The Joomlashack Blog
Introducing the Marker Images in Shack Locations
- Written by Steve Burge Steve Burge
- Published: 28 September 2018 28 September 2018
Shack Locations is the best way to create map-based directory in Joomla.
In this guide, I'm going to explain how you can customize the markers used on your Shack Locations maps.
Your can use the same marker image for every location, or can also be customized individually
In this blog post, I will show you the four types of markers in Shack Locations. This will help you make informed decisions and avoid mistakes as you work with them.
Getting to Hello World With Your First Joomla Plugin
- Written by Steve Burge Steve Burge
- Published: 28 September 2018 28 September 2018
Are you ready to learn how to build Joomla plugins?
These powerful extensions act on Joomla's trigger events to perform almost any task that you can imagine. Plugins are responsible for a huge variety of tasks on your site from logins, to search, to article features and 1,001 other things.
Inside Joomlashack University, you'll find detailed classes on every aspect of Joomla development. In these 3 videos, we'll show you how to set up your Joomla plugin environment and create a "Hello World" plugin.
Read more: Getting to Hello World With Your First Joomla Plugin
25 Best Joomla Extensions in 2018
- Written by Nick Savov Nick Savov
- Published: 27 September 2018 27 September 2018
Joomla extensions can significantly improve your Joomla website. They can enhance your Joomla site front end and improve the experience of your site visitors.
They can enhance your Joomla administrator panel and help you administer your site more efficiently. It's hard to imagine a website without Joomla extensions.
In this blog post, you will find our list of 25 best Joomla extensions in 2018. These are extensions that we would recommend for almost any Joomla site and which we use ourselves.
Shack Spreadsheets Is Now Live at Joomlashack
- Written by Steve Burge Steve Burge
- Published: 26 September 2018 26 September 2018
We are happy to announce that Shack Spreadsheets is now available for Joomlashack members.
Shack Spreadsheets enables you to upload spreadsheets to your Joomla articles. This extension will automatically display your spreadsheet data in a clean HTML table.
This really is the quickest and easiest way to take information from a spreadsheet and add it to your Joomla site!
Shack Spreadsheets, previously named PixParse Sheets, is the third of several extensions we'll be launching as part of our acquisition deal with PixPro Labs.
This is the 26th extension available to our Joomlashack members!
Fresh Install - Template Messed Up?
- Written by Steve Burge Steve Burge
- Published: 25 September 2018 25 September 2018
One of the most asked questions we get in our support ticket system, is why a particular template is 'messed up, broken, not right, etc etc' upon first installation.
The following is taken from a tutorial on how to set up the Onyx template with Joomla 3, however, there are some concepts that might help a user of any Joomlashack template understand why a template does not look like the demo right out of the box.
This information is not designed to help you set up any particular template besides Onyx (for that please see the template documentation in the demo of the template you are seeking help with) but it is important as a user of Joomla to grasp some concepts that will make life a little easier as you learn how to use this sometimes confusing system.
Default Template installed
This is how our Onyx template with demo content looks, within the style variations.
So you've installed Joomla successfully, and now you want to us a profession template. First you need to install your template. For help with installing that template, see the tutorial 'How do I install a Joomlashack Template'
Joomlashack Template installed
This is how Onyx template looks without the demo content.
You've successfuly installed your template and set it as the 'default', and gone to view your wonderful new template... and WHOA! It looks like something went terribly wrong!
...it's not all that bad - you just need to do some simple template setup now. Keep reading and it will all look good in a time.
First Things First - know your available module positions!
Before you can put things where they belong (or where you want them), or move things from where they don't belong, you need to know what module positions are available with your particular template. Each template demo contains a 'Module Map'. The module map will outline your available module positions. This is the Module Map for Onyx, to view the module map for your particular template, see the Demos.
Where is my menu?
You'll notice in the default template (Protostar), that menu module is published nicely to the 'position-1' position. When you change the default template to the Onyx template (in this example), you need to change that menu module to the 'menu' postion.Know your available module styles
Just as you need to know what module positions are avaialbe if you want to put things where you want them - you also need to know the styles that are available for your particular template. And just as each demo contains a Module Map ... guess what?.... they also contain info on what styles are at your disposal!
The above image shows the 'Module Class Suffixes' and corresponding formatting for the Onyx template (for your template's available suffixes, see the demo).
Add the suffix.
The module itself will gain styles based on the Module Class Suffix, which is added in the module's parameters as seen in the screenshot below:
Remember, if you need help further assistance after viewing this information and the documentation for your template, please submit a ticket (only available for customers).
Thanks for using Joomlashack's template, and Have Fun!
CSS Grid #11: How to Place Items with Grid Template Areas
- Written by Jorge Montoya Jorge Montoya
- Published: 25 September 2018 25 September 2018
Welcome to the 11th tutorial in our series on the CSS Grid.
We are presenting this series to help Joomla developers learn about CSS Grid. The introduction of CSS Grid will be one of the major changes in upcoming Joomla 4.
In past tutorials, you learned how to place items on a grid using the span keyword and/or using a line-based placement.
There’s another method for placing items on a grid. You can create areas inside the grid with your own specific names and then position the items
Read more: CSS Grid #11: How to Place Items with Grid Template Areas
How to Use Marker Clustering in Shack Locations Pro
- Written by Steve Burge Steve Burge
- Published: 21 September 2018 21 September 2018
Shack Locations allows you to create a map directory on your Joomla site. Using Shack Locations, you can display multiple places on a map, each with their own custom marker.
Shack Locations Pro offers a ton of extra, really cool features. One of these features is "Marker Clustering". This enables you to group markers together if you have multiple locations that are close to one another.
Read more: How to Use Marker Clustering in Shack Locations Pro
Shack Editorial Calendar Is Now Live at Joomlashack
- Written by Steve Burge Steve Burge
- Published: 19 September 2018 19 September 2018
We are happy to announce that Shack Editorial Calendar is now available for Joomlashack members.
Shack Editorial Calendar is designed for people with busy Joomla sites. With this extension, you can manage large amounts of Joomla articles. You can create, edit and schedule all your content from a single calendar screen.
Shack Editorial Calendar is the second of several extensions we'll be launching as part of our acquisition deal with PixPro Labs. This extension was previously called PixPublish.
This is the 25th extension available for Joomlashack members!
Read more: Shack Editorial Calendar Is Now Live at Joomlashack
OSYouTube Has New Settings for Related Videos and Your Video Display
- Written by Steve Burge Steve Burge
- Published: 19 September 2018 19 September 2018
We recently posted about our plans to change the OSYouTube Pro Joomla plugin. The OSYouTube Pro 3.3.12 release implements those changes.
This update is needed because Google is making some signifcant changes to how embeds are displayed. In short, you will have less control over the display of your video title and the YouTube logo. You will also lose the ability to disable the "Related Videos" feature.
Read more: OSYouTube Has New Settings for Related Videos and Your Video Display
CSS Grid #10: How to Name Grid Lines
- Written by Jorge Montoya Jorge Montoya
- Published: 17 September 2018 17 September 2018
Welcome to the 10th tutorial in our series on the CSS Grid.
We are presenting this series to help Joomla developers learn about CSS Grid. The introduction of CSS Grid will be one of the major changes in upcoming Joomla 4.
In the previous tutorial, you learned how to place grid items according to the numbered lines that compose the grid.
As humans though, we find much easier to process names rather than numbers.
In this tutorial, you will learn how to name the lines that compose the CSS Grid.
Let's start!