In this article we will review all steps you need in order to migrate content from Joomla! 1.0.x to Joomla! 1.5. Let’s get started!

Before we go

Here is something you need to know before we start. By default the Migrator Component used in this guide is capable to migrate following:

• Global configuration settings
• Menus
• Users
• Sections, categories, content items
• Core components such as Banner, Poll, News Feed, Weblinks, etc.
• Core modules and related menu configuration
• Core mambots
• Messages

If you are using 3rd extension on your website, it’s data will not be migrated automatically. You need to contact your extension’s provider and request Migrator plugin for that extension.

(more…)

Tags: component joomla, components, Joomla, Joomla, Joomla Tutorials

When building a website with Joomla 1.5, you might need to hide content from registreted users and guests. When we were recently building a website with Joomla 1.5, we came across the 3 options: JoomiHide Ninja Access - JACL RokAccess In this post we will be discussing the pros and cons of each of these plugins and explaining how to make RokAccess work in Joomla 1.5. Hiding content depending on whether a user is a registered member or a guest is a really useful feature to have. Fortunately, there are a number of different options available set content permissions in Joomla 1.5…

JoomiHide
How JoomiHide works

This is the simplest plugin available for Joomla 1.5 to hide content. Although it’s simple it works seamlessly for showing content either to registered members or guests.

Content in an article can be restricted to be displayed to certain visitors by adding these tags:
{reg} This content is only displayed to registered users logged in {/reg}
{unreg} This content is only displayed to unregistered users or non-logged in users {/unreg}

When content is restricted for non-members, this plugin replaces the restricted text with: “To view rest of this section, please login or register”. This is a nice feature but a little annoying to have it displayed each time content is not displayed. To remove or edit this text, you can hack the plugin by changing the html code on line 108 of joomihide.php which is in /plugins/content/.

Unlike content restricted for non-members, when content is not shown to registered users there is no text added.
Pros

* Simple

Cons

* Downloading this membership at HowIDid Academy which will set you back $10 for 3 months.
* Content can only be hidden to members and non-members: There is no option of showing content to administrators or other Joomla groups
* Need to hack the plugin to remove or change the text displayed when content restricted for guests

Click here to see what other people are saying about JoomiHide. Click here to download this plugin.
Ninja Access
How Ninja Access works

Hide content using this plugin by surrounding the content you want to be seen by certain groups in a tag. Ninja Access uses numbers to specify which group the content includes:

{njaccess 0} Shows this content only to guests {/njaccess}
{njaccess 18,19,20,21,23,24,25} Shows this content to all users who are guests {/njaccess}
{njaccess 24,25,30,31} Shows this content to administrators and 2 custom groups created in JACL {/njaccess}

When content is not shown to a particular group, the text is simply hidden.

As you can see from the examples above, you need to know the default Joomla GroupIDs: 0 - Guest, 18 - Registered, 19 - Author, 20 - Editor, 21 - Publisher, 23 - Manager, 24 - Administrator, 25 - Super Administrator.
Pros

* Very complete plugin for hiding content for specific groups including groups created with JACL
* Great support from the Ninjoomla team

Cons

* You need to have the GroupIDs at hand when you use this plugin.
* Downloading this requires Silver Membership at NinJoomla which will set you back $30.

Find out more about Ninja Access here.
RokAccess

RokAccess is an extremely popular plugin for Joomla 1.0, but hasn’t yet been updated for Joomla 1.5. Thanks to Lukas White, we managed to get RokAccess working in Joomla 1.5.
How to get RokAccess working in Joomla 1.5

After installing the Joomla 1.0 RokAccess extension on your Joomla 1.5 website, you will need to change the rokaccess.php file which is located in /plugins/content/

There are 3 changes you need to make to this file:

$_MAMBOTS->registerFunction( ‘onPrepareContent’, ‘botRokAccess’ );
Change to:
$mainframe->registerEvent( ‘onPrepareContent’, ‘botRokAccess’ );

function botRokAccess( $published, &$row, &$params, $page=0 )
Change to:
function botRokAccess( &$row, &$params, $page=0 ) {

