Dash (-) before Title on Each Joomla Page

Dash (-) is used in Joomla page titles to separate the Site Name and the Page Name. For example: "Our Company Site - About Us." If you happen to see pages as " - About Us", then this implies two things. One is that you have chosen to show the Site Name in the title on each page and that is why Joomla is putting the dash in the title; to separate the site and page name. Second, it implies that your site name was left blank. As a result you have the dash separating a blank space and the page name. Simply check your settings and give your site a name!

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404 Error After Deleting Main Menu

If you accidentally (or knowingly) deleted your Joomla site's main menu and tried making a new homepage link with separator, this may not function correctly and you may end up getting a 404 error. To ensure that this doesn't happen, all you need to make sure is that "separator" is not chosen as the menu type, but rather choose "internal link." So, when you go to Articles/Frontpage, just make sure you don't choose "Separator and Alias."

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Joomla! System info

System info, like the name say here you can find information about your Joomla! website, and information about the web server, the server that hosts your website.

You can access System info by going to Help -> System info, in the Joomla! main menu.

Here, we have five tabs:

1. System Info, 
2. PHP Settings, 
3. Configuration File, 
4. Directory Permissions, 
5. PHP Information.

In the System Information tab we can find details about the operation system, database version, PHP version, web server (Apache in our case), Joomla! version and the user agent(your browser's type).

PHP Settings tab, show's information about php setting relevant to Joomla!

Configuration file tab, is a preview of configuration.php file, found in Joomla!'s folder.

Things you see here you can modify in Joomla! Global Configuration.

Directory Permission tab, show's a list of folder's in which Joomla! must have write access.

This feature you may use after you upload your website, to test if everything is okay.

PHP Information tab, is what the name say. It show information about your, php configuration.

Is like the "phpinfo()" function.

I hope you found this information useful. Thank you for reading.

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Joomla! 1.5 Global Configuration

The Global Configuration can be access through  the top joomla menu, Site -> Global Configuration, or in the main Control Panel, click on Global Configuration.

The Global Configuration screen is divided into three areas: Site, System, and Server. allowing you to configure the Joomla! website with your personal settings.


Joomla! Global configuration SITE 

Site Settings, Metadata Settings, SEO Settings.

In Joomla! Site Settings we can put the site in offline mode and set a message for our users with why the website is offline. The message will be displayed under the website's name.

Still here you can change the website's name, you can change the editor you use to write your articles (hint: I use JCE editor for Joomla!), here you can change the number of articles displayed in the Feed list (RSS) or you could change the default number of items displayed in a Joomal! list. (the list of articles, the list of plug-ins, menus, modules, etc..)

Here is PrintScreen of where this number is.

In Joomla! Metadata Settings you can change the Global Site Meta Description and Global Site Meta Keywords.

The meta information will be displayed on every page of your website that has no other meta data information assign to it.

You can find the meta description and meta keyword at the beginning of the code of every page.

Joomla! SEO Settings makes your Jooma! website's URL search engine friendly.

What does that mean? First if you check the radio button for "Search Engine Friendly URLs", Joomla! will make your URL from:

http://localhost/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=25&Itemid=28

into

http://localhost/index.php/about-joomla

Second if you check "Use Apache mod_rewrite", for this to work, you will have to rename the file htaccess.txt from your Joomla! install folder into .htaccess, yes there is a dot in front of htaccess.

This will transform your website's URL from:

http://localhost/index.php/about-joomla

into

http://localhost/about-joomla


Finally if you select all three options, meaning "Add suffix to URLs" also, your Joomla! website URL's will look like this:

http://localhost/about-joomla.html


Joomla! Global configuration System

System Settings, User Settings, Media Settings, Debug Settings, Cache Settings, Session Settings.

Joomla! System Settings is made of:  a secret word, the path to the log folder, web services and the path to the help file.

The secret word is a unique alphanumeric code for every Joomla! installation an is used internally for security propose.

The path to the log folder is where Joomla! stores all the logs.

Web Services are used for compatibility with third-party extension , but are usually set to "no".

Help Server set the server from where you'll get your help. To access help go to the top menu Help - > Joomla! Help.

