If you’ve ever thought to yourself “I wish my clients could ask for help directly in the back end of Joomla right there and then when they need it”, then congratulations — you’ve just stumbled upon the perfect excuse to join our next Code Along JUG meeting.

We’re a friendly bunch who bu ild cool things together in Joomla, with just the right amount of code, creativity, and occasional chaos.  You can find us on Mattermost under the Code Along JUG channel, or on Facebook 

We meet online monthly, and our sessions are open to absolutely everyone — from seasoned developers to people who still think PHP is a setting on a dishwasher. Whether you’ve been using Joomla for 16 years (like yours truly) or just stumbled across it yesterday while Googling “free CMS that isn’t WordPress,” you’re welcome here.

What Did We Do This Time?

At our most recent session, we tackled a task that many agencies and site owners will find useful: creating an admin chat module for Joomla. The goal? Let your clients send you support messages directly from their admin panel. Think of it as your very own Bat-Signal — minus the bats, the cape, and the existential crisis.

We built modules for platforms like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Crisp, and Tawk.to — all with the idea that admins can click a button and get help (or at least whinge about needing it). You can see the WhatsApp module we created here, free for you to download, break, and hopefully improve:

This one gives a link that will automatically open a WhatsApp Chat

🔗 https://github.com/uglyeoin/mod_admin_chat_whatsapp

This one gives a Tawk.to chat module

https://github.com/uglyeoin/mod_admin_chat

In both cases just download the Zip file and install into your Joomla admin.  Then visit Content > Admin Modules and find the module to configure it.  For Tawk.to you'll need your tawk.to code and for WhatsApp you'll just need to add your phone number.

In the next session we will combine the two modules and add in a couple of other providers.  This will mean users can select their chat service of choice from a handy dropdown. Because if we’re going to over-engineer something, we may as well do it properly.

How the Session Went

The agenda? Roughly this:

• Say hello, tell us your name, country, and how long you’ve been in the Joomla trenches.

• Build stuff.

• Break stuff.

• Fix what we just broke.

• Complain about it.

• Congratulate ourselves anyway.

• Plan the next one.

Oh, and we also shared anecdotes, helped each other through challenges, and had some surprisingly philosophical chats about menu item placements. Yes, we’re those kinds of nerds.

The team tackled bugs, figured out international phone formatting (yes, it’s more complicated than it sounds), and brainstormed future projects like integrating with Zapier — because who doesn’t want to automate their life to the point of near irrelevance?  See my "Automate your Life" talk at Joomla Day USA if you're interested!

We only had a few on this afternoon, but what a great few we had. 

Adam Melcher of New Line Web Design also the owner of J2Commerce along with Olivier Buisard.  A knowledge on Joomla Development.

Also Mark Fleeson, current head developer of the JED (Joomla Extensions Directory), and most certainly a hard core coder.  Another fountain of knowledge and able to answer questions clearly and concisely.  Especially helpful for us newcomers.  How many times do you get stuck and don't know who to ask?  Well this Code Along JUG is here for that reason, so you aren't alone and you have someone to ask.  And they so far have been able to answer brilliantly in a rapid space of time.

Myself, Eoin Oliver, from Square Balloon.  I've been using Joomla since 2011 but I mostly don't have time to learn how to code as I'm running other functions of my business as well as other things (you can find my first attempt at Stand Up Comedy here).

And we had Emmanuel Lemor Vice-President of OSM, a great contributor to Joomla although not a developer.  Emmanuel stated at the beginning that he would just like to watch and learn as we did things.  So Eoin shared his screen and they both tried to resolve things together.  A pretty useful exercise, especially as Mark and Adam could jump in to help them both.  This is what you can see on our YouTube video of the session.

Why You Should Join

• You’ll actually build something, not just sit through another 3-hour webinar with 20 minutes of content and 2 hours of filler.

• You’ll learn Joomla coding techniques, from modules and XML files to dispatcher files and language strings.

• You’ll get free code. Who doesn’t love free stuff?

• You’ll meet other Joomla users from around the world — whether they’re developers, designers, or just people who accidentally clicked "yes" on a Joomla install 10 years ago and never looked back.

• And yes — there’s a social bit at the end, where we all pretend we’re not still working while chatting about everything from modules to Minesweeper.

Why did I start this?

• I want to learn how to code better.  But I hate feeling stuck and I don't know who to ask.  Worse I feel guilty for asking others as I know they have other work to do and they could charge for their time.
• I know others must feel this way.
• I want to reduce the barrier to entry for Joomla.
• I want Joomla to grow and become and even better CMS.  It's really not given the credit it deserves.
• I want you to enjoy Joomla more and learn some new skills.

Want In?

Join us at the next Code Along JUG session. Bring your keyboard, your curiosity, and your camera. The sessions are recorded, so avoid saying anything you wouldn’t want on a future blooper reel.  We release them on YouTube unedited.  

✅ Sign up to the mailing list: https://shorturl.at/7y9DT
📊 Vote on what we build next: https://forms.gle/nNjxhgYjBubXCn2f6
🧠 Let us know your skills: https://forms.gle/sVeYhkzmxxnZqLzV7

Come code with us — we’ll laugh, we’ll cry (mainly from debugging), and we’ll build some brilliant things together.