One of my clients has an online magazine and wanted the show introduction text, or a teaser, from 5 different categories on their site, and they wanted to display each secton in a different location. Furthermore, they wanted individual control of each category so they could show, for example, 1 article from one category, 2 articles from a second category, and 6 articles from another category. Finally, they wanted to articles to display automatically, so that as they published new articles, the latest articles would automatically show up on their home page as a teaser with the thumbnail of the aritcle image.

The MiniFrontPage module fulfilled their requirements perfectly. What’s more, you can use it multiple times on a page, making it a perfect choice for content rich sites that are continually updated.

The following is a list of configuration settings for the module:

• Specify the pages on which the module will display
• Specify the number columns in which to display the teasers
• Specify which sections and categories from which to display articles
• Specify to display article title, author, article date
• Specify intro text length
• Specify thumbnail inclusion and thumbnail site
• Specify the number of articles to display
• And more…

Unfortunately, there are a few drawbacks to this module:

• Unless your Joomla template module already has locations you can use for this module, you will need to edit your Joomal template and adjust the design to accomodate the module.
• The module does not use Joomla’s Intro Text feature if you set the article parameter to NOT include intro text, plus, it will not use the image from the intro text.

Lucky for me, I found RSGallery2, a free Photo Gallery component for Joomla. The price is right, but does it have the features you would expect in a photo gallery?

The following is a list of RSGallery2 features:

• VERY easy to install
• VERY easy to use
• Can bulk upload of a zip file of images (this feature is AWESOME and saves a great deal of time)
• Very easy to manage image galleries
• Easy to configure
• Automatic thumbnail creation and sizing (configurable)
• Automatic image resizing (configurable)
• User comments and voting
• Front-end users can create their own galleries and upload their own images (configurable)
• Automatic image branding and watermarking (configurable)
• Image search
• Image download link
• Ability to display random images
• Ability to display latest images
• And the list goes on

Most important, though, for ME and for my clients, is that RSGaller2 is easy to install, configure, and use. In addition, the default gallery display looks very nice.

I give this Joomla Photo Gallery Component 5 stars.

The Collametics site uses Joomla to manage content and EcommerceTemplates shopping cart to manage the ecommerce, online shopping.

When I started using Yahoo Mail in 1999, I wanted a webmail tool that I could access from ANY computer and that allowed me to import my Netscape mail address book. Yahoo mail did all that…and it was FREE! Even though I loved all of the nice features of Netscape, Mozilla, and Thunderbird mail, I was willing to sacrafice those nice, interactive features for a mail tool that allowed me to access my email from any computer.

But all webmail tools at the time were pretty cumbersome. They worked like web applications and were missing all the nice features of a dedicated, local mail client like Thunderbird or Outlook. For example, webmail tools don’t allow you to drag and drop messages into folders, and many webmail tools, like Gmail, don’t even have folders.

Most webmail tools don’t let you use keyboard commands to interact with the mail tool for common functions like new email, check email, delete email, and save email. Instead, you have to click a checkbox or a button. This is a very cumbersome way to deal with these repetitive tasks.

The new Yahoo mail is different. It acts more like a dedicated mail client. For example, to start a new email, just click the letter “n” on your keyboard and a new mail tab appears. To delete an email, select it and click your Delete key. To check mail, click the letter “m” on your keyboard. To check all email accounts, click Shift + m.

If you want to move a bunch of emails to a folder, you have several choices: Control click multiple emails and drag them to a folder, or click the select box on each mail and then select a folder from the Move menu. That’s all there is to it.

What’s more, you can have several tabs open at the same time; for example, you can have an inbox tab, multiple new email tabs, and a search results tab.

And finally, for around $20 a year, you can get Yahoo Mail Plus. With Yahoo Mail Plus, you don’t see ANY ads. That alone is worth $20. But you get more. You can add all your other email accounts. No big deal, you say; you can do that with other webmail tools. Maybe so, but other tools don’t let you send email from those accounts; when you send an email, the from address is from your webmail account, not the extra account. The nice thing about Yahoo Plus Mail is that I can use one mail tool to manage several email accounts and I can send mail as if it came from any of those other accounts. Try doing that in YOUR webmail tool.