Delete:
if (!$published) {
$row->text = preg_replace( $regex, ”, $row->text );
return;
}

How RokAccess works

To hide content using the RokAccess plugin you add the RokAccess tag to the content you want to hide. Here are some examples:

{rokaccess guest} Shows this content only to guest users {/rokaccess}
{rokaccess !guest} Shows this content to all users who are not a guest {/rokaccess}
{rokaccess registered} Shows this content to all users who are registered {/rokaccess}
{rokaccess guest,!editor} Shows this content this to all guests and members who are not editors {/rokaccess}
{rokaccess editor,special} Shows this content to editors, administrators, and superadministrators {/rokaccess}

In similarity to Ninja Access, when content is not shown to a particular group, the text is simply hidden.
Pros

* Free
* Complete

Cons

* You need to hack the plugin files to get this working in Joomla 1.5
* No support

Click here to see what other people are saying about RokAccess. Click here to download this plugin.
Which should plugin should you choose?

It just depends on what your needs are. We recommend you choose the plugin you’re comfortable using… If you don’t want to hack any files and need support with getting the plugin to work, we recommend you use the Ninjoomla plugin.

Do you have any experience with these plugins? We welcome your comments below.

Source: www.goodwebpractices.com/joomla/hide-content-from-certain-users.html

Tags: components, hidde, Joomla, Joomla, Joomla Tutorials, visitors

Having attractive RSS feeds is really important. If your feed is dull and unattractive, you are unlikely to get many subscribers and the click-through rate from your subscribers runs the risk of being low.

The best way to have good looking RSS feeds in Joomla 1.0.1 is to use the DS-Syndicate component.

In this post we will talk briefly about why DS-Syndicate is great choice for creating RSS feeds in Joomla. We will then share with you how to solve two very irritating bugs in DS-Syndicate: (1) The component adding open and closed brackets (parentheses) to the feed title and (2) the component outputting the author’s email address in the news feed.

Why DS-Syndicate is a good option

With DS-Syndicate you can render images and HTML in the news feed and select which sections and categories to include in the feed. There is also an extensive list of feed types DS-Syndicate can output including RSS 2.0 and Atom. Another important function that DS-Syndicate offers is being able to add a read more link to each item in the feed.
Two bugs with DS-Syndicate

After downloading, installing and configuring DS-Syndicate, we experienced two problems:

1. Feed titles were followed by open and closed parentheses: ()
2. The author’s email address was included in the RSS feed
How to resolve these bugs

We resolved these two issues by changing the components PHP files. The simple solution we found was to prevent the author tag from being outputted and to delete the code which was adding the () to the end of the feed title.

If after downloading and installing DS-Syndicate you too are experiencing these problems, you can resolve them by simply overwriting two files in the DS-Syndicate component directory. Follow these steps:

* Download this file and extract the files
* Replace ds-syndicate.php in www.yoursite.com/components/com_ds-syndicate/ with ds-syndicate.php included in the zip
* Replace feedcreator.class.php in www.yoursite.comcomponents/com_ds-syndicate/includes/ with feedcreator.class.php included in the zip

Changing these two files should enable you to output a RSS 2.0 feed without the author email tag, and without () being attached to the RSS feed title.

It works here at Good Web Practices, just click here to see our news feed which is generated by DS-Syndicate in action!

from: www.goodwebpractices.com/joomla/rss-ds-synidicate-fix.html

Tags: components, feedcreator, Joomla, Joomla, rss

Auction Ads have been in the lime light for sometime since March 2007, Recently MediaWhiz acquired the company fully from Jeremy Schoemaker for an undisclosed fee. Auction Ads is an advertising widget that serves relevant eBay auctions based on tags placed by the publisher.

As a publisher with Auction Ads, you are paid 100% of eBay affiliate fees. Auction Ads had more than 5,000 publisher within a week and have more than 20,000 publishers registered in their network.

