Joomla Basics: How to customize the style of a module

So you need to customize the look of a Joomla module? This is quite simple, just follow these steps:

1) Go to the backend -> Extensions -> Module Manager -> Find your module and set the name of the custom css that you will add

2) Refresh the page and check the source code. You will find the element using the new class name as shown below

3) Modify the css file and include the specific propreties you want for this module and use the name set previously

That's it, now you can make your modules look the way you want!

How to migrate from Blogger to Joomla

I migrated my blog to Joomla last week, here you have the steps to do it:

1. Download Feed Gator for Joomla, you can find the latest release here.
   
2. Install the extension (there shouldn't be any problem doing this).
   
3. Go to Components --> Feed Gator --> Manage Feeds.
   
4. Create a new entry and set the title.
   
5. Go to your blog and check the link to your RSS feed at the bottom, it should be something like this: Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)
   
6. Set the rest of the properties in the entry and save it.
   
7. Select the entry (tick on the left side) and then click on “Import All”.
   

That should be it, all the entries must be available now in the article manager.

Migrating from Blogger to Joomla

After checking out a couple of articles on the Pros and Cons of keeping my blog on Blogger, I finally made the (a bit painful) decision of moving my things to a Joomla based solution on my own domain before it is too late. If you are wondering why, well three things pushed me to do it:

1. Google is rich and famous enough, so I don't need to keep using .blogspot.com in my blog, and well the real reason behind this is that you will lose all search rankings and links to your site.
2. Moving the content from your blog to Joomla can be a problem sometimes, and the more you wait the more content you will have to fix.
3. Having your own domain for 7$ is not a high price to pay for having all the control on your site.

Other people have other reasons to leave and some people are totally happy staying with Blogger, in the end it's up to you... as usual.

Gavick Pro Photoslide translation with Joomfish

Recently I was looking for a way to translate slides from the popular Phothoslide GK2 Joomla component and noticed there was not so much information out there about it, after a few minutes I found out that it was quite easy to do it, just follow this steps:

1) In the backend of your Joomla site go to Components -> Gavick Photoslide GK2
2) If you have a group "main_group_EN" then create a group for your translation like "main_group_ES" (Spanish translation) by clicking on "Add Group"
3) Add the translated slides to this new group
4) Go to Components -> Joom!Fish -> Translation
5) Choose your language in the "Languages" combo box
6) Choose "Modules" from the "Content elements" combo box
7) Find and open the "Gavick News Image I" module
8) Find the "Slides group" combo box and choose the new translated slides group you created on step 2 (main_group_ES)
8) Tick on the "Published" option and save the changes

That's it! now you can translate your slide show to any language you want ;)

Adding Xmap Joomla plugin to Google

A couple of days ago I had to move one of my Joomla sites to a new hosting company (obviously because of a better deal) and after checking Google webmaster tools I noticed that the xml sitemap wasn't working anymore, so I took a look at the Joomla extensions for something that could help me solve this issue and with a few clicks I found Xmap 1.2.

It is a very popular component with lots of downloads and a detailed documentation, simple to install and use:

1. Download the latest Xmap version version here.
2. Unzip it and install both files (com_xmap-x.x.x and plg_xmaplink)
   
3. In the backend go to the Xmap configuration window at Components --> Xmap.
4. It is easy to add a new menu or modify default priority options.
   
5. Now go to Options --> Preferences and copy the Xml sitemap url.
   
6. Click on Add Sitemap on Google Webmaster Tools dashboard
7. Add the copied url and make it "fit", just copy what's after yoursite.com/ this should be something like index.php?option=com_xmap&sitemap=1&view=xml
8. That's it!

Now you don't have to worry about your site's xml sitemap anymore ;)

Joomla 1.5

This weekend I had the time to play for a while with the new version of the award winning content management system (CMS) Joomla 1.5. It was the first time ever I used this app, so I tried the installation wizard available at the hosting company's server and the first step was painless and quick.

After checking Joomla's site I noticed that the project is very well documented and found out in a few minutes how to use the basic features. This CMS seems to take away some of the common headaches for website developers with the variety of solutions that includes, since it's an open source application based on modules and plugins developed by a big community that is backing up the project.

I created categories, sections, menu items and a couple of articles, disabled some unnecessary modules and activated some others, then I started googling for some more components and extensions and ended up amazed with the huge amount of products available.

Fireboard was the first thing in my list, once again the installation was very easy, probably the only trick is to enable "System - Legacy" at the plugin manager, and just like that I had a complete forum ready to use.

The second component installation wasn't as easy as with Fireboard, after reading why an SEO was important for my site, I decided to try sh404SEF. Seems logical to install it in case you want to improve the possibilities for people to find your site by making the urls search engine friendly, in the end sh404SEF will replace the default Joomla urls that look like this:

http://www.yourdomain.com/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=34&Itemid=55

for something understandable for the search engine like:

http://www.yourdomain.com/why-seo-matters.html

It seems that a common error after the installation is to access the main page of your site www.yourdomain.com and get an access error, you can solve this pretty easily by creating an index.html file at yourdomainfolder/httpdocs/index.html redirecting people to www.yourdomain.com/joomla/index.php like this:

<meta equiv="REFRESH" content="0; url=http://www.yourdomain.com/joomla/index.php" >

After installing and setting up these plugins the options to create a professional site in a few days are huge an easy, you can check for more extensions here and knock yourself out.