Tag: CMS
These items have all been tagged with "CMS". You can see other tags in the Tag CloudFlaRIA makes creating W3C valid websites easy
is yet another Flash (AS2) / PHP based online content management system. You can download and use it completely for free, only thing that'll happen is after 100 visits a "powered by" / register link will be displayed. Registration is on a per-domain basis.
Features:
Create W3C HTML 4.01 Transitional / W3C CSS Valid FLASH / AJAX and PHP web-sites online.
- Create, edit and update your web pages without ever leaving your browser window.
- Add HTML, Flash9 / AS3, PHP, Javascript, Java etc. code elements to your flash site.
- Deep linking and real URLs for flash, full support for google analytics.
- Add any content - images, videos, 3D, animation, text and components
with couple of clicks!
- Edit links, x, y, width, height, depth, color and alpha.
- Image editor with multiple image banks, video editor, style editor for components, link editor, WYSIWYG template & text editor, HTML/CSS editor.
- Create menus online! XML editor / menu manager.
- Filemanager for uploading/deleting/renaming of files.
The situation
The Joomla Joint Commercial Developers Alliance has many well-known members. Names such as Vimes, Websmurf, Netshine, Jaclplus, Predator, absalom, lobos, joomlatwork, iJoomla, Elearningforce, saka, Phil Taylor etc etc (sorry to those not listed explicitly), over 70 good devs many community members will recognize as developers of many of the best commercial (non-GPL) extensions.
They have tried to talk to the Core devs to find a solution, while at the same time trying to save their businesses. I know of concrete examples.
Not much positive response.
Proposals of how to work around the obligation for them to re-license their extensions as GPL, including code examples, have been posted on the forums.
No usefull interaction from there.
The GPL-related forums are read-only for all community members except the original thread starter, who has to try to justify his position against all moderators in support of the Core idea(l)s.
No fruitfull discussion on proposals is possible.
If you want a perfect example for this, look at this thread.
It is just not possible to get simple answers to a simple question, all you get are replies with the same GPL references over and over.
The question is VERY simple, and VERY important: Does Joomla! WANT non-GPL extensions around? If yes, let's work together to find a solution to make this possible. If no, just tell us so it's perfctly clear. That's the point.
The answers are: developers take a risk if they violate the GPL terms. Once again, the we-are-so-helpfull reference to "The core team has said numerous times that they want to work with the developer community", but what is omitted here is the important part "...to help them make their extensions compliant" (not "to find a solution in the Joomla code to allow interaction with non-GPL extensions")! Which is not at all what they want, what was asked here, what they can do to keep their businesses alive. But all Joomla wants to offer them: "The offer to help them figure out how to come into compliance with our license". And even though it has been stated that Joomla had no intentions of using legal means to force compliance, you can also read there "proprietary developers would rather live with the risk of being sued by the copyright holders"..! Inconsistency. Which copyright holders are meant here? Is someone going to legally enforce anything or not? (notice all the strong words in those posts, risk, sue, violation.. scary!)
Final topping: "Joomla! is open source, so if you want to work at finding a solution
within the core, you are free to download the nightly build and try to
come up with something." which basically a)still doesn't answer the important question of welcome or not, and b)tells the dev's "we've offered help, but you'll have to provide it to yourselves"..
No clear position. No constructive contributions from Joomla.
Conclusion:
- I have discontinued the few extensions I had on the Extensions directory. They are GPL, so feel free to continue support and development if needed.
- I have loged out of the forums there and do not intend to post again untill this unhelpfull resistance to 3rd party devs and absence of answers to simple questions get resolved after this last thread here, where about 5 people didn't manage to answer another simple Yes/No question about the same topic...
- I heard good things about the upcoming Mambo 4.7 version, nice features, and as it looks like some good extensions developers might increase their support and contributions for Joomla's root CMS, I shall wait untill this gets released, check once more on the Joomla board if the situation has evolved to the better, and if not, might move back to Mambo - what I started with anyway.. que sera, sera.
