Joomlashack Blog and Updates

K2 - the Missing Documentation (Part 1)

: Written by Steve Burge Steve Burge; Published: 11 March 2010 11 March 2010

The hottest new extension in Joomla is K2.

Why? Normal Joomla articles provide you with a Title and Body. K2 gives you the flexibility to add much more information. For example, this is part of a K2 article about a camera called the Canon EOS Rebel:

K2 Additional Information

Beyond just an article, you can add information about:

Price
Weight
Color
A link for more information

You can also add tags, videos, photo galleries, comments and more.

That is the essential benefit of K2 ... you can create articles with far more information and features.

Installing K2

Go to https://getk2.org and download the file.
You'll see a file on your desktop with a name very similar to K2_v2.2.zip
Go to the administrator area of your Joomla site, then Extensions >> Install / Uninstall.
Click "Browse" to locate the package file and then click "Upload File and Install".
Go to Components >> K2

The K2 Dashboard

When you go to Components >> K2 you should see a screen like this one below:

K2 Dashboard

You'll mainly be working from the top menu, so these are the links to concentrate on:

Dashboard: Will take you right back to the screen you're looking at.
Items: That's K2's name for articles. That's where you'll add all your content.
Categories: Joomla places articles into Sections and Categories. K2 only has categories but you can have as many levels as you like.
Tags: These are the small keywords you can add at the bottom of each item.
Comments: K2 has its own comments system. Here you'll find all the comments written on your site.
Users: A list of all your K2 writers.
User Groups: Here you can control which categories and which features your writers have access to.
Extra Fields: Remember the Price, Weight, Color for the camera? Those are fields.
Extra Field Groups: If you have a lot of fields, you can organize them here.

Understanding K2

When you're getting started with K2, I'm going to recommend that you work in this order:

Categories
Extra Fields / Extra Fields Groups
Items
Other features ...

This Missing Documentation tutorial will take you through Steps 1, 2 and 3. Next week in Part 2 we'll cover the other features.

Step 1: K2 Categories

The reason we're starting with categories is that otherwise we won't have anywhere to put our items. If you create an item called "Canon EOS Rebel" you need a category called "Cameras" to put it into. There isn't an "Uncategorized" option as with Joomla.

Our aim for this tutorial is to build a site similar to K2's demo. The K2 demo has multiple different categories. We're going to focus on the Catalog. Let's start recreating that set up:

Click "Categories"
Click "New" and you'll see a screen like the one below:

K2 New Categories

Enter your "Title" for the first category. In this case it will be "Catalog".
The "Title Alias" is just same as with Joomla. It will be the URL of this page if you have Search Engine Friendly URLs.
"Parent Category", "Inherit parameter options from category" and the other options can wait until we have more of K2 set up.
For now just enter a description for your category or click "Image" to upload an image for this category. Both of these are identical to normal Joomla which allows a description and image for each category.
Click "Save and New" and move on.
Create more 4 categories called "Digital", "Climbing", "Bikes" and "Snowboard". Make sure to choose "Catalog" from the "Parent Category" dropdown.
By the time you're finished you should be able to click "Save" and see a category tree like this:

K2 Category Tree

We're going to re-create the K2 demo site so we need to do something else also. The demo site has a blog and a magazine layout. Go ahead and create a category called "Blog" and also one called "Magazine". K2 is big enough to handle products, blogs, magazines and more in just one installation:

K2 Category Tree

Step 2: K2 Groups

Now that we have organization for our articles, we can start to add information to them. A product page is going to need different information than a blog or magazine page. That's where groups come in. We're going to recreate the same fields that we saw with the Canon EOS Rebel.

Click "Extra Field Groups".
Click "New".
Enter "Additional Info" and click "Save.
Click "Extra Fields"
Click "New" and you'll see a screen like the one below:

K2 New Fields

We're going to recreate the fields we saw for the camera:

Price
Weight
Color
A link for more information

For all of them, we need to select "Additional Info" from the "Create New Group" dropdown.

For Price, Weight and Color you can choose "Text Field" and click "Save".
For the "More info" link you can simply choose "Link". You might also want to choose "External link" for "Link Text" and "Lightbox popup" for "Open in".