After giving a brief introduction about Auction Ads, I think it’s really an idiot prove system to use, simple and effective! New Publishers who are looking forward to make money online can now breath on Auction Ads.

The All new 2.0 Design For Auction Ads
If you were a long supporter with Auction Ads and have seen their makeover through the months from the ads that were with poor resolution, distorted and stretchy looking advertising items to the all new refreshing 2.0 look, which will allow better images shown so that you can attract more clicks on your site, given the staff a few more weeks before everything is up!

Worry no more as you will get double the performance than before!
AuctionAds was very confident to say that they have “doubled the size of our hardware infrastructure and optimized it to ensure near 100% uptime of ad serving“. This acts as an assurances to all of us that the problems we faced previous would be eliminated by their dedicated hardware.

Why should i sign up with Auction Ads?
Many people will think Auction Ads President Patrick Gavin paid me to review them, but all i can say is they would not be looking at me because i am not a big earner with them, Maybe if i am John Chow, i might get few hundred dollars for this review or maybe not?
If my memory served me well, i remembered giving them a drop when they were having problems with their servers and now i see the prospect of this program coming back with its assurances with Media Whiz which i see as a way to make more money online, don’t tell me this is not what you wanted “make more money“!

Managing my Auction Ads Account
A little run through on how to actually setup your account which would help speed up the amount of time used to further optimize your ads. Its so simple there is no need to use multiple screenshots for elaborations.

Click on “Campaigns” and start to create a campaign to monitor your click results and impressions made. You can have multiple campaigns going on at the same time, there should be a limit but i have yet to create to that amount so i can’t tell you the limits.

After creating your campaign, lets give it a name “Money“. Click on “Get Code” to setup your ads. There are 3 columns which you need to fill up to create your very first auction codes.

• Ad Keywords: Place your keywords within this box and to breakup keywords leave a “,” in between every word created.
• Ad Campaign: You have created “Money” as your campaign, choose it so that you can track the stats.
• Ad Type: Though after the new implementation with the web 2.0 design, the older design still is around and is still being offered as a choice, why is this so? Let me explain to you later.

Who do i choose? The New or stick to the old ads?
Auction Ads retained the services for the older banners though it brings much distorted picture but the older banners had features to customize compared to the new ones. It really depends on individual pick.

The High and Low of Older Banners

High

1. You have a wide choice of ads sizes that you can chose to fit your site.
2. You have the ability to customize your background,descriptions and links colour.
3. You will be able to blend your ads better on your site.

Low

1. The Ads are showing poor quality pictures which could affect your earnings, better images are require to pull of a convincing purchase.

The High and Low of New Banners

High

1. It gives a much attractive and sleek look which could attract more clicks.
2. There is a cool range of colours to choose for your ads.

Low

1. There is a limited number of ads style i can choice which is the vertical or horizontal style followed by a maximum of 3 ads shown.

You have setup your first hand and have placed it in your blog, but realised most of your ads are not rotating and also you made a discovery that your ads are always having many bids at $0.01, how do you increase them and set a minimum amount to improve your earnings?

Optimize your Auction Ads!
All these tips and tricks were found on Auction Ads Blog which is broken into parts during their updates, I decided to compile it to look good under one post. Here i go!

New Window Open Function
This feature does not look new but it allows your ads to open in another tab or window page.In your own code it will look like this ” auctionads_option=”n”; ” . This means your ads will open in another page or tab.

Rotate your keywords Automatically in one banner
Bored and tired of seeing same ads in every pages, then you can use this function which allows your keywords within to rotate by itself. While Keying in your keywords to “Ad Keywords” add “;” in between every keyword. The code reflected should be like this

“auctionads_ad_kw = “keyword 1;keyword 2;keyword 3;keyword 4″; ”

Optimizing auction prices to make more money
This can be trick, it can decrease the number of clicks on one hand but on the other hand it can help you earn more with just 1 single purchase. “minprice:___ and maxprice:___“. The code will look like this:

“auctionads_ad_kw = “Xbox 360 minprice:50″;” - will generate all relevant items above $50

“auctionads_ad_kw = “X box 360 maxprice:50″;” - will generate all relevant items under $50

Using the best way to convert auctions to cash!
Go back to your account under “Url converter“. Add in a ebay item’s url that you would want to promote or let your readers know about how hot that item is. For example,Brand New Apple iPhone 8GB is up for grab at only $728, would you not want to own a iphone now?

