How to create an Article in the Back-End.

BEFORE YOU CREATE AN ARTICLE, YOU MUST FIRST HAVE A MODULE AND MENU ITEM SET UP. To see how you create a Module, follow this link. To see how to create a Menu, follow this link.

1. Go to Content>Article Manager (if you are in the control panel of the Back-End, simply click on Add New Article.)
2. A new screen should appear. Give it a name in the Title box.
3. Decide whether or not it will be published
4. Decide whether or not it will be shown on the front page of your site
5. Select which Section, and which Category your article will be shown in.
6. On the right side of the screen, decide who the author is (this usually defaults to your name since you are logged in.)
7. Decide the access level (which users can see the article)
8. Pick a Start Publishing Date. This defaults to the time and date of when you create the article. You can change it to a different time in the future, allowing you to create the article and it not publish until the time you decide. (Please remember that the time for this is military time.)
9. Pick a date for Finish Publishing. If you do not want the article to stop publishing until you manually turn it off, then leave this blank.
10. Under Parameters, change the settings to what you prefer. If you are wondering what each setting does, simply put your mouse over it for a second and it will explain.
11. Enter in the content you want on your site.

Once everything is complete, click the Save or Apply button on the top right. It will immediately be seen on your site, under the previously determined menu item.

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How to add menu items in a module

BEFORE YOU ADD A MENU, YOU MUST FIRST HAVE A MODULE SET UP. If you need a module set up, then please read the post labelled "How to create a Menu Module."

Setting up a menu item is very simple, but does require a few different steps.

1. You first must set up your categories. So go to Content>Category Manager.
2. Click New, enter the Title of the menu item you want, select which Section it will be in, and what the access level will be.
3. Once you have saved that, go to Menus>and select the menu that this will be under. (Do not click on Menu Manager.)
4. Click New>Articles>and decide what kind of layout you want to have. READ BELOW TO SEE AN EXPLANATION OF THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF ARTICLE LAYOUTS, AND WHY YOU WOULD USE THEM.
5. After you have selected the type of layout, put in the Title of the menu, what the parent item will be (which is most likely "Top") and select the category for which the link will be associated to.
6. Once you save it, that is it. You will now see that menu item within the module. Now if you create an article that associates with the section and category, it will show up once clicking on that menu item.

EXPLANATION ON DIFFERENT TYPES OF ARTICLE LAYOUTS

Typically, you will want to use selection labelled "Category Blog Layout." This will then take all the articles within a chosen category, and show the full article. If say for instance you have multiple articles in the same category that you do not want to show all at once, you can select "Category List Layout" and that will litterally give you the list of those articles, and if sombody wants to read an article, they simply click on it. To see an example of a "Category Blog Layout" follow this link. To see an example of a "Category List Layout" follow this link.

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How to create a Menu Module

You must first rememeber what a module is. They are the boxes you find either on the left or right side of the site. If you want a menu with various links inside it, then you must create that menu first. Follow these steps to create the module.

1. Create the section by going to Content>Section Manager
2. Click New, and label your section. (For example, all sites need a Main Menu.)
3. Now you create the menu. Go to Menus>Menu Manager
4. Click New, and label the menu you want to create.
5. Now you create the module that associates with that menu.
6. Go to Extenstion>Module Manager.
7. Click New>Menu>Next>Give it a title, and on the right, select the Menu Name
8. You also want to pay attention to the Position drop down. It defaults to left, but if you want the module to show on the right side of your site, then change it to such. You can also decide what the access level is. If you have it set to Public, then anybody who comes to the site will see the module and everything in it. If you have it set to registered, then it will only show up when somebody is a general registered user on the front-end of the site. If you have it set to special, then only those who are registered and have access to the back-end of the site will see the module. Those who are only registered for the front-end will NOT be able to see the module if it is set to Special.

Once you have finished those steps, the module will be visible. To add menu items within the module, then please read the posting labelled "How to add menu items in a module."

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SMS Functionality

We did manage to use PHP to send sms using WAMP Joomla Server. For those who are interested, we use a facileform to create the joomla interface, I define phpSerial class in the facileform.process.php which can be called by the created form. You can create your own extension if you feel like it :). and you can get the phpSerial class that I use here => phpSerial

On form submission we run this chunk of code :

//Define String to send, use chr(13) for line feed
sms = "title".chr(13)."description";

//Require php Serial Class
$serial = new phpSerial;

//Open up connection to the GSM Modem
$serial->deviceSet("COM5");
$serial->deviceOpen();

//send command to GSM Modem, chr(26) is carriage return where the message ends.
$serial->sendMessage("at+cmgs=\"+6598776625\"\r\n",1);
$serial->sendMessage($sms.chr(26));

//release and close the device
$serial->deviceClose();

That's all for sending sms in Windows, you can retrieve data from database and put it into the string to send as sms too.
As for receiving sms, we fail to execute it in Windows using phpSerial. Instead we use Java to retrieve the sms and store to the joomla content database. Take a look here => http://smslib.org

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Free Joomla Template 3 - Joomlabasic Charity

Finally an update!! Recently, my schedule is packed with schools and work stuffs. Enough with the unnecessary issues :)... At last, I can find some time to make a quick conversion from the previous charity HTML template.

Joomlabasic Charity modules consist of:
user1 module
top module
right module

Remember to place the mainmenu at "top" position with "flat list" styling.

As usual free free to post suggestions. Thanks and enjoy.
You can get the template --> here

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HTML Charity Template

This month we are building a site for charity and here is the html web template. This template will be converted to Joomla 1.0 template, check back for updates.

You can get the html template here

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Joomla useful Extension

After playing around with a number of freely available Joomla extensions, I find some pretty useful ones when developing joomla sites.

1. JCE ~ pretty much an upgrade from tinymce wysiswyg editor, recommended.

2. Simple image Gallery ~ display pictures in thumbnail formats (viewable in original size slideshow) from a folder, as the name says it's simple and it works well :). I suggest using this for a gallery page.

3. mosModule ~ show a module in a content, useful.

4. denVideo ~ play flashs, videos, musics in your content or modules, another useful one.

5. Fireboard ~ install this component if you want to have a forum in your site.

6. Virtuemart ~ Good shopping cart systems, but pretty complex if code modification is required. Use it as it is.

7. Community Builder ~ let the user members feel to be part of your web community! Uploading profiles and stuffs are nice features.

8. Facile Form ~ I love this addon, it is able to create simple to advanced web forms. Sometimes virtuemart order flow will be much of a hassle for a simple customer order and hacking the code will be too much of a work. This form builder will be able to sort it out :).
this is not install and go addon, but learning how to use it will be very useful.

All these extensions are great, one problem I find is that there is rarely any support in their forums anymore.
If there's anymore Joomla extensions that you find useful and simple, do add on :).

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