Hopefully when you're done, you'll see a screen like this:

K2 New Fields

Next we're going to bring Step #1 and Step #2 together and apply those fields to some of our categories:

Click "Categories"
Click "Catalog"
Under "Associated "Extra Fields Group" choose "Additional Info".
Open up "Digital". This time we're going to "Inherit parameter options from category" and choose "Catalog". That means that we can automatically update this category when we change "Catalog". We don't have to open it up and make individual changes to each category.
Repeat the process for "Climbing", "Bikes" and "Snowboard".

Step 3: K2 Items

Now we're all set up. We have categories and information for our items. Let's go and write them:

Click "Items"
Click "New" and you'll see this screen:

K2 New Item

Now you can really start to see the power of K2! Image, Image galleries, videos, extra fields, attachments and more!

Enter "Canon EOS Rebel" into the "Title" field.
Choose "Digital" from the "Category" dropdown.
From there you're free to add as much information about this product as you want:
- Content: write your article (or copy and paste from the K2 demo)
- Image: upload an image that will go at the top of the page
- Image Gallery: to have an image slideshow you'll need to install and enable the Simple Image Gallery plugin from https://www.joomlaworks.gr, the makers of K2.
- Video: to add videos, install and enable the AllVideos plugin also from from https://www.joomlaworks.gr.
- Extra Fields: you should see Price, Weight and the other fields we added.
- Attachments: you can upload a document for people to download.
Click "Save" and repeat the process for more items ...

An Overview of K2 - the Missing Documentation (Part 1)

Hopefully we've given you a taster of K2 and how you can use it to create articles with far more information and features.

Looking at the top menu, you can see that we haven't covered Tags, Comments, User, User Groups. We also haven't show you how to control the frontend layout of your K2 site. All of that and more is in Part 2 of our K2 documentation!

How to Use Sessions in Joomla!

: Written by Steve Burge Steve Burge; Published: 08 March 2010 08 March 2010

Session storage is a very important aspect of web applications. In its simplest form, a PHP session allows data to be stored temporarily on the server and accessed throughout a user's time on the site. When that user leaves the site or is inactive for a certain amount of time, the data is destroyed. While anonymous sessions are common, sessions are usually associated with user logins. When a correct username/password combination is entered, a session is created around that user's access information and then read and checked every time that user loads a page. As a developer, you can access this session functionality to enhance your extensions.

One practical illustration is the ever-present shopping cart. When you are using an online store, you will usually choose to add a few items to your cart while you are browsing. You may add items at different times, update quantities, or remove products. Instead of using database tables to temporarily store and access this data, using session data is faster and easier.

Joomla's JSession class has already taken care of the nitty gritty aspects of session storage. It provides a very simple interface to store and retrieve data from the user's session.

## Grab session ##
$session = JFactory::getSession();
$session->set('mymessage', 'here is some message text');
....
$mymessage = $session->get('mymessage');
echo $mymessage;

## You can also store arrays and objects ##
$cart = array();
$cart['items'][] = array('item_number' => 12345, 'name' => 'Joomla! Web Security');
$cart['items'][] = array('item_number' => 98765, 'name' => 'Beginning Joomla! Web Site Development');
$cart['shippingInfo'] = array('address' => '123 Main Street', zip => '83957');
$session->set('cart', $cart);
....
$cart = $session->get('cart');
## Make changes or add items to cart ##
$cart['items'][] = array('item_number' => 10294, 'name' => 'Learning Joomla! 1.5 Extension Development');
## Store it back to session; Now it contains updated information appended to original ##
$session->set('cart', $cart);

## Erase cart session data
$session->clear('cart');

There are a few notes that should be made in addition to the above code. You can specify a default value in the get() method much like in the JRequest library. Also, when multiple extensions run on a site, there is a possibility that you can run into naming conflicts in your session variables. For this reason, JSession allows you to create your own namespace.

## Namespace will be called 'uniqueName'
$session = JFactory::getSession();
$session->set('cart', $cart, 'uniqueName');
....
## If session cart is empty or not set, an empty array will be returned ##
$cart = $session->get('cart', array(), 'uniqueName');
$session->clear('cart', 'uniqueName');

Sessions provide a very convenient way to make data persistent without the need to constantly pass it through URL's or hidden form fields. They are very useful in instances where frequently accessed information can be loaded once to save resources on database queries. Check out the rest of the information at the JSession docs page to find out what else you can do with Joomla! sessions.

