Joomla! Community Magazine™

In cyberspace where dangers creep,
Your secrets kept are not that deep,
Beware the hackers, lurking near,
They'll steal your data, and cause you fear.

Template overrides are, for me, the most powerful feature of Joomla. I use them a lot and they are what makes the difference between a good looking website and a great one. They can be as simple as moving the intro image above the article title to something more complex, including CSS and JavaScript changes, such as creating a photo gallery from a category of articles or creating a set of buttons to filter the content.

If you are a movie buff then you will have recognised the title of this article as a quotation from the Kevin Costner movie, Field of Dreams. But like all great quotations, that everyone knows, it is never said in the movie. The actual line is "If they build it he will come".

Looking back, looking forward

This week I stumbled across a copy of a keynote presentation given by Paul Delbar at JoomlaDagen 2012 all about Joomla 5 (although he was a bit trendy and used the Roman Numeral V).

Last week I visited a website and saw something that I hadn’t seen for what seems like over a decade - a counter telling me I was the 3619th visitor to the site.

When a link to your site is posted on social media you will typically see an image as well as the link. Depending on the social media platform you may also see additional information such as a summary of the content.

Over the last four years I'be been on a journey to learn more about accessibility and to share that knowledge and experience. I've been fortunate to have had some amazing mentors who have given their time (in exchange for the occasional beer and curry) to nudge me in the right direction and answer my queries. When we help each other and work together we can achieve so much more than when we stay marooned on our own islands.

I don't build many websites. Most of my work is in training and advising people to build their own websites. So when I do need to build a new website I get the opportunity to put my ideas into practice.

Over the last few months I have been working on producing https://www.learnjoomla4.com - a free video course to teach people how to build their first Joomla 4 website.

Web Accessibility

How many times have we heard this phrase but is it really true? Most content creators will spend a long time selecting the perfect photo to illustrate their article. The key word is illustrate. The image should be used to enhance the content. Perhaps to set the mood of the article or to illustrate an example in the text such as a product shot.

Standing in front of an audience of 167 (including an 11 day old baby) and not seeing a single empty seat when the event began was an awesome feeling. It was only then that I knew we had succeeded in rebooting JoomlaDay UK and proving that we have a large community.