Joomla! goes GPL - again
GPL? What is that? If you don't know, you didn't pay attention during the installation process of your website. It is the license Joomla comes under. Some things you will want to know about this license, in order to understand what this post (and long discussions) are all about.
1. Software licensed as GPL is free in the meaning of: you can change it as you need, there is no charge for it (the software itself).
2. You are allowed to charge for the distribution of the software (the actual download, or sending it out on CD).
3. As the software itself is free, anyone who has a copy is allowed to distribute it, charging for this or not.
Joomla has always been released under this license. For a long time, ever since Mambo which still supports this, there was a policy of allowing commercial, even encrypted extensions to co-exist with Joomla. In the SVN code for 1.5, there even was a rider added for around 12 months, which recently was removed again.
The problem is that any limitation imposed on the distribution of an extensions makes it non-GPL. Same goes for encrypted code.
Most, if not all, commercial extensions are thus released under other licenses, which are not compatible with the GPL.
These extensions use calls to the Joomla API to run.
Recently one of the main developpers and projects leaders, after removing this rider, declared
a. that the rider was added illegaly as not all code contributors (thus license holders) were informed and asked for approval
b. that this rider should never have been added as it was not compliant with the GPL
c. that all extensions are to be considered as derivative works, and thus need to use the GPL license too
d. that Joomla will seek to enforce compliance within the community from now on.
This was started by a simple forum post, inviting developers and users to contribute their ideas and feelings about this.
The biggest thread ever in Joomla history started, went on and on for about 2 months reaching almost 2000 posts, and almost no core developer participated, or tried to clarify Joomlas intentions.
When the thread started to become really a bit much to manage, and pressure from both users and devs rose to certainly unexpected levels asking for a clear statement about the idea behind this "back to GPL but we've always been GPL", all of a sudden, apparently after recieving legal advice from the FSF, first there was a blog about this, and then 2 pages of posts/replies from Core members finally answering some of the questions.
The thread was then closed, shortly after some subforums opened for everything GPL related - the dicsussions still go on.
Posts were censored, threads closed.
Saka and Predator left the Core team because they do not agree with this change of policy.
Some working group members left also.
The Joomal Commercial Developers Alliance (JCD-A) was created.
So much for the last 2-3 months.
What is the problems for the developers of commercial extensions?
They can still sell their extension even if it's GPL.
But: they couldn't encrypt important parts of it anymore, and they can't keep anyone who has obtained a copy of their product from redistributing it for free!
This basically means they can't protect their work if they want to comply fully with the license.
What is the resulting problem for end users?
Two possible answers:
1. popular commercial extensions continue to be sold as currently, in breach of the license, and they're fine because not the user must comply with the license, but the developer -each dev is responsible for his own license and enforcing it. But at some point Joomla / OSM could decide to enforce the GPL and have them close shop by legal means.
2. to avoid this issue, dev's decide they can't reasonably make an income with support and memberships instead of selling individual copies of their scripts, and stop development for Joomla, which thus looses much of it's capacities and interest.
3. devs decide to change their business model to comply, do not make enoughincome anymore and are forced to quit.
What do I think about all this? ...
Joomla! 1.5 Beta-2 released on May 5th 2007
As anyone installing and using the beta 2 code (I prefer to play around with SVN as it's more current..), I am also an official betatester of the so-called "Red Barchetta" release. If you wonder what this "red barchetta" means, please refer to the official announcement and the complete how's and why's, as well as some more details... Here's the image:
Soon after this release, most of the Core Team and Working Group leaders started their summit at Googleplex facilities on May 8th. You can read some blog posts about this meeting on the dev blog, but the interesting stuff will hopefully be published after further talks between Group leaders and their team members, as well as a new roadmap and maybe some details about other structure changes. Here are the attendees:
Since release, testing and bughunting have been intense, there's a Beta 2 feedback forum for more general topics, and a bug report forum available (please be as precise as possible if you do report a bug, and make sure it hasn't been raised before and been solved in the meantime!). Looks like there's still some work to do before we can expect RC...