Verdant: Colorful, powerful, flexible Joomla template

: Written by Tom Elliott Tom Elliott; Published: 03 March 2010 03 March 2010

verdant_200 Colorful. Flexible. Powerful. Searchable. Modern, clean, and versatile. That's our new JS Verdant template.

Built on our customized Joomlshack 960 grid system, Verdant is lightweight, source-ordered, and fast loading for maximum SEO performance. And it's ready to style the outstanding K2 content extension!

Along with our many standard features, we've added a couple new cuts to this multi-faceted gem, including:

Page background color customization- change the color of your page background with a simple hex code in the template parameters
5 Colors and Light and Dark options- make your banner space pop above the fold with this instant change
CSS3 fueled- CSS3 styles that degrade gracefully for older browsers
Full vs Static Width- change the extent of your background color with a simple parameter change
Easy Title Customizations- make your heading stand out with easy-to-use title parameters

Verdant comes ready to style K2, the incredible content extension, and is easily customize with fully commented CSS overrides.

Here's a list of the full Verdant feature set:

How to debug your Joomla code with FirePHP

: Written by Joseph LeBlanc Joseph LeBlanc; Published: 22 February 2010 22 February 2010

Debugging PHP applications has always been a bit of a challenge, as the environment is so distributed. At the minimum, there is a web server, the PHP interpreter, and the web browser. While there are tools that add debugging environments to PHP (such as XDebug), you don’t always have access to install them on the server you’re working with.

Fortunately, you can gain some reasonable debugging capabilities through FirePHP. When you want to dump objects or variables back to your browser without having to do so in your HTML, FirePHP is ready for the task. It can also be used to handle code traces and PHP errors.

FirePHP is both a Firebug extension and a PHP library. When the PHP library is in place, special HTTP headers containing JSON objects are created. Firebug reads the HTTP headers, decodes the JSON, then shows the variables in the console. Since the output body is unaffected, it is extremely useful for debugging XML, JSON, PDFs, images, or other non-HTML output generated in PHP.

Changing Joomla's Date Format to American Format

: Written by Forest Linden Forest Linden; Published: 18 February 2010 18 February 2010

For one reason or another, American's preferred date format (e.g., February 25, 2010) is not an option within Joomla.

I know there's many people who use Joomla who are not in the U.S., but for those of you who are, if you'd like to change the date format in Joomla to the American format, this one's for you.

You can see the date format appear in a number of different places, but one common place you'll see it is in an article's date created information:

qt2_shot_1

The date format you see in the above image is Joomla's default date format, which is the international date format.

I'll show you two ways you can change this date format: 1) By editing one of Joomla's core files, and 2) installing a US language pack.

Here's how to change the international date format to Month Day, Year (while also removing the time stamp) by editing one of Joomla's core files.

1) Using your ftp software, such as Filezilla, navigate to the en-GB.ini file, which is in this location: your root directory/languages/en-GB/en-GB.ini

2) Open the en-GB.ini file with your plain text editor and look for this line of code towards the top of the file:

DATE_FORMAT_LC2=%A, %d %B %Y %H:%M

3) That's Linux date format code, and you'll need to change it to this:

DATE_FORMAT_LC2=%B %d, %Y

4) Once you make that change, save the en-GB.ini file and upload it back to the en-GB directory.

5) Go back to the front of your site and refresh the page. You should see this date format now:

qt2_shot_2

Now, here's an important note to keep in mind: when you make this change, you're editing a core Joomla file. When you upgrade Joomla, there's a chance that there will be a new language directory, a new en-GB directory, or a new en-GB.ini file.

If that's the case, when you upgrade, your date change will be lost, since the en-GB.ini file that you edited will be overwritten by the new one in the Joomla upgrade package.

If you're fine with potentially needing to make this simple change each time you upgrade, then you're fine.

If you want to avoid that, there's another way to make this change: install the American Language pack by Dave Morgan.

Here's how:

1) Go to this page and download the language pack by clicking on the download link:

English Language pack

2) Install it in Joomla by going to Extensions>Install Uninstall.

Click on Browse, find the language pack file you downloaded, and double click on it when you find it.

