Developers Workbench
Wednesday, 01 February 2012 00:00
Developing a Smart Search Plugin
With the Joomla! 2.5 release, a new search component has been included to improve the search engine in Joomla! sites. Based on JXtended's Finder, Smart Search is quite the powerful tool and can be used to improve search results and show the user exactly what they want. Out of the box, Smart Search will work for most core data, but third party developers will have to create their own Finder plugins to interact with Smart Search. Not to worry, I'll help you get started with that now!
Published in 2012 February
Wednesday, 01 February 2012 00:00
Customizing an Extension's Edit Screen
Clients grumble too often about a hard-to-use CMS. The problem, often, is delivering to clients edit screens that are unchanged from how they come out-of-the-box. We can do better. In this example we’ll be tailoring a complex edit screen into something streamlined for a particular client. The technique shown here can be applied to any extension and for any client with specific needs.
Published in 2012 February
Wednesday, 28 December 2011 19:03
Integrating WebSocket to Joomla!
The purpose of this paper is to present WebSocket technology, included in the latest HTML5 specification, which allows much faster communication and dynamic communication server / client.
Published in 2012 January
Sunday, 01 January 2012 00:00
Customising Joomla! Help!!
When a website development project is ready to be delivered, the clients usually demand a customised built-in help system so that they know how to navigate through the loads of menu items and web pages in order to maintain and manage the content/site in the absence of the development team. Implementing such a built-in help system is made easier by Joomla’s Administrator Menu module.
Published in 2012 January
Thursday, 01 December 2011 00:00
Two Awesome Examples of Mapping with Joomla!
Some fun tips, tricks, and hacks for creating maps with Joomla!
Published in 2011 December
Thursday, 01 December 2011 00:00
Write your own App using Joomla! Platform
A few days ago Joomla! platform version 11.3 was released. More and more people are wondering what Joomla! platform is about. The following article is a chapter of the upcoming Joomla! Development Beginner's Guide which will be released as a free pdf as soon as possible. The term Joomla! platform is quite new. It was introduced with the release of Joomla! 1.6 in January 2011.
Published in 2011 December
Tuesday, 01 November 2011 00:00
Sorting Articles by Recently Touched Date
Joomla 1.5 has several sort orders defined to arrange the articles in a specific sequence for displaying in the blog and list layouts. The sort orders are primarily based on the created date, title, hits, and pre-defined order of the articles. There may be situations where one would like to see a combination of articles in the order that has been recently modified and/or created like the option View New Posts in the Joomla forums. Currently, there is no sort order available to handle this situation. This paper discusses about how to implement this new sort order, Recently Touched Date.
Published in 2011 November
Tuesday, 01 November 2011 00:00
Rebasing
If you think this involves a teaspoon and a spirit lamp, take your F and go home. Git's "rebase" command takes advantage of the distributed nature of git to enable you to do some really useful and creative things in your repository. Of course, like all power tools, rebase can be abused. Let's take a closer look at what can be done through rebasing, and where and when you should use it. This article assumes familiarity with software version control systems in general, as well as a basic familiarity with git itself. While it does explore some git fundamentals, it is not intended to be a primer on git usage.
Published in 2011 November
Thursday, 01 September 2011 00:00
Site Builders can Build Custom Joomla Components
If you are a professional site builder, but not a professional developer, then you have likely wished you could quickly build custom Joomla! extensions that would allow you to collect exactly the data needed, presented in the precise manner, as required by your client.
Published in 2011 September
Friday, 01 July 2011 00:00
Navigating the code development process (part 2 of 2)
While at JAB11 in May, I heard comments from more than a few developers that it could be difficult to get their code accepted into the Joomla! core. So I committed to publishing a JCM article to try and address those concerns. In the first article of this two part series, I gave an overview of how the existing development process works. In this month's article, Mark Dexter and Louis Landry from the Joomla! Production Leadership Team have responded to questions about the development process that were submitted by other developers in the community.
Published in 2011 July
