The Joomlashack Blog
What Analytics Tools Do You Use With Joomla?
- Written by Steve Burge Steve Burge
- Published: 17 January 2020 17 January 2020
This week, we've been working on improvements to Shack Analytics.
Joomla site owners often have scripts such as Google Analytics, Adwords, Clicky, Facebook, MailChimp and other sites. But those scripts are hidden away inside random modules, plugins or template files. Shack Analytics can help!
Shack Analytics is a single extension to manage all the analytics code on your sites. Here are guides for using some popular analytics scripts with Joomla:
After installing Shack Analytics, you'll see a single dashboard with room to add the analytics for your site.
Getting Started with the Download Form in OSDownloads Pro
- Written by Steve Burge Steve Burge
- Published: 15 January 2020 15 January 2020
OSDownloads is the easiest Joomla extension to add file downloads to your Joomla site. You can allow your site visitors to download files with one click, simply clicking the "Download" button. But what if you need to set a more advanced download form for them?
What if you, for example, would like to collect some information from your site visitors before they will be able to download a file? Or what if you wish to display them some information?
These are exact benefits that the "Download Form" feature in OSDownloads Pro offers you. In this blog post, I will give you a tour to the "Download Form" in OSDownloads Pro.
Read more: Getting Started with the Download Form in OSDownloads Pro
What Are JCal Pro Email Notifications?
- Written by Steve Burge Steve Burge
- Published: 10 January 2020 10 January 2020
With a robust set of features and intuitive interface, JCal Pro is one of Joomlashack's most sold extensions. With JCal Pro you can quickly and easily create an event calendar for your Joomla site.
But you don't have to create events yourself. JCal Pro allows you to delegate this job to an authorized frontend user. Once they create an event or someone registers for an event, JCal Pro will automatically send email notifications.
In this blog post, you will learn what those email notifications are and to whom they get sent.
JCal Pro Event Registrations Are Now Protected by Google Captchas
- Written by Steve Burge Steve Burge
- Published: 07 January 2020 07 January 2020
JCal Pro is the best calendaring Joomla extension. The new JCal Pro version released this week now allows you to protect the event registration pages against spam with Google's Captchas.
Setting this is a three-step process:
- Register your Joomla site to use Google's Captcha.
- Enable Joomla's captcha plugin.
- Enable Google's Captcha in JCal Pro.
In this blog post, I will give you a brief introduction to this new feature.
Read more: JCal Pro Event Registrations Are Now Protected by Google Captchas
Joomlashack's 2019 Review and Thank You
- Written by Steve Burge Steve Burge
- Published: 02 January 2020 02 January 2020
Thank you for your support of Joomlashack.
Joomlashack started in 2005, but our team took over the site in 2016.
We've been running Joomlashack for over three years now, and at the end of every year we write a review. If you want to look back, here is our 2016 review, 2017 review and 2018 review.
Hopefully these are not lame "everything is awesome" posts. We try and give you honesty and insight into Joomlashack's year. Every year there are plenty of ups and downs.
Joomla: Session is marked as crashed and should be repaired
- Written by Steve Burge Steve Burge
- Published: 02 January 2020 02 January 2020
The image below shows an error message that sometimes occurs on Joomla sites:
The message is actually fairly clear once you know what to look for. Let's take a look at how to fix it.
Read more: Joomla: Session is marked as crashed and should be repaired
Use Joomla as a Static Generator and Make Your Site Blazing Fast
- Written by Steve Burge Steve Burge
- Published: 02 January 2020 02 January 2020
We held the Joomlashack Conference over 3 days in mid-November.
This was a free conference featuring over 20 of the best speakers from around the Joomla world.
I was amazed at how good the presentations were. We've videotaped all the presentations and uploaded the videos to the Joomlashack YouTube channel.
This presentation was from Javier Olivares. Javier is based in Madrid. He works as a web developer and system administrator. He specializes in turning CMS based sites to static sites. This will make sure that your site is much safer and also much faster.
It comes with some pros and cons. In this session, Javier will get us through how you can use your Joomla site to spin up static sites.
Read more: Use Joomla as a Static Generator and Make Your Site Blazing Fast
The Joomla School of Hospitable Technology
- Written by Steve Burge Steve Burge
- Published: 20 December 2019 20 December 2019
We held the Joomlashack Conference over 3 days in mid-November.
This was a free conference featuring over 20 of the best speakers from around the Joomla world.
I was amazed at how good the presentations were. We posted all of them to the Joomlashack YouTube channel.
This presentation was from Joe LeBlanc. This was the final, the closing session of the event and I don't think we could've picked a more appropriate closing session. Joe is one of my oldest friends in the Joomla community. He wrote many of the first and most useful Joomla extensions tutorials. He certainly wrote the first Joomla development book. We still have some useful tutorials over here at Joomlashack that he wrote over a decade ago.
Joe used Joomla as the jumping off point for a full-stack web developer career. His career has taken him to Ruby-on-Rails, deep into JavaScript and all sorts of other coding skills, working for big e-commerce companies. Joe's topic today is on how you can do the same: how you can get skills you use in the Joomla environment and build a wide-ranging and successful web development career.
Joomla System Plugins Explained
- Written by Steve Burge Steve Burge
- Published: 19 December 2019 19 December 2019
We held the Joomlashack Conference over 3 days in mid-November.
This was a free conference featuring over 20 of the best speakers from around the Joomla world.
I was amazed at how good the presentations were. We're currently editing all the videos and posting them to the Joomlashack YouTube channel.
This presentation is from Randy Carey. I've known Randy for many years. I think he presented the last time we had a conference like this five years ago. Randy has a skill of presenting a technical topic in a way that even non-technical people like myself can understand and appreciate. Randy is a long-time member and volunteer of the Joomla community. He is going to be talking about the magic of Joomla system plugins.
They may look like one of a kind of plugin. If you go to your Joomla admin area, there are many different types: Content, Authentication, User. But System plugins are perhaps the most powerful of all. In this presentation, Randy is going to dig into what exactly makes them different and what you can do to power your Joomla site.
Rapidly Building Semi-bespoke Joomla Templates
- Written by Steve Burge Steve Burge
- Published: 18 December 2019 18 December 2019
We held the Joomlashack Conference over 3 days in mid-November.
This was a free conference featuring over 20 of the best speakers from around the Joomla world.
I was amazed at how good the presentations were. We're currently editing all the videos and posting them to the Joomlashack YouTube channel.
This presentation was from Eoin Oliver from London. He has been involved in several Joomla working groups for a few years now. When he first started with Joomla, he loved it. He could make any website look great by buying a template from a club and then putting his fee on top. Often it left him trying to fit the clients ideas into a pre-made solution.