Explorer, Firefox retrieves website files and then renders them together to present the website that you view on the screen before you. Mozilla Firefox works in true open source fashion by allowing users to customise its look, feel and functionality with the addition of numerous add-ons. These add-ons give the web browser the ability to do everything from social bookmarking your favourite blog posts to helping you edit a website’s code.

Here are five of our favourite Firfox Add-ons

1. Firebug

Five Fantastic Add ons for Firefox
Firebug allows you to view, browse and edit a preview version of a website’s code as you look at it in your browser. Better yet, you get to do it without having to open up any other programs! Just click on the tiny little Firebug icon in the bottom-right corner of Firefox and a window will open up directly in your current browser with access to the code. This little add-on also allows you to try out different options on a live website without affecting the live code.

2. ColorfulTabs

Five Fantastic Add ons for Firefox
ColorfulTabs does just what the name says; it makes each of your open website tabs a different colour. This can not only make your web browser prettier, but it can also help you with tab organisation and quick tab identification. ColorfulTabs is one of the simplest Firefox add-ons, but it is definitely one of the most popular.

3. Fire Gestures

Five Fantastic Add ons for Firefox
Fire Gestures provides the ability to take its five different mouse gestures and link them to various commands. With this awesome add-on, you can make opening different browser tabs, or click the forward and back buttons, a breeze. The add-on’s homepage provides an entire list of mapping options to apply to each gesture including enlarging and reducing an image’s size, accessing Firefox options and translating a page’s language.

4. YSlow

Five Fantastic Add ons for Firefox
Yslow is especially great for web developers, but anyone interested in web design can benefit by using this Firefox add-on. YSlow analyses a website’s performance, and the criteria with which it uses to determine this level can be customised. Besides that, it will provide a list of suggestions that can be used to make it better. This add-on works in conjunction with Firebug, so of course, that add-on should be installed as well in order for YSlow to function.

5. Delicious Bookmarks

Five Fantastic Add ons for FirefoxDelicious Bookmarks is a Firefox add-on that helps you to quickly and easily bookmark your favourite websites and blogs. With the integration into the toolbar, you can even access and search your bookmarks, view and search your tags and share via the Internet. For those concerned about consistency between the web version and the toolbar version, you will be happy to know there is a synchronise feature to keep the both the same.

Last time I checked, there were a couple thousand Firefox add-ons to choose from in their add-on repository, and these are just five! So, even if there wasn’t anything in this entry that you would enjoy integrating with Firefox, it would still be worthwhile searching the add-on site for a desired feature.

As always, we want to know which add-ons you would recommend, and why. Leave us a comment below to add to this list.

If you would like to learn more about Internet Explorer and Firefox – the two most popular web browsers – please read more in Browser Compatibility.

Five Fantastic Add ons for Firefox Five Fantastic Add ons for Firefox Five Fantastic Add ons for Firefox Five Fantastic Add ons for Firefox Five Fantastic Add ons for Firefox Five Fantastic Add ons for Firefox Five Fantastic Add ons for Firefox Five Fantastic Add ons for Firefox Five Fantastic Add ons for Firefox

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Posted in Programming, Webmaster | 2 Comments »

Every bug in the world can be solved with just 15 new lines!

Tuesday, May 26th, 2009

Customers of Digital Pacific will be happy to know that in a few months time, we will be moving to a new; more feature complete billing system that will provide many benefits to users. With our new billing system, Parallels Business Automation, users will be able to see all their invoices (past, present and future) and will be able to literally click one button and switch between all of their hosting control panels.

This move, however, has not been without quite a number of funny mishaps while moving from our current billing system (ModernBill) to Parallels Business Automation (“PBA”). The following text is going to go into quite a bit of technical information, so if you don’t know what XML is, well, you might just want to close this window go to Wikipedia’s article on XML and look it up!

Observe this image very closely:

Every bug in the world can be solved with just 15 new lines!

So what I have done, is I have made a set of files with 100 customers each. Every separate file gets imported by running the command on the PBA server ‘hspc-import.pl’. Here, I am running the 59th file (the files start at 00). hspc-import.pl is complaining that the email for person “Becky A. Douglas” is not defined, however, when I go to edit the file, the email is infact correct, and it is definitely defined. Just like it is for the clients before her.

This issue has had me baffled for weeks trying to solve this issue. Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. Sometimes changing the name in the XML file will just magically solve the issue, as if it was not there to begin with.

So what I do, is I get on Skype and call our Sales Engineer at Parallels, and tell him what the issue is. He points out a few issues with the XML file (which is fair enough, but why did all the clients before these “just” import without any issues?).

I take into account the issues that he pointed out, and go and create a new set of import documents to get our clients into our new billing system. I run all the commands again to start the process rolling, and now the issue is coming up again!

But now something very, very bad is going on! The import is actually failing faster then it was before the fixes that were suggested by our Sales Engineer. So I back track and change a few lines in the XML file. Instead of the top of the file saying this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<data>
<account>
<type>CUSTOMER</type>
<status>active</status>
<is_corporate>0</is_corporate>
<name>Bob Smith</name>

It now says this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<data>

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.


<account>
<type>CUSTOMER</type>
<status>active</status>
<is_corporate>0</is_corporate>
<name>Bob Smith</name>

After adding exactly 15 new lines after the <data> child in the failing XML file in the import batch, you wouldn’t believe it. The import actually succeeded.

So now my new motto is, “Every bug in the world can be solved with just fifteen newlines!“.

Every bug in the world can be solved with just 15 new lines! Every bug in the world can be solved with just 15 new lines! Every bug in the world can be solved with just 15 new lines! Every bug in the world can be solved with just 15 new lines! Every bug in the world can be solved with just 15 new lines! Every bug in the world can be solved with just 15 new lines! Every bug in the world can be solved with just 15 new lines! Every bug in the world can be solved with just 15 new lines! Every bug in the world can be solved with just 15 new lines!

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Posted in Programming | 4 Comments »