What else..?
Access Granted is a Joomla! component for custom user levels and groups
Using Access Granted (AG), you can define the access level a user needs to access in the Joomla Frontend and Backend for:- a menu item (using the Joomla standard menu system)
- a component, a module, a mambot
- content icons (Print | PDF | Email)
- frontend editing
- a section, a category, a content item
Considering the possibilities offered by this component, the easy management of access rights and setup of custom groups it allows, and the super-easy install, the current price for a single site: $97.85 (including 3 % tax) seems VERY reasonable!
AG contains a very powerfull user management system, with handy filters to make user selections based on diverse criteria. The user management also contains simple but missed tools, like resending emails with passwords to users.
Building a Community focused Joomla site
Joomla's mission is to manage your content, mainly articles, media, users.
User management is very limited in the core CMS. One image and just a few details is all you can have here.
If you want to build a user-focused website, a real online community where members can interact with each other and make the site come alive, you'll have to add a few features with extensions.
The centerpiece of your new website will be one of the best components for the CMS, what makes it even cooler is that it's free:
Community Builder
This very extensive component has many advantages (JACL+ OK):
- it is one of the most actively maintained and widely used extensions, so critical issues get fixed asap and new features are actively developped
- it has its own plug-in framework API architecture, allowing coders to extend its functionality even more with additional "tabs" on user profiles (such as image galleries, points, blog post..)
- it is so well-known and used that the devs have now an active collaboration with many other extension developers. These components can thus interact and work together to create an even better user experience.
- you can add your very own custom fields to user profiles, so that it can be adapted to any website type
- it is well-coded and fast, has active support forums and very nice documentation!
- it's language files allow you to set up international communities
Now, what is the lovingly called "CB" good for?
- replace the normal registration and login process with a proprietary one which allows requiering terms and conditions approval, email (and admin) confirmation / activation / approval, and addition of additional, public or private, requiered or optional, user details.
- each user has his/her own extensive profile page, where different information is grouped into tabs: articles contributed, forum posts, image gallery, user friends/links (connections), blog entries, and any other tabs you want to create
- extensive moderation (user aproval, user image aproval, requiered and or non changeable informations..) with dedicated admin module
- Twelve field types supported: checkbox, date, dropdown, email address, editor text area, text area, text, radio, web address, multi-select checkbox, multi-select dropdown and delimiter; and all can use language variables!
Profile page example:
On these profile tabs, you can notice for example the Zoom gallery tab, or the Forum tab. These are providing data from CB plugins or other components right there in your CB profile, such as your gallery images or your forum posts (with clickable link). You can add
plugins (native to CB) and their tabs for:
- the CB Profile gallery (images with admin-configurable quota)
- OnStat for your Instant Messengers online status (MSN, ICQ, AIM..)
- ...
3rd party standalone component integration!
This allows you to have CB working with any or all of the following:
- a forum: Joomlaboard: share and reciprocal link of profile informations (avatar etc), link to users posts..
- newsletter: YANC, which can be integrated into sign-up workflow
- various galleries such as Gallery...
- Account Expiration (AEC),
- custom user groups (GroupJive)
- custom access rights (JACL+)
- instant messaging (JIM, Missus, uddeIM ..) and others!
Admin menus reorganization from Joomla! 1.0.x to 1.5
In Joomla 1.0.x, we are used to quite a few top-level admin menu items. The Home item is just a button to get back to the welcome screen and has no sub-items, modules only has 2, mambots only one.. much space wasted!
In Joomla! 1.5, this has all been reorganized, which means many elements have been moved, some have been removed, so here's a little screenshot of some elements to make it easier for you to find your way around:
(Joomla 1.0 menus with red border, Joomla 1.5 menus with green border, in the center)
As you can see in just these two Joomla! 1.5 top-menu items, they now hold many items from other menus, some are completely gone, and the sub-menus for top-leveitems (such as for ex. "Site Modules" or "Admin Modules") are now found as conveniently accessible items on each individual Manager screen.
