Joomla - Joel Lipman .Com

Joomla CMS: Register to Read More

: Joel Lipman; Joomla; 11 April 2020; Hits: 5835

What?
This article is a quick note on how to change your Joomla CMS "Read More" to "Register to Read More" all without hacking away at the Joomla core.

Why?
Well a few hacks may be necessary because not only do we want to restrict read more content (full text) and just show intro texts to public but the default Joomla instructions do not include the search engine. I need the Joomla built-in search engine to also ignore permissions so that the article can still be indexed in global search engines such as Google.

How?
It's been difficult to search for the right words but heres the method to restrict the introtext to the public and fulltext (read more) to the registered users:

: Joel Lipman; Joomla; 14 March 2020; Hits: 3135

Applies to

Joomla! CMS v3.5.x

What?
This is a short article on how to remove the ID numbers from your Joomla website addresses for search engine friendly URLs.

copy raw

// What I have
www.joellipman.com/index.php?option=com_content&category_id=4&article_id=123-article-alias

// With URL rewriting enabled
www.joellipman.com/index.php/4-category-alias/123-article-alias.html

// What I want
www.joellipman.com/category-alias/article-alias.html

// What I have
www.joellipman.com/index.php?option=com_content&category_id=4&article_id=123-article-alias
// With URL rewriting enabled
www.joellipman.com/index.php/4-category-alias/123-article-alias.html
// What I want
www.joellipman.com/category-alias/article-alias.html

How?
You could buy an SEF extension that does this for you or spend time tweaking your .htaccess file. Or you can take advantage of a Joomla update and do this without any coding...

Category: Joomla :: Article: 711

: Joel Lipman; Joomla; 13 March 2020; Hits: 19273

What?
During a site upgrade, the commenting extension for Joomla called JComments would return errors when using PHP version 7. This is a quick article to document what needed doing to fix the errors.

How?

: Joel Lipman; Joomla; 23 October 2015; Hits: 2931

What?
This is a quick article to remind me how to move a Joomla administration section and to lock it down to a specific IP address. The below does not involve installing any third-party extensions and will remain in place even if you update your Joomla CMS.

Why?
When checking audit logs, I sometimes see that my administrator url is accessed more than my front-end. The below has worked for me on Joomla websites in general and prevents the administrator URL showing up at all in the stats (unless you were using it).

Leaving this unchecked means that the crackers/hackers will get through ultimately whether it be by brute-force, DoS, Injection, etc. I'm not saying these are silver bullets, but they will slow down some people.

How?
The below will a) change the /administrator location and b) limit access to a single IP address. Note that you will need to ensure you have a static IP (most ISPs now assign static IPs to home broadband users as well as larger corporations). But just in case you don't have one, let me do this in two stages.

: Joel Lipman; Joomla; 24 September 2015; Hits: 3011

What?
A quick article to remind me about this issue. Not sure whether it is specific to the Joomla Content Management System, but within the Joomla! CMS, an error 1054 comes up if you use the above statement.

Why?
The MySQL statement SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT name) FROM table is valid but I get what you mean and it's sometimes difficult to explain why you want to use it.

How?
Method #1: Add an alias to the field:

: Joel Lipman; Joomla; 12 September 2015; Hits: 4255

What?
This is an article to document the migration of a Joomla! CMS running version 2.5.11 to an instance of Joomla! CMS version 3.4.1. I would consider the below instructions an ALPHA version as it is considered unstable for official use... Saying that this is how I upgraded my own personal website: www.joellipman.com.

This article assumes you are familiar with upgrading a Joomla! CMS and running MySQL statements against your database.

For the purposes of this article, we will refer to the live/current/production website running Joomla v2.5 as "v25" and the new Joomla instance as "v34". Their respective database tables are prefixed with "v25_" and "v34_". So an example MySQL statement will be:

`v25_db`.`v25_tablename`
-- with the database name and table prefix of database you are READING from (eg. `myuser_joellipmancom_mysitedb`.`lkdjf_content`)

`v34_db`.`v34_tablename`
-- with the database name and table prefix of database you are WRITING to (eg. `myuser_joellipmancom_mysitedb`.`ejf1r_content`)

How?
Here's a brief outline of the whole process:

Backups
Install
Users
Categories -- unstable
Content
Weblinks
3rd-party: JComments

: Joel Lipman; Joomla; 02 September 2015; Hits: 2402

What?
So I'm getting an error like this:

The requested page can't be found.
An error has occurred while processing your request.

You may not be able to visit this page because of:
- an out-of-date bookmark/favourite
- a mistyped address
- a search engine that has an out-of-date listing for this site
- you have no access to this page

If difficulties persist, please contact the System Administrator of this site and report the error below.
404 Component not found.

Just because I'm doing something like this:

How?

: Joel Lipman; Joomla; 13 March 2015; Hits: 10092

What?
A quick article for Joomla CMS version 3.x on resolving a menu item alias conflict:

Warning
Save failed with the following error. Another menu item has the same alias in Root. Root is the top level parent

You will need:

Access to the Joomla Administration Panel (to check for and remove expired menu items)
A good database administrator who is comfortable with making changes to the database

: Joel Lipman; Joomla; 06 February 2015; Hits: 7494

What?
A quick article on how to set a password using the database tools for super users.

Why?
It happens to us all, especially me. I like to use different passwords for every site but this came up as a client had lost their super user password.

How?
This method is reliant on having access to the database of your Joomla website.

: Joel Lipman; Joomla; 16 July 2014; Hits: 6780

What?
A quick article on how to use the where clause in a joomla database query.

Why?
In response to a member, I use the old form where I can include the whole SQL statement:

copy raw

$db->query('SELECT * FROM #__myTable WHERE condition1=true or condition2=true')

$db->query('SELECT * FROM #__myTable WHERE condition1=true or condition2=true')

Method #1 - chain:

Category: Joomla :: Article: 569

ReCaptcha alternative: Integrate PlayThru in JComments 3.0 for Joomla 3.2

: Joel Lipman; Joomla; 27 April 2014; Hits: 188518

Applies to:

Joomla CMS v3.2.3 (Joomla.org)
jComments v3.0.0 (JoomlaTune.com)
PlayThru v1.1.8 (AreYouAHuman.com)

What?
This article is a follow on from my article JComments 2.3 with PlayThru (Joomla 2.5.x) but this is for a later version of the components using the alternative called PlayThru by AreYouAHuman.Com.

Why?
The kCaptcha used by the jComments extension is easily automated and no longer blocks spam comments. Google's ReCaptcha is overrun by click farms and is unable to authenticate engaging visitors.

How?
So I have come up with what I consider a pretty stable solution. I adapted it from various legacy solutions when using Google's ReCaptcha.

ReCaptcha alternative: Integrate PlayThru in JComments 2.3 for Joomla 2.5

: Joel Lipman; Joomla; 24 March 2014; Hits: 107598

Applies to:

Joomla CMS v2.5.11 (Joomla.org)
jComments v2.3.0 (JoomlaTune.com)
PlayThru v1.1.8 (AreYouAHuman.com)

What?
This article is a follow-up of my article JComments 2.3.0 with Google ReCaptcha (Joomla 2.5.x) but instead of using ReCaptcha, we're going to use an alternative called PlayThru by AreYouAHuman.Com.

Why?
The kCaptcha used by the jComments extension is easily automated and no longer blocks spam comments.

How?
So I have come up with what I consider a pretty stable solution. I adapted it from various legacy solutions when using Google's ReCaptcha.