Joomla! User Settings, work's with an active "Login" module and it sets if you let your users to register on your website, if they register, here you can set what type of access would they have, if they have to confirm the registration and if they can set some parameters.

Here is a print screen of a "Login" module with User Registration set to Yes. If registration is set to NO, the highlighted link will not appear.

Joomla! Media Settings here you set where Joomla! will store your media files.

File type is what kind of file you can upload trough Media Manager and the maximum file size, the default is ~10MB.

The Path to Media Folder is where all your media is stored, Path to Image Folder is where you keep your images for writing articles.

You will see that if you want to add a image to an article by clicking the image button you'll only see the images in this folder.

Restrict uploads, set to YES, restricts only those type of users that have access less then manager. Minimum User Level for Media Manager.

Here you can select which type of users have access to the media manager, you have to select the lowest access group.

Check MIME Types, this is a verification for the files type, for more information you can read mime media types.

Legal Image Extensions, this allows you to limit the type of image users can upload.

Ignored Extensions, what types of files will be ignored. Legal MIME Types / Illegal MIME Types, better left as is, only for advanced users.


Enable Flash Uploader, the default is "No", if set to "Yes", may appear problems due to flash setting.


Debug Settings, here you have two options Debug System and Debug Language, by default both are set to off, if you activate Joomla! debug system you'll get something like the print screen below every page, showing you what Joomla! loads and what errors appear if there are any.

If you want Joomla! to use cache, here is the place you have to look.

In the Cache Settings you can enable/disable cache, set the maximum length of time the cache will be stored before it is refreshed, and the caching mechanism. I do recommend you not to use the cache system in the development period of your website.

In Session Settings you can configure the Session Lifetime, where you set how long a user can stay signed in, before the system disconnect it for inactivity, and the type of Session Handler.

I recommend setting a higher value for the session lifetime in the development stage of your website, so that you don't have to reconnect frequently, but don't forget to set it back to a lower value when you launch the site on the web.


Joomla! Global configuration Server

Server Settings, Locale Settings, FTP Settings, Database Settings, Mail Settings.

In Server Settings you can set, the Path to Temp-folder, where Joomla! keeps it's temp files, the website's "GZIP Page Compression" which could make it load faster (This option by default is turn off, if you want to turn it on, first check your server if it's supports GZIP Compression).

Also in Server Settings, you can set the appropriate level of error reporting, and configure your Joomla! system to use SSL for some areas of the website(I recommend using this option only if you know what your doing. Advanced user only).

Locale Settings, here you set the Time Zone of your website, which should be the same as the web server time zone.

FTP (File Transfer Protocol), if you don't have access to use the php upload function, Joomla! can use, this FTP build in function. To enable this function you'll need a your ftp host name, the port is usually 21 (the default), an username and a password for the Joomla! system to have access and finally the path to the folder where Joomla! will upload the files, this being the FTP Root in the configuration screen.

Database Settings, this settings were made during the Joomla! install process.

Here we can set the database type, in most cases is mysql, the hostname, the name of the server that hosts the database, the username, the password and the database's name.

Database prefix is a feature that allows you to have multiple Joomla! installations in the same database.

Warning! do not change anything here, unless, you know what you're doing.

Mail Settings. Three option here:

• PHP Mail Function(mail function build in PHP) is the default,

• Sendmail is typically used when you want to sent a HTML email.

• SMTP Server uses the site's SMTP server and you have to fill all the fields that start's with SMTP.

Mail From and From Name are the the email and the name that will be used for sending email, by default Joomla! fills "From Name" with the site's name. The "Mail From" is the email you were asked for at the Joomla! installation.

This is it with the Joomla! Global Configuration, I hope you liked it and understood it, thank for reading.

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Step by step picture tutorial on how to install Joomla! 1.5

Here is a free tutorial on how to install Joomla! 1.5.

This tutorial presumes that you already have a web-server installed on your PC, and that you extracted the Joomla installation archive in the public folder of the web-server.(If not, click on installing xampp for Joomla)

This being said let's start.

Open your favorite browser and type in the address bar http://localhost.

This window should appear.

Chose your installation language and click next. (top right corner).

Here the Joomla! setup checks your system if  it meets the minimum requirements for installation.

You can read this article Xampp installation for running joomla! to turn all checks green.