Things to note:
- the Installers menu is completely gone, thanks to the new universal installer: one size fits all!
You don't need to worry anymore about what you want to install, just point to the .zip file and off you go!
This item is now located under the new - Extensions menu, which lets you un/ install any type of extension, and also groups the Managers for Modules, Plugins, Templates and Languages! which brings to me another new item:
- Mambots cease to exits, they shall henceforth be known as Plugins!
So the 1.5 Extensions Menu alone groups (elements of) 4 menus from 1.0!
The Site menu is much simpler also: from previously 8 items, it's now down to 5, of which the first is the "Home" link we had in 1.0 as simple item (now named "Control Panel" !) and Logout are simple buttons.
There's only 2 main managers (not content-related) left here: Users and Media, plus the (Global -word removed) Configuration.
From 11 top menu items in 1.0.x, we're down to 7 in 1.5, a third less!
Everything is neatly organized, cool sub-menus when needed:
You won't be long before getting used to the new layout!
Managing Joomla content access based on current users rights
One of the most requested features in the last 4! years for then-Mambo-now-Joomla! has been, still is and will be for some more time a more granular access control system (also known as ACL).
As site admin, I would like to grant access to (parts of) the content not only the registered members, but maybe based on specific sections or categories to sub-user groups. Simple example: each department should only be able to update their own content, while having read-access to others too; each customer only gets to see (not edit) their own project-specific pages etc etc.. We're going to probably have to wait for Joomla! 2.0 to implement better rights management.
In the meantime, there are a few solutions around you can use to overcome this problem -more or less.
First, some interesting content bots. A mambot, soon to be known as plugin, processes the output before it gets displayed, so can alter it as needed.
Bots such as RokGuest and RokMember or MosViewOnly and MosHideFrom allow you, inside one content item, to display selected texts and images either only to non-member visitors, or only to logged-in site members.
Drawbacks: this is valid for parts of a content item, but not all of it; and it's only member/non member, nothing more fine-grained!
Then, ACL hacks.
Example: JACL+
allows you to set up custom user groups you can assign users to. This
component hacks (replaces) some Core files, so it's a bit tedious to
update. Also, any 3rd party component you want to use with the extended
access rights needs to be adapted! So even more work at each update of
one of these!
Quite powerfull, but not so easy to maintain if you want
to keep all parts of your site updated and use a few extensions.. heck, it's free!
Next in line, a free tool such as
Account Expiration Control allows you to "charge users to access content of your web site. Account Expiration Control expands your ability to manage subscription based web sites. Fully integrated with several online payment systems, allows Admin to create payment plans and an alternative payment option."
It's commercial counterpart
mosLock, which "takes orders made by PayPal and creates registered users on your Joomla website. Use this to charge for entry to your Joomla site." does not allow for subscriptions, it is a one time charge to gain site access, currently priced at £22.50 plus taxes.
Drawbacks: this is an all or nothing solution in the sense of: either the user (pays to) register(s) on the site and gets access, or no access at all. Once he's in, he has access to all "registered" content! Free too, so who are we to complain, right?
Another tool, less content but more maintenance-oriented is the commercial, powerfull
JBAM component. "This system was originally designed to give the Primary Site Administrator the ability to lock-down the access rights of all individuals who need to perform tasks related to the maintenance of a site. The abilities of this component have been greatly enlarged to encompass activities of the Frontend of a site as well." This is most usefull for sites with quite a few admins, who also need access to some backend-only components to manage certain tasks. You can control, on a per-user basis:
- Installation of Components, Modules, Mambots, Templates, and Language Files (CMTs)
- Maintenance of the CMTs
- Creation of Content Sections, Categories, and Items
- Modification of Menus
- Modification of the Site's configuration file
- Creating or maintaining Users
- Installation and Maintenance of Components, Modules, Mambots, Templates, and Language Files (CMTs)
- Creation of Content Sections, Categories, and Items
- Modification of Menus
- Modification of the Site's configuration file
- Creating or maintaining Users
Drawbacks: hacks multiple core files, and as Joomla! 1.0.11 is not bug free, it will only be updated for 1.0.12 so you're currently stuck if using the latest J! version.