Give Yahoo’s new mail tool a test drive. It’s free and I’m sure you’ll be impressed.

Joomla How To Help Procedures. Find answers to common Joomla How To Questions:

• Adding Links to the mainmenu
• Adding, editing, and updating Joomla articles
• Adding articles to the Joomla Frontpage Manager
• Checking in ALL Joomla articles
• Adding images to a Joomla article
• Adding large, popup images to a Joomla article.

Still not convinced that you need Skype? Maybe you don’t, but it just might be a viable replacement for your old land-line phone. My wife and I have been moving around for the last couple years. As a result, we both got cell phones and canceled our land line with the phone company. The best thing about this move, in addition to saving a lot of money, is that now, when my phone rings, it’s for me, and I rarely get a telemarketing call. Unfortunately, there are several problems with cell phones compared to land lines. First, the voice quality is never as good as a land line and the reception is often poor. Second, if you talk a lot on the phone, cell phones can be very expensive, especially if you go over your plan minutes.

This is where Skype comes in. The Free Skpye is great, but you can only call other Skype users. You can’t call phones and phones can’t call you. For about $75 a year, you can get a Skype plan with unlimited long distance anywhere in the US. In addition, you get a Skype phone number so phone users can call you on Skype. What’s more, you can configure you Skype phone number so it forwards to your cell or land phone after a specified number of rings. That way, you never miss you Skype calls.

I have been using Skype for over a year now and love it. I can make free conference calls to up to four phones and talk as long as I want. Plus, the voice quality is VERY good and the connnections are reliable.

ChronoForms is an excellent and FREE Joomla component for creating forms within the Joomla Content Management System (CMS).

ChronoForms iseasy to install and pretty easy to use. There isn’t much documentation, but they provide a good introduction video and have an excellent forum. Also, they are very responsive to questions on the forum, but if you are in the United States, there will be about a 12 hour delay because ChronoEngine is in England.

The best thing about ChronoForms is that you can create your forms using Dreamweaver or any text editor. This is especially helpful when you have a big form containing more than five fields. Once you have created and styled the form, you can paste the html code into ChronoForms.

Other features that make ChronoForms a great choice for integrating forms into Joomla CMS:

• Extensive built-in form validation scripts
• The ability to add your own php or javascript valadation to the form
• Easily creates a database table to hold the form data.
• The ability to view submitted data using the Joomla Administration screens.
• The ability to easily download form data and save it as a CSV file or an Excel file.
• The ability to add the form to your menu or embed it in a content page.

The one big flaw in ChronoForms is that it is probably NOT the right form tool for non-technical users. But then I think the creation of forms is probably one of the more technical aspects of building a website. As a result, maybe the building of forms should be left to web designers. However, it would be nice to have a WYSIWYG, point-and-click form plugin for Joomla where anyone who can use a word processor could build a form. Phil Taylor’s PhilaForm comes close to that, but the validation functions are too difficult for non-technical users.

Finally, even though ChronoForms is FREE, you will have to pay $25 for a five-site license to remove the ChronoForms link that appears below all forms. As I have said before, paying for plugins is a GOOD idea. In fact, I think it’s the right thing to do. Unless you are building a site for a non-profit or a personal site that is NOT commercial, it’s only fair to pay for the work of others. And twenty-five dollars is a small fee to pay for a tool that does so much.

First of all, JCal is very easy to use. Non-technical users can easily create, edit, or remove calendar events. Plus, users who have JCal permiisons can access JCal from the Joomla front end. This is a very nice feature, especially if you don’t want your calendar managers to access Joomla’s backend.

Second, JCal has beautiful styling right out of the box. But if you want to modify the look and feel of Jcal calendar, you can easily do so by modifying the css style sheet.

JCal is not a free plugin, but it’s well worth the $5 for a 24-hour access to the download, or, for developers, a yearly fee of $20. I’ve heard complaints on forums about charging for plugins, but I think it is only fair to pay for the tools you use.