How many times do you do something when managing a website that you know shouldn’t happen but it’s easier to do the workaround than actually fix the problem? And once you know it’s a problem, how long does it take to actually fix it?

I’ve got a few examples. You may recognise some.

Every time I carry out an action on my website I get an email

Not all my websites are configured the same way. I have sites that need me to be able to see quickly what actions other users have performed during the day. This might be creating a new article, adding a menu item or just logging in.

Joomla has a handy dashboard module that displays Latest Actions to Super Users. This is controlled by a function within Users called User Action Log Options and the first selector says Email Notifications. This is set per user. I know this because some time ago I’d enabled it for my own user on a site but had forgotten I did it. Every time I logged in, edited any content or changed something in the config I got an email. Every time! This morning I turned off the Email Notifications option and my Inbox is happy again.

There’s a few other times I might get annoying emails. One is when using Akeeba Admintools and I’ve set an email address for all alerts. Really I don’t need to know if someone’s not able to login to my small site (it might be different if there’s a team of users and someone has a password issue) The other is getting reminders about Joomla updates. Take a look at the plugin called Task - Joomla! Update Notification and if you’re me, turn it off as I see Update Reminders whenever I log into the website.

I made a change to my website but I can’t see it in the front end

Sound familiar? Again, this issue differs between sites but I’ve seen it so many times. Your website is in production and for on-page SEO and page speed reasons it’s cached to the max so your website loads quickly for all visitors. You might be using LiteSpeed, JCH Optimize or caching from within the template / pagebuilder that the website was created with. Besides which, Joomla has a System Cache option in Configuration. Oh and besides that there’s a CDN or site traffic is set to go through Cloudflare. Does this scenario sound familiar?

For some sites when changing content I might have to:

• Set Cloudflare to Development Mode
• Change JCH Optimize to Development Mode
• Flush the website cache using Maintenance > Clear Cache

And after not seeing the changes appear in the website using Incognito mode, remember to flush the cache on the webhost. That’s actually the step I forget the most, so writing it here is a my reminder especially for me.

Finally, set everything back to caching so your website doesn’t slow down.

My user is a Super User but I still can’t insert certain HTML in the editor

I know the first time I Googled the answer to this question, it was in 2011 and I was using Joomla 1.7 and I posted a short article directing visitors to an article about how to fix this annoyance. The article is still there, 13 years later, though Text Filters now appear under User Permissions.

I did this to test embedding a Google Map or video in some content I was creating using the Joomla default editor and the Cassiopeia template. Reading the instructions for Text Filtering, as a Super Admin I should be able to add any tag I like in the text editor, and it will be saved and rendered. Embedding a map needs the iframe tag but in my first attempt, with No Filtering selected my code was swiftly removed when saving.

According to the notes for Text Filters, “Allowed List allows only the tags listed in the Filter Tags and Filter Attributes fields.”

OK, so I want to embed an map in an iframe, within a paragraph, I may want to add a div or two and maybe some styling, so here are my options:

Filter Type: Allowed List
Filter Tags: iframe,script, style, p, div

Filter Attributes: id, class

But you know what? It still didn’t work. So I did what I usually do which is go back to Users, change my Editor to “No Editor” under Basic Settings and then insert the code.

There’s a caveat in Text Filters which reads: “Please note that these settings work regardless of the editor that you are using. Even if you are using a WYSIWYG editor, the filtering settings may strip additional tags and attributes prior to saving information in the database.”

For TinyMCE, I was able to use an option mentioned in the documentation whereby I can edit the Prohibited Elements list so iframe is allowed for certain users.

https://docs.joomla.org/Entering_raw_HTML_in_editors

Using JCE (Joomla Content Editor) I can just add the code I want based on the user profile settings in the component.

What have I learnt?

I set out to fix some issues I have lived with for years (in some cases) when editing Joomla websites. My intention was to find the best method or to resolve a long-running problem. I’m some of the way there but need to spend more time getting it completely right. I think there may be a part 2 to this article.