Finally, a few commercial subscription management extensions.
- MamboCharge
"a full featured subscription management system for Joomla and Mambo sites. It allows you to sell site subscriptions as well as listings under such products as mosDirectory, mosets Tree and Hot Property"
Some features:
- Recurring billings
- Automated account activation and deactivation upon termination
- Multiple product options in any number of days, months or years
- Change user's account settings when they subscribe, change them back when their account expires
- Accept promotional coupons
- Trial periods
- Extensive reporting
- Sell access to content on a pay-per-click basis
- Create subscriptions manually
- ...
- SubscriptionDELUXE or SubscriptionPro from eLearningForceThese are not too expensive either: currently ranging from $65 to $95. Pro has a few features less than Deluxe, globally it is subscriptions for multiple sites or the site the component is installed on.
A list is generated from a Site List in the setup for Subsciption PRO component installed on the Main Site.
When the logged in user clicks the info button for each listed site/item on local site, he can see an overview of what the site contains. This info (Heading + some text+ price+ access period) is generated from the component, where you write some info when adding a site or a folder.
It is possible to list free sites/folders, so the user will be registered on those after sending the order. Also the Main site can be used for buying access to if you only have one site.
The user checks the sites/folders he wants to buy access to -> clicks the Buy button -> an overview of the chosen sites/folders with price and period of each, and a total price are shown.
Opinion: if you're gonna pay, get the Deluxe version. Features Community Builder integration and many more options! - JContentSubscription is the latest and greatest, at least according to the description.
It allows you to grant really to most specific access to your sites content, and compared to the other solutions, it looks more powerfull, yet is cheaper: currently download is just $55! - Access based on categories: select one or a few (section)
- If you don't want to restrict access to a whole category, you can even set a subscription only for individual articles by inserting a tag such as where the number is the article id. This will then be readable only by those users signed up for this subscription!
- Permission on a per-user level with another tag: where the number is a userID. Only this specific user can access this specific article!
- Now this sounds like a really cool feature: You can create subscriptions for any section of any component.
For example some of your forum threads, or boards, for a particular category in the weblinks component, or a contact category or item. You can even create multicomponent subscriptions! Allow access to specific DocMan or Remository folders, a Virtuemart category.. endless possibilities!
Watch a video about usage (windows media).
ACL hacks for Joomla! 1.0.x
One shortcoming of the current Joomla! version is the lack of access control / group management of the CMS. This is due to the original "Power in Simplicity" concept which limits groups you can assign users to to only 4 frontend (registered, author, editor, publisher) and 3 backend (manager, admin, super-admin) choices.
Limitations:
- A user can only belong to one group,
- he is automatically allowed all acesses of "lower" groups
- no per-item rights can be set
- no new custom groups can be created..
Solutions:
currently only available as "hacks", in the sense of: these work-arounds replace various Core files, making updating the CMS a tedious task. Mostly install just like any component, and replaced files are backed up during install.
Listed by order of "usability", from most stable & well tested one to least finished code.
-
JACL+
seems to be the most active project at the moment, very reactive to updates and with many components adapted to use the enhanced rights management. The most up-to-date versions are released to "chartered" (read: paying) members first, but are later available free of charge. In the Pro version, it features:
- Supports Multiple User Groups per user.
- Supports User Level ACL feature to complement User Group ACL feature.
- Supports Access Control Rules overriding feature.
- Enables to Automatically Create new Access Level when create new User Group.
-
GMAccess
is developed by a single coder, so not always current. You can find the latest released on the Forge. Looks promissing but needs work still. Some components adapted also to work with this.
Website: Forge
-
Permis
is very recent, still buggy but already looking good! Create new groups, assign users to one or multiple groups, assign rights.
