How to Redirect Sitemap.xml to Your OSMap Sitemap

How to Redirect Sitemap.xml to Your OSMap Sitemap

OSMap is the most popular way to create a sitemap for Joomla sites.

In another tutorial, we showed you how to submit your sitemap to Google Search Console.

In this guide, I'm going to show you a more general way to allow any search engine to find your site. Some search engines will look for your sitemap at particular URL: example.com/sitemap.xml. Sitemaps work perfectly without using this URL, but redirecting sitemap.xml to your actual sitemap URL is one small step can make it easier for search engines. All that's needed is to copy the URL and add one line to your robots.txt file.

This tutorial will show you how to do that, step-by-step. 

Read more: How to Redirect Sitemap.xml to Your OSMap Sitemap

How to Test the Account of Any Joomla User

How to Test the Account of Any Joomla User

The Shack User Switching plugin is for Joomla administrators and allows you to login as any user, but using your own password. You can mimic anyone else's login and see exactly what they see.

This is enormously helpful for us here at Joomlashack. This enables us check what our users see when they login. We can easily troubleshoot problems.

Here's how to use the Shack User Switching plugin:

Read more: How to Test the Account of Any Joomla User

How to Create Layout Overrides in Joomla

How to Create Layout Overrides in Joomla 3

Joomla makes it possible to re-design almost any aspect of your site.

In a previous post, we explained how template overrides work. In this post, we're going to talk about layout overrides.

Layout overrides are more narrow and specific than template overrides. Layout overrides allow you to customize small portions of a design, for example: social icons, article titles and tags.

Read more: How to Create Layout Overrides in Joomla

How to Create Layout Overrides for Joomla Tags

How to Create Layout Overrides for Joomla Tags

Joomla allows you to customize almost any feature through overrides.

Layout overrides are a type of override that enable you to customize small elements such as the article author or published date.

In this tutorial, I'll show you how to create a layout override for Joomla tags.

Read more: How to Create Layout Overrides for Joomla Tags

How to Change the Joomla Homepage Layout

How to Change the Joomla Homepage Layout

A question that comes up often of new users is this:

"How do I change the layout of the content on my frontpage?

To be more specific, the question is often about how to change the content layout from Joomla's default layout. The actual layout will vary depending on the sample data you choose. However, one common layout is the 1 column leading / 2 column intro / links layout that you can see in the image below:.

Read more: How to Change the Joomla Homepage Layout

Create Joomla Blog Layouts That Users Can Select

How to Create Custom, Selectable Blog Layouts in Joomla

One Joomlashack user wanted to create custom blog layouts that their users could chose from.

The user wanted to keep to choose different layouts in different situations. They wanted to use the default blog layout in some situations, and use a new design for some blog pages.

In this tutorial, I'm going to show you how to create a custom layout and how to control it via your menu links.

Read more: Create Joomla Blog Layouts That Users Can Select

How to Solve the Joomla Message: "AJAX Loading Error: Not Found"

How to Solve the Joomla Message: "AJAX Loading Error: Not Found"

Did you ever see this message when trying to update your Joomla site?

AJAX Loading Error: Not Found

In this tutorial, I'm going to show you a few options for getting rid of this error and smoothly running your Joomla update.

Read more: How to Solve the Joomla Message: "AJAX Loading Error: Not Found"

JCal Pro Has New Export Options and Filters

JCal Pro Has New Export Options and Filters

JCal Pro 4.5 is now available.

JCal Pro makes it easy to display your events in a stylish Joomla calendar. This week's release has a lot of code clean-up and refactoring, plus two new features you'll see while using it.

The first new feature is the ability to create customizable .ICS files or RSS feeds of your JCal Pro events. The other new feature is an improved set of frontend filters, including the ability to see all the events at a single location.

Read more: JCal Pro Has New Export Options and Filters

Joomla Video Grids with OSYouTube and Template Overrides

Joomla Video Grids with OSYouTube and Template Overrides

I'm going to show you how to create a video gallery on your Joomla site.

OSYouTube is the best Joomla plugin for embedding YouTube videos in Joomla. Template overrides are the best way to safely change the design of your site.

We're going to use OSYouTube and template overrides to create a stylish grid of videos.

Read more: Joomla Video Grids with OSYouTube and Template Overrides

How to Stop the Joomla Editor From Removing Code

How to Stop the Joomla Editor From Removing Code

Your Joomla site was built on code. The right code in the right place brings your site to life. However, there are many places where it can also be a huge security risk. 

If you allow people to use PHP, Javascript, iframes or other code inside your content, you will greatly increase the chance that your site might be compromised by a malicious code. To minimize this risk, by default Joomla restricts the code you can insert into articles. 

The downside to this is that some common code snippets, from well-trusted sources, will be blocked. For example, Joomla doesn’t allow you to insert embed codes from sites like YouTube and Google Maps.

Read more: How to Stop the Joomla Editor From Removing Code