Benefits are way above all and you can outdo your current PPC earnings
Since you take 100% affiliate earnings as a publisher, and you will see that PPC clicks are seriously pathetic, maybe a maxmium of $2/day with 1000/day unless your site brings in tons of traffic, otherwise giving Auction Ads a try would not mean any harm at all!

Plugins, Modules and Widgets readily available

• AuctionAds Joomla Module - Download Joomla Module
• Wordpress 2.2 AuctionAds Widget - Download WP 2.2 Widget
• AuctionAds Easy Wordpress Plugin - Download WP Plugin
• AuctionAds Drupal Module - Download Drupal Module

*Too bad for Bloggers, we don’t have widget readily available for auctions ads, maybe someone would create one one day! Do contact me and i will have you added in this list and contact Auction ads, cause they will give T-shirt to the one who creates plugins or widgets for them!

Give AuctionAds a try, its one of the best program available and signup now to start making money online! Do you have something to share, do share with us a tips that you have used before or comments on this program?

source:www.etienneteo.com/2007/08/make-money-online-with-auction-ads-new.html

Tags: age, Apple, ark, banner, blogger, cd, CLOSED, CMS, code, count, download, Drupal, etc, Free, Hardware, IDE, image, Internet, Joomla, list, memory, Module, modules, Money Making Resources, mount, option, page, PHP, Plugins, PROM, RAM, SEO, server, Tips and tricks, traffic, Web 2.0, WordPress

The following instructions outline a few ways to migrate your existing Mambo 4.5.2 site to Joomla! 1.0.If you need to migrate to Joomla! from an earlier version of Mambo, you will need to follow the Mambo upgrade path to at least Mambo 4.5.2 and then migrate to Joomla!

Migration or upgrading of any system is all about change management.

Before you start you should:

• Consult with your stakeholders about the migration or change (your clients, your work {glossarbot=disable}group, etc).
• Test the migration of a copy of your site in a sandpit that is not on your production server (if that is available to you). Get your stakeholders involved in the test plan also.
• Backup all files, systems, and databases prior to migration.
• Determine a time that least impacts your business for the migration. Then inform your stakeholders when the migration will occur and how long systems will be out of action.
• Prepare a roll back plan so that in the event of a disastrous roll out, you can restore the system to a “last known stable” condition.

{glossarbot=enable}So you’ve got your change management plan worked out and signed-off? Good. Here is a fairly safe option for upgrading:

• Copy the Joomla! files (e.g., via FTP) to a new directory under your web root.
• Remove the Joomla /installation folder
• Copy your Mambo configuration.php file to your Joomla! site. Change the $mosConfig_absolute_path and $mosConfig_live_site variables to suit the new location.
• Copy any CUSTOM templates, components, modules, mambots and languages to the same relative locations in the new Joomla directory. The following is a list of the entities that SHOULD NOT be copied from Mambo as they are part of the Joomla core.

Templates:

• mambo_admin (administrator only)
• mambo_admin_blue (administrator only)
• rhuk_solarflare_ii

Components:

• com_admin (administrator only)
• com_banners
• com_categories (administrator only)
• com_checkin (administrator only)
• com_config (administrator only)
• com_contact
• com_content
• com_frontpage
• com_installer (administrator only)
• com_languages (administrator only)
• com_login
• com_mambots (administrator only)
• com_massmail (administrator only)
• com_media (administrator only)
• com_menumanager (administrator only)
• com_menus (administrator only)
• com_messages
• com_modules (administrator only)
• com_newsfeeds
• com_poll
• com_registration
• com_rss
• com_search
• com_sections (administrator only)
• com_statistics (administrator only)
• com_syndicate (administrator only)
• com_templates (administrator only)
• com_trash (administrator only)
• com_typedcontent (administrator only)
• com_user
• com_users (administrator only)
• com_weblinks
• com_wrapper