Joomla is free, open, and available to anyone under the GPL license. So if you accept the license click next.

Joomla! Database Configuration.

In this screen you are asked for five things, this Joomla! tutorial is for fresh install and we have nothing to do with the Advanced Settings.

First thing we are asked is the database type which I recommend leaving it to MySql, the default setting.

In the Host Name field we can type localhost considering the fact that we are installing joomla on our computer.

For this installation we can use the user root with no password, that is automatically created when xampp is installed, or if you created another user you can type it here.

In the Database Name field I usually type the website name. You can type almost any name you like, so if you filled everything click next.

This is to enable Joomla! FTP file system layer. For this instalation we do not need that so you can click next.

In this window we will fill the web site name, an email address for the super administrator and a password.

And to see how a Joomla! web site looks we are going to install the sample data, so click on the button.

After we will click next we are going to be directed to the final setup window where we asked to delete the installation folder.

Go to drive:\xampp\htdocs and delete the installation folder, then click on the site button in the top right corner.

This is the default Joomla! instalation website with data sample.

To acces the administration section type http://localhost/administrator in your address bar of your browser.

Type in the username field admin and in the password field the password you chose earlier in the setup.

This is the administration section of Jooma!, from here we will create menus, change the website language, add content and much more.

If you have any question please feel free to comment.

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Joomla 1.5 Directory and its Files

What are all the folders and files in the joomla directory?

In this article we are going to talk about the Joomla! Directory structure.

As you can see there are a lot of folders and files.

I'm not going to describe every file here, why?, because there are to many joomla files and it will take to much.

We are going to discus about the main folders and some of the root files you are seeing in the picture above.

Let's start with the folders.

• administrator

This is the folder for Joomla back-end and it's like the Joomla root folder.

There is a component folder, a templates folder in witch are the back-end templates, khepri being the default template, a language folder in witch are stored the languages you installed for the back-end.

• cache

Every rendered Joomla page is made by a php and mysql request.

To make the website load faster joomla uses this folder to temporary store (cache) popular pre-rendered pages, so when you request a popular page, Joomla will load the page from cache so that you will have to wait less for that page to load.

• components

In this folder joomla store all its components. All installed components can be found here, as you can see the default ones are also here.

• images

The images folder is where you find all your articles images, more exactly in the stories sub-folder, banners and smilies for articles.

You can change Joomla's default image folder in the global configuration manager, which I'll discuss in another article.

• includes

The includes folder contains PHP files that helps joomla with the automate inclusion of content.

• language

Here are stored all the language files for the front-end of your website. Every translation of the website is stored in a sub-folder named in this format: standardLanguageCode_standardCountryCode. As you can see the default language is (en_GB) English_GreatBritan.

• libraries

This folder contains all the core libraries that Joomla uses.

• logs

This folder should be automatically filled by the Joomla! installer. Here's where all the logs are stored.

• media

Media may be stored in this folder for Joomla to access.

• modules

All the modules you installed and the standard ones that comes with Joomla! are stored here.

Modules are for the front-end of your joomla website and they often provide the front-end display for a component.

• plugins

Here are stored all joomla plug-ins which are framework extensions and they operate at a lower level than components.

A plug-in example is TinyMCE which is Joomla!'s default editor.

• templates

In this folder you will find all the template installed for the Joomla! front-end website.

All the sub-folders found here match the name of a template.

The back-end template can be found in "\administrator\templates".

• tmp

All the temporary files and cookies used by Joomla! are stored here.

• xmlrpc (eXtensible Markup Language Remote Procedure Call (XML-RPC))

This feature of joomla allows a procedure call which can be sent into the Joomla server for on-server execution.

Files

configuration.php

As the name said this is the Joomla! configuration file.

Here you can find options like the state of the website, the editor you use to write your articles, data access to the database, tmp and log folders path, meta-data and keywords for the first page of your website and many more options.

index.php

This file launches Joomla! installer or it reads configuration.php an starts the website.

htacces.txt

We will rename this file from htaccess.txt into .htaccess(server configuration file) so we can use the  SEF(search engine friendly) Section of Joomla!

robots.txt

This file allow or disallow robots, like googlebot and others, to crawl your website or a part of it and to index it. For more information visit robotstxt.org

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