I was working on a fast-paced project, a Joomla website update, and the client wanted a flash-like header on the home page that changed the image every few seconds and stopped after three images. I’m not a flash developer and didn’t think I could complete this requirement within the deadline. Meanwhile, I searched the Joomla Extensions directory and found a GREAT FREE image rotator that did almost exactly what the client requested: Joomlaworks Simple Image Rotator. The only problem was that the image rotator did not stop the rotation. The client was OK with this, but it was NOT their ideal.

I posted a question on the Simple Image Rotator forum; I asked if there was a way to stop the image rotation. pansoru (username) wrote back and asked why I wanted to stop the image rotation. I explained that my client wanted to play three images, each with a message and then end on the last, and most important image/message.

A few hours later, I received an email from the forum:

“Well as panosru, i love to help people, lucky you i love to do it and as joomlaworks!

Replace the mod_jw_sir.js with the one i attached to this post.

after that open the js file and go to line 14. Somewhere on this line i have the totalImages = 4 code, replace the 4 with the number of the pictures that you want to show, in your case the number is 3.

Tested on: IE6/IE7/Firefox 2/Safari 3/Opera 9″

Simply because he likes helping people, panasru modified the script so I could configure it to stop after x number of images had displayed. It worked perfectly. Now that’s service! I was so delighted, I donated $20 dollars to Joomlaworks.

What’s more, Joomlaworks makes several other commercial Joomla plugins that are GREAT:

• Simple Image Rotator Pro (12 Euros) - This is an extended version of the simple image rotator and many great features. This extension allows you to add multiple slideshows to any content page, AND it has the ability to popup a larger image if the users clicks an image.
• Front Page Image Rotator (22 Euros) - This extension allows you to insert a slideshow on your home page that rotates through articles and images. For example, if you sell products, the Front Page Image Rotator can rotate the products and images.

I had a VERY stressful website job and was way over budget. The thing that was giving me the most heartburn was a form I had to build with 80 fields! That’s right: 80 fields! I have built some large forms by hand writing php code, but it’s very time consuming. And when you add a database to the form, even more time consuming.

I’d read about a couple form tools in the Joomla Extensions and both seemed to be powerful, complex tools. But I was stressed and out of time and I wanted a simple point-and-click form builder that wasn’t going to take three days to learn. And then I discovered PhilaForm Form Building Component for Joomla. This component was a real lifesaver for me. I was able to install and build the 80 field form and the database in about 4 hours!

This component has an easy-to-use javascript verification script for checking almost any field validation you can think of. Even with 80 fields, the verfication was fast and intuitive.

The only downside to this script is the cost and the support. The component costs around $40 U S dollars. That might seem kind of high, but when you consider the time savings, it’s worth it. Money well spent. But for $40 dollars, I expect at least some reasonable forum response time. I posted two quetions on the forum over two weeks ago and neither of them have been answered. There was an indication that Phil Taylor, the developer, had a heart attached sometime in the last two months, so maybe he’s still recovering from that. Luckily, the software is pretty easy to use.

Joomap is a Joomla component that automatically creates a sitemap of your joomla site. This wonderful, free component is easily configurable. For example, you can exclude specific menu items from the sitemap, and you can configure the sitemap layout. In addition, you can edit the Joomap .css file to change the look of the Joomap unordered lists.

Joomla is the Swiss Army Knife of Content Management Systems because of it’s Components, Mods, and Plugins. The default Joomla text editor is TinyMCE, a web based Javascript/HTML WYSIWYG editor control released as open source. It’s a nice little editor, but it not very user friendly, especially for html novices. And lets face it, many of the people using Joomla are HTML novices. That’s why they use Joomla: So they can easily update their website without calling a web site designer.

The JCE Text Editor, by Ryan Demmer is a wonderful upgrade to the TinyMCE editor.

The following is a list of just a few of the great features in JCE:

• Image Upload and Insertion: JCE’s image upload and insertion is a vast improvement over the default Joomla image manager. With this feature, web site novices can easily upload and insert images into their article and documents and even do right or left image floats just be selecting left or right alignment.
• File Upload and Insertion: Like the Image Upload and Insertion, this feature allows you to easily upload and link to non-html documents such as .doc, .pdf, and .xls. Again, this feature makes is so novice users can easily upload and link to non-html documents.
• Insert/Edit Link: Normally, to link to a joomla article, you have to copy the url from the page you have to link to and then open an article, create a link, and paste the URL into the link dialog screen. With JCE’s Insert/Edit link feature, you can select text or an image, click the Insert/Edit Link tool, and then select from a list of Sections, Categories, Articles, Static Content, Contacts, Menu Items, or URLs. Again, even a website novice can now easily add links.

The license fee for this module is $20 per year, AND you can install it on multiple domains. This is an incredible deal. Plus, Ryan’s support is EXCELLENT. JCE requires very specific server configuration (pretty common for LAMP servers), and I had some problems installing it the first time, mostly because of errors on my part. But I posted my problem on the JCE forum and Ryan answered promptly (I’m in the U S and Ryan’s in South Africa). Even with his email assistance, I couldn’t get JCE to work correctly. Finally, Ryan logged into my web server and fixed the issue in minutes. Now that’s service!

My only complaint about JCE is this: WHY IS THIS COMPONENT NOT INCLUDED IN THE DEFAULT JOOMLA INSTALLATION?

Many of our website clients want the ability to easily add, edit, update, and delete text, images, and pages on their website. A Content Management System (CMS) provides a way for these clients to easily achieve these goals.

A website content management system (CMS) is a computer system used to manage and control a large or small, dynamic collection of web material (HTML documents and their associated images). A CMS facilitates document control, auditing, editing, and management. The beauty of a CMS is that it does not require the CMS user to be an HTML expert. Furthermore, it allows the CMS user to easily update web pages using a simple web browser interface.

Joomla is a free, OpenSource CMS will hundreds of free and commercial plugins that extends it’s already abundant features.

• For more information, see our article on Content Management Systems.
• Also, see the Joomla website.