Modules:

• mod_archive
• mod_banners
• mod_components (administrator only)
• mod_fullmenu (administrator only)
• mod_latest (administrator only)
• mod_latestnews
• mod_logged (administrator only)
• mod_login
• mod_mainmenu
• mod_mosmsg (administrator only)
• mod_mostread
• mod_newsflash
• mod_online
• mod_pathway
• mod_poll
• mod_popular (administrator only)
• mod_quickicon (administrator only)
• mod_random_image
• mod_related_items
• mod_rssfeed
• mod_search
• mod_sections
• mod_stats
• mod_templatechooser
• mod_toolbar (administrator only)
• mod_unread (administrator only)
• mod_whosonline
• mod_wrapper

Mambots:

• content/geshi
• content/legacybots
• content/moscode
• content/mosemailcloak
• content/mosimage
• content/mosloadposition
• content/mospaging
• content/mossef
• content/mosvote
• editors/none
• editors/tinymce
• editors-xtd/mosimage.btn
• editors-xtd/mospage.btn
• search/categories.searchbot
• search/contacts.searchbot
• search/content.searchbot
• search/newsfeeds.searchbot
• search/sections.searchbot
• search/weblinks.searchbot

Language:

• english
• Apply the patch (see below) to all your administrator templates.
• Load the new site in your browser.

When you are satisfied that all is working well, archive your existing site and move the Joomla! directory to the location of the original site (or use web server alias, etc, there are many options here).

Database Updates

While there are no “critical” database updates that are required, we have included a script (/installation/sql/migrate_Mambo4523_to_Joomla_100.sql) that will update the default template for the administrator, and unpublish a module that relates to MamboForge.

Please note that you will need to either run the migrate sql or apply the template patch (see below) for the Administrator to work correctly (the tempalte patch no longer applies for 1.0.1).

Hardening Joomla!

Mambo and Joomla! by default emulate a PHP setting called register_globals = on. This is generally considered to be an undesirable condition in modern web application design. The preferred setting for production sites is register_globals = off. While not a cure-all, it does prevent some forms of malicious attack due to bugs or poor programming practices.

To emulate this setting in Joomla!, rename globals.php to globals.php-on and then rename globals.php-off to globals.php.

However, we make no guarantee that all custom addons will still work correctly as the author may have been relying on the fact that register_globals was set to On.

Joomla! with PHP 5 and MySQL 4.1

MySQL 4.1 requires the mysqli libraries to be used to access the database. To be able to install and use Joomla! in under this configuration, rename database.php to database.mysql.php and then rename database.mysqli.php to database.php.

Questions you might have

Can I just copy the Joomla! files over the top of my Mambo directory?
Yes, but we recommend that you try this on a copy of your file system first and remember to backup your files before you do anything. When you do copy over your existing files, double check that the files are actually being updated and that no transfer errors occurred (eg, errors about permissions).

The site preview page is blank after I install.
Check that you have removed your installation directory. If you log out of the Administrator you will probably get a warning to this effect.

Administrator Template Patch

*Note: the instructions below no longer apply for 1.0.1 as we have included modified `mambo_admin` and `mambo_admin_blue` templates - so you can safely ignore the instructions below*
Because we have introduced output buffering in the Administrator, any existing Administator templates need to be modified slightly to correctly work in Joomla!.

Load the template’s index.php file into an editor. Find the lines that look like this:

getPath( ‘admin’ )) {
  require $path;
} else {
  echo “<img border=”0” alt=”” src=”” />\r\n
\r\n“;
}
?>

Then replace it with this code:

<?php mosMainBody_Admin(); ?>

Save the file.

Tags: Joomla, Mambo, Module, SEF, variables