Website: Forge -
Google SoC 2006 JACL project
This is a work on full access rights management for Joomla, but aimed at version 2 (not even the upcoming 1.5), as the Core changes are too substantial and far-reaching to introduce this now, and has not released any usable code so far.
Enhanced Joomla! administration
Joomla! administration interface is "power in simplicity". It's very clean and usable. But it can be improved still be a few extensions, and some interesting functionality can be added if requiered.
The advantage of Joomlas modularity and extensibility is that you can also tweak the admin interface to add new components and modules, accessible from the interface there. Presentation of some of these I personally find very usefull and would recommend you check out.
The admin "Home" screen consists, just like the frontend, of various module positions. This makes it very easy to change, add functionality and adapt to suit your needs. All you need to do is install the new module, and configure it for display in the correct location. Screenshot of the module positions:
The most usefull ones are cpanel, header, and icons.
header position
As you may have noticed, header is quite small in terms of real estate. You'll find the "users online" indicator and "recieved messages" there by default.
Here's a screenshot with some added icons:
Proud to say, these are my own creations! The tutorial to create your own is available, let me know what you come up with! 
We have, added here:
- All Content, which links to the "all content items" screen" (yes, I know, you wouldn't have guessed..),
- Preview with Positions (frontend with module positions placement highlighted in the template)
- Preview, which provides quick access to frontend view from any page, even if the mainmenu is disabled (content editing screens). I use this for example by setting an item to "special" access, then I can check it on the live site without anyone knowing. Using this one all the time, as I was fed up with the Site/Preview/In new window submenu.. glad to find it now in the 1.5 SVN
cpanel position
Now this position provides some really usefull space, it does look a bit weird with a lot of tabs, but can hold very usefull items.
Remember: you can get rid of the ones you do not used by simply clicking the state from published (green check) to unpublished (red x)!
Defaults here are:
- Logged (online users by nickname)
- Components (never using this..)
- Popular (good for the ego, and wondering why these items are and others not.. my most popular is 404, strangely..???)
- Latest Items, which I used to use all the time: start a new article, which remains unpublished because not finished. Do other stuff, then want to continue editing: just click Home / Latest, and it's right there, and you're back in edit mode in one click! Luv it!
- Menu stats: still wondering what this is usefull for.. if you know..
Brand new, very cool: hackwar's ToDo module!
Let's you create private or public items (for collab between admins, reminders etc..)
The world famous "Rated Multilingual"
which I'm just finishing up before publication.This one contains the list of your items by rating. Gotta be carefull with the parameters, because it has no pagination (glad for any help on this!!!), so if you have many (rated) items, this list could get veeeeery long!
The must-have "Unpublished items" module
This one now is my first item in cpanel, as I often start an item, then get pictures ready, upload these, and come back to edit: one click! Also nice for multi-contributor sites, as you'll get all unpublished articles here at one glance!
Notice: I have no ACL (access rights) in the code, so anyone with backend access sees this list.. handle with care!
Finally, something I probably won't publish officially as it's not very flexible, though it can be configured via parameters.
You can find it on the forums attached to some of my posts, but you'll have to look for it yourself. Introducing:
The linky module!
The purpose of this was a proof of concept for something to include for different user levels (new Joomla! usrs, intermediate, advanced), or for different link topics like security, development etc.. Just to give you ideas really (and maybe to the dev's).
Last important position: the quicklink icons!
icons position
Now for this position, I really only know one way to change anthing which is really usefull: the component + module replacement for core default called Custom Quickicons. I use it myself and really like it.
Install the component and module, configure the component by adding/removing/re-ordering the links and selecting the icons, then unpublish the default module and publish the new one! Result (notice 2nd and 3rd icons..):
As you can see, I unpublished the ones I seldom use, and added 2 of my own for quick access to the most important sections of the site.
There's another component around the rename the menu links of the main menu which I haven't used, and maybe some others I don't know about, but i hope these examples will inspire you to create something and share it with the rest of us!
Find most extensions here. | Tutorial.
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