Then click on Upload and Install on the Extension Manager page.

3) After it's been successfully installed, go to Extensions>Language Manager.

4) Check the radio button next to English(United States) and then click on the Defualt icon in the upper right of the page to make this language pack your default language pack.

5) Then, go to the front of your site and refresh the page, or navigate to a page that has a date showing and you should see a date format like this:

qt2_shot_3

If you want to edit how that date format is appearing, such as taking the time stamp off, go to language/en-US and open the en-US.ini file. Change the date format for LC2 in a similar way that I described above for editing the en-GB.ini file.

For example, if you wanted to remove the time stamp, you would delete the %H:%M on the line of code for the DATE_FORMAT_LC2 within the en-US.ini file. Currently, that line of code is on line 11 of that file.

When you update Joomla, your date format changes will remain in tact as long as the core Joomla team doesn't create a new language directory named en-US as a new option.

Joomlashack University loves CMS Expo

: Written by Tom Elliott Tom Elliott; Published: 16 February 2010 16 February 2010

CMS Expo IV is ON for this May 3-5th in Chicago, and it's bigger, better, and busier than ever! Joomlashack University is very proud to sponsor this amazing and can't-miss event.

Not only is CMS Expo a hotbed of the world's leading Joomla experts, developers, and trainers, the conference has expanded to include learning tracks and presentations on a wide range of the world's best open source Content Management Systems.

How to put modules in Joomla articles

: Written by Forest Linden Forest Linden; Published: 16 February 2010 16 February 2010

One of the handiest tools you can have in your Joomla toolbox is the ability to put the contents of a module right into the body of an article. (The article you're reading now is using this method. See the message in the box right above this sentence? That's actually content from a module being loaded right into this article.)

This can be a significant timesaver, since you can create a module one time in the Module Manager and then simply place it into any number of articles on your site.

That means you wouldn't have to set up that content individually in every article: you do the work once and then simply tell Joomla where you want that module to appear.

To show you how to do this, I'll show you an example of using this method to put a newsletter sign up form right in an article.

Here's a look at the end result:

qt_scrnshot_1

Here's how to do this:

1) In Joomla go to Extensions>Module Manager. Then click on New to create a new module.

2) Select Custom HTML from the list of available modules. (You can put other types of modules in articles, but for this example I'll show you how to do this with a custom HTML module.)

3) Name your module. In this example, I named the module "Newsletter sign up."

4) Set show title to "No."

5) For the module Position (and here's the key of this trick), put your cursor in the field next to "Position" and type in a new position name. In this example, I've called the new position "newsletter."

qt_scrnshot_2

6) For the menu assignment, you can leave it set to All.

7) In the Custom Output area, enter in whatever content you want to have in this module. In this example, I've got some code entered that's creating the iContact newsletter sign up form:

qt_scrnshot_3

8) When you're done, save the module.

9) Go into the Article Manager (Components>Article Manager) and open up an article where you'd like to put this module.

10) Wherever you want the module to be, type in this syntax (which is sometimes referred to as the "loadposition syntax") :

Replace "newmoduleposition" with the name of the new module position you created when you typed in the new position name in the custom HTML module.

For my example, this is how my article with the newsletter module in it looks when opened up in Joomla:

qt_scrnshot_4

11) Save the article and check how it looks on the front of your site. That's it!

Now, whatever article on your site that you want to have this module appear in, all you have to do is enter in the loadposition syntax and it will appear.

Testing a Server for PCI Compliance

: Written by Steve Burge Steve Burge; Published: 14 February 2010 14 February 2010

Today's security topic is inspired by a recent exercise I went through - testing a server for PCI compliance. For those who are not aware PCI is a security standard for accepting credit cards.

According the website for PCI they state their mission as follows:

"The PCI Security Standards Council’s mission is to enhance payment account data security by driving education and awareness of the PCI Security Standards. The organization was founded by American Express, Discover Financial Services, JCB International, MasterCard Worldwide, and Visa, Inc."

Will that be cash or credit?

: Written by Tom Cannan Tom Cannan; Published: 14 February 2010 14 February 2010

Today's security topic is inspired by a recent exercise I went through - testing a server for PCI compliance. For those who are not aware PCI is a security standard for accepting credit cards.

According the website for PCI they state their mission as follows: