So, this blog post will be a bit off the beaten (Joomla!) path, but I think it's important nonetheless. It's about the amount of paper the world uses on a daily basis.

We recently closed on a new house and had to sit through the fabled title closing meeting. You'd be amazed at how much paper is used for that single transaction! I'm pretty sure about a ream of paper was used during that meeting.

Deforestation is a horrible by-product of our technological revolution, but the technological revolution, itself, may be the saving grace. Lots of things are heading the way of bits and bytes, including document transfer, making the use of physical pieces of paper a thing of the past.

So, here's my promise to help the situation: I promise not to use a piece of paper for something or print something unnecessarily that I could have otherwise used a digital (PDF) version to accomplish the same thing.

I love checklists. And goals. But even more than both, I love checking off goals on my checklist.

One of this month's goals was to release the WhiteSpace 2.0 template. So as I check off this goal on my list, let me introduce you to some of the new things found in the WhiteSpace 2 template.

I got some really good feedback on the 1.0 version of the template. I got a few really good ideas from people; some made it in and some didn't.  I even had a few ideas that didn't make it in.  A good number of ideas came from the book Beginning Joomla! Web Site Development by Cory Webb. He's got a chapter in there (Chapter 8, to be specific) that had a lot of great ideas of things to stick in templates, so thank Cory by going and picking up his book.

Here's a rundown of some of the things that are new w/ this template:

Logo Parameters

Probably the coolest feature for the general Joomla user will be the new logo options in the Template Parameters. In WhiteSpace v1, you were on your own to change out the header logo. Now, you can choose to use either an image or some text in the logo spot.

If you navigate to 'Extensions' > 'Template Manager' > 'WhiteSpace', you'll see the parameters available for changing. The "Logo type" parameter will determine whether an image is used or whether text is used (the options are "Image" or "Text"). If you choose "Text", then the template will use the text entered into the "Logo text" parameter field. Pretty cool, huh?

Of course, if you wanted to use an image, upload a new image here:

/templates/whitespace/images/logo.png

Overrides

As promised, I threw a few overrides into the mix as well:

• com_contact
• com_content
• com_weblinks
• mod_breadcrumbs

There were quite a few more that I wanted to squeeze in but ran out of time.  You know how that goes. For you developers out there, here are a few other things I included:

•  A component.php file
• A tag (how did I forget that the first time around?)
• A prettier offline.php file
• A prettier, though incomplete, error.php file

One thing you'll notice that's missing is the dropdown menu. Believe me when I say that I tried to implement a quick CSS dropdown menu system, but hit more bugs than I had time to squash. That will have to wait for the next version.

This template has a boatload of module positions making it pretty flexible. Here's a guide for you:

Drop me a note if you're able to put WhiteSpace v2 to good use.  Feel free also to leave feedback here if you have suggestions for future releases. If you have trouble, I'll do my best to help out, but the template is released pretty much as-is. 

Download the WhiteSpace v2 template.

Cheers.

In my last post I outlined a few things I wanted to do with the White Space template. I wanted to keep it as clean and un-complicated as possible, but I wanted to add the convenience of a few extra features that didn't make it into the last release.

Along the way, my goal for White Space v.2.0 has changed a bit.  Digging into other commercial templates to see how things work has taught me a ton about template design and functionality. Looking at the various free 'starter' templates out there, I realized that there are very few bare-bones templates that have some of the more advanced whiz-bang features that some of the commercial templates have. So I've built in a few convenient starting points for other developers who want to take White Space and run with it. 

Some of those features include template parameters and a params.ini file. I've also integrated a really easy example of how to use it effectively in a site.  As well, there's a functions.php file that has a few tricks to make a template builder's life easier.

I have no intention of taking away anything from the commercial template builders out there. They are extending the limits of what Joomla can do with every new template they build. What I wanted though was a template that someone could learn the basics of 'the next step' when it comes to template building: not simply building the layout, but also building in some intelligence into the template.

I've got two more major things on the v2.0 to-do list, but I should be releasing it within the next week or two.

When I released the Whitespace template a few weeks ago, it was admittedly bare-bones. There wasn't much to either the design or the functionality of the template. I was okay with that. I'm a big fan of the Release Early/Release Often way of developing. I set a deadline for myself to get done what I could and released the result of that.

After some feedback (the whole point of the 'Release Early/Release Often' method) I've come up with a list of things I'd like to see in the v2.0 of the Whitespace template.  Here's my list:

• Integrate a Dropdown menu for the main menu (this will likely be CSS-based for speed)
• Make a few overrides, such as com_weblinks, com_content, etc.
• Add an offline.php page
• Add a component.php page
• Add an error.php page
• Add a few best-practice bits that I missed the first go-round

One of the things that threw me off when I tried Drupal out years ago was how there was no visual separation between the front end site that visitors saw and the back end site that administrators used. Joomla provided this nicely (though in a dated interface).  This visual separation made a lot of sense to me as a new user. There were clearly-defined areas for doing totally different things. This separation gave me confidence as a new user.

However, one aspect of Joomla that still bugs me is the way frontend editing is handled. Frontend editing is a great feature that users (and many inexperienced clients) would much rather use, but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen editor boxes and option menus extend beyond (or complete break) a frontend template.

My personal view is that frontend editing should be abstracted completely from the frontend template to a layer “above” the template. I think that through the magic of modal boxes already built into the backend of Joomla, frontend editing can not only become more useful but also more powerful.

I am in no way a UI designer, but I made a few rough sketches of my ideas. Here’s what I propose:

The Super Admin and Admins have the right to turn on or off the Frontend Maintenance Menu (FMM, for lack of a better name) for any level of user. Additionally, menu items in the FMM can be enabled or disabled for a particular user group. If the FMM is enabled for a particular user, the menu will show up collapsed on the left or right side of the screen, unobtrusively and out of the way of the site content.

When it is clicked, it will slide out to reveal the options available to the user. Some handy menu options:

• Content – used for article management.
• Menus – enables easy menu management
• Modules – used for module management
• Template – can be used to harness the preferences power being built into modern templates

Choosing an option will open a modal box above the site. The modal box will serve more as a ‘window’ through which they can perform various administrative functions, rather than a feature that’s shoehorned into the front-end template.

Some advantages of moving in a direction like this:

• There is a consistent view of Joomla frontend functions across all Joomla sites
• Users have a clearly defined place to perform their frontend functions
• Templates can focus on displaying the data instead of displaying ways to manage the data

I’d love to hear some thoughts or feedback on this. Thanks for reading.

One of the most requested types of sites I get these days is an E-Commerce site. With commerce shifting slowly but surely to the web, it's no wonder that everyone would like to have a store online where they can sell their wares. However, most e-business owners are grossly unprepared for what it takes to make an online store successful.

Planning

Usually the folks I talk to contact me needing a way to sell a few of their products. However, their train of thought stops there. They have no plan of how to go up against the competition, market their products, or provide excellent customer support. They just expect that as soon as they have a website online that people will find their store and purchase products from them. This rarely happens.

Managing

Another misconception I see all the time is that people expect their stores to run themselves once they're setup. After a few months of no sales, many of them realize that they have to actually put work into their e-commerce store, just like a brick-and-mortar store owner does. Unfortunately, I've seen far too many beautiful e-commerce stores become vacant once their owners find out the realities of the time commitment needed.

Selling

Unless an idea or product is truly unique or one-of-a-kind, chances are that competition is fierce out there for the very product that most people are trying to sell. This isn't meant to be a discouragement, but rather an honest look at the way online commerce works. Most people would have a hard time answering if they were asked about the ways by which their e-commerce store stood out from the competition. 

Some Advice

Here are a few things to think about before jumping into the wide world of e-commerce:

• Do you have a way to process credit cards?
• How do you plan to stand out from the crowd?
• How often do you plan to update your website?
• Will you be available daily to handle customer support?
• Do you have a dedicated address (P.O. box) and phone number for customer support?
• Do you have a business plan, including a solid plan for growth?

There are lots of other things to consider before having an e-commerce website built for your e-business. But if you plan and work hard at making your business a success, e-commerce websites can be great sources of addidional income or a way to escape your 9-5.

Contact me if you have more questions about starting an e-commerce website and I'd love to chat with you and help you through the process. In the mean time, here's a website with a ton of resources for e-commerce owners.

Today I attended the Joomla Training session put on by Steve Burge of the Joomla Training and Alledia fame. Besides being a supremely nice guy, he was awesome at taking beginners through the Joomla ropes in a clear and concise way.

The majority of the class was made up of people who had used Joomla for less than a month, but there were a few of us that had more than a few Joomla sites under our belts. Even so, the way Steve presented many of the Joomla concepts were brilliant and gave me ideas of ways to better explain to a client how to work the website I just built for them.

My fellow Joomla freelancer, Cory Webb, came down from Waco to cameo during the section about managing templates. His presentation was equally thorough and bite-sized enough for the brand new users. I understand why Wrox picked him out of the sea of Joomla freelancers to write an awesome book for them.

Even though the Joomla Training wasn't geared towards me, I'm really glad I got to go, if for no other reason than to  help some of the new people through the exercises we did during the class. If you're looking to learn more about Joomla, I highly recommend attending one of Steve's classes while you can. The ability to see someone walk through a demonstration and be able to ask questions right there is pretty invaluable to the learning process. However, if you can't swing the cash or the time to attend, definitely pick up one of Cory's books: Beginning Joomla Web Site Development.

I've been building websites for years using Open Source frameworks, components, templates, etc.  The nice thing about Open Source projects for the most part is that they're free. 'Free', as in, getting something someone else has worked hard on for zilch. As sweet as this is, the other side of the 'Open Source' coin is the community aspect. People release open source projects and code for the greater good of the community.

Well, for years I've wanted to gain enough experience to start giving back to the open source community, especially the community I've gotten so much from: the Joomla community. 

Without further ado, I present my first of many attempts to give back and enrich  the Joomla community: the Whitespace 1.0 template for Joomla 1.5.

If you hadn't noticed, I'm not much for graphics or clutter. The goal of this template is stay out of the way of the content. Since there are only a handful of small graphics, this template happens to be blazing fast. Much of the CSS is compressed to shave some kbs from supporting files as well.

I built the template on the 960.gs CSS framework, and I have to say, I pretty much love the 960.gs framework. It definitely gave the template a professional edge with all the consistency.

The template is pretty simple as far as templates these days go. All of the module positions are collapsible and hopefully there are enough module positions to make the template pretty versitile. 

In order of appearance, here are the available modules:

• Search
• Menu
• Top
• Banner
• User1
• User2
• User3
• Left
• Content
• Bottom
• User4
• User5
• User6
• User7
• User8
• User9
• Footer Menu
• Footer

Hopefully I'll get a test site up soon to show it off. Until then, below are some screenshots for you.

Download Whitespace 1.0 For Free Here

I worked for years at a web company that built sites for organizations that wouldn't be considered the most technically-savvy. There's nothing wrong with that at all, but we'd usually have to spend a bit more time up front explaining the benefits of a good domain name that was less than 30 characters long. Just because "SouthsideHosannahChurchofGodMissionaryWorshipCenter.com" was very specific, (and, not surprisingly, not yet taken) didn't mean that it was a good choice for a domain name.

If you're still in the process of choosing a domain name, Christopher Johnson wrote a fantastic article over at Smashing Magazine about coming up with a domain name.

Here's a quick excerpt:

Forget the cliche of the crazy adverstising or marketing genius who’s struck by the perfect idea as if by lightning. Approach the naming process in a strategic, rational way, and look for elegant solutions to your particular naming challenge. Even as domain names become scarcer and scarcer, with the right strategy and enough attention to linguistic design principles, building a great name is still possible.

Read the rest of the article here.

On one of the sites I work on, Azrul's MyBlog component is utilized for the site's blogging. Recently, one of the users informed me of the fact that the feed wasn't working. Upon closer inspection using a feed validator, I realized that what was being spit out in the feed was nowhere near what should be in an RSS feed. Instead, the feed URL seemed to be spitting out an XHTML valid web page.

After some digging in the MyBlog forums, I came across a few users who suggested that it might be other junk in the URL causing the problem. Taking a look at the current URL, it looked something like this:

http://example.com/index.php?option=com_myblog&Itemid=120&task=rss

 Nothing specifically suspicious about this. Just for kicks though, I tried removing the "&Itemid=120"bit from the URL. Low and behold, it suddenly validated.

Now that I knew what the correct URL was, I had to change the URL that was in the MyBlog toolbar and the RSS URL that was picked up by the browser. To do that I had to dig into two files.

 First up, the 'Feed' link in the MyBlog toolbar. To change this, I first found this file:

/components/com_myblog/templates/_default/toolbar.tmpl.html

On line 18, look for the following piece of code:

<.li class="toolbarFeed"><.a href="<.?php echo $toolbar['rssFeedLink']; ?>">_MB_FEED<./a><./li>

...and replace it with this (without the '.' in the opening and closing tags):

<.li class="toolbarFeed"><.a href="http://example.com/index.php?option=com_myblog&task=rss">_MB_FEED<./a><./li>

That essentially hard-codes the correct URL into the link.  The next task is to change the link that MyBlog spits out for browsers to pick up on. To do that, I tracked down this file:

 /components/com_myblog/task/base.php

 On lines 160 and 161, you'll see the 'if' part of the RSS URL function that deals with the 'Itemid'. This may be useful to some, but it wasn't to me, so those two lines got completely commented out. What I found out that doing this will do is that it will add the "&Itemid=xx" to the end of the RSS URL, which apparently still works for feed validators and RSS readers.

As you can see, both fixes are hacks to the core of the MyBlog component. Hack at your own risk, and don't forget to back these files up when you update the component in the future.