Joomla! How-To's: Mambots/Plugins

As you may know, you can set your Joomla site "offline" by setting "Site Offline" to "Yes" in the Global Configuration. This is a great feature that enables you to build or troubleshoot your site in offline mode, restricting access only to backend users who login through the login form displayed on the offline page.

The only limitation to this feature is that you have to be logged in to see the frontend of the site, so you cannot test the site from the perspective of a user who is not logged in. For example, if you want to test registration, AEC or Ambra Subscriptions integration, or any number of other things that might require you to see the site from the perspective of a non-logged-in user, you cannot do that because offline mode requires you to log in to see the front end of the site.

I have developed a Joomla plugin called Offline Override that enables you to put the site in offline mode, and enter a keyword to override offline mode without requiring a login. You simply install and enable the Offline Override plugin, create your secret keyword (no spaces) and enter it in the plugin's parameters. Then, when your site is in offline mode, you can override the offline mode by adding "?keyword=VALUE" in the address bar for the frontend of your site. For example, if your keyword is "joomlarocks", you would go to http://yoursite.com/?keyword=joomlarocks. The override only lasts the length of your session and you must re-enter the keyword in the address bar (http://yoursite.com/?keyword=joomlarocks) the next time you open your browser.

In my most recent blog post about my 10 favorite Joomla! extensions, I embedded a news feed from Twitter to show the latest posts using the #t10jx tag on Twitter. Initially, I thought about finding a plugin that handled displaying an RSS feed in an article, since that would be the easiest way to accomplish what I wanted. Then I remembered the "Load Module" plugin and the "Feed Display" module that are part of a core Joomla! installation. I realized that I could embed the feed without installing any 3rd-party extensions. Read on to find out how to do it.

There are actually several ways to go about embedding a YouTube video into an article in Joomla! 1.5, but I have built a plugin that makes it dead simple. You can download the plugin here.

Here's how it works:

• Step 1: Download the plugin.
• Step 2: Install it.
• Step 3: Enable (publish) it.
• Step 4: Go to YouTube.com and find a video that you want to embed.
• Step 5: Copy the URL for that video from your browser bar.
• Step 6: Paste the URL into your content item.
• Repeat steps 4-6 for as many videos as you wish to embed.

That's all there is to it. Really. It's that simple. The plugin handles all the embedding code for you. I am releasing the plugin under the GNU/GPL, so feel free to use it on as many sites as you wish.

Special thanks to Simon Tiplady for helping me with the regular expressions in this plugin.

Example

Joomla! comes with a plugin/mambot called GeSHi that comes in quite handy if you have a site like HowToJoomla.net in which you share code snippets with your readers. I recently tried to use GeSHi on a Joomla! 1.5 site, and I found that it works differently in Joomla! 1.5 than it does in Joomla! 1.0. Read on to see how to use it in both.

With your standard Joomla! installation, you get a WYSIWYG editor called TinyMCE. A WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) editor basically enables you to edit content items in your browser just like editing a document in a word processor without needing to know how to write HTML code.

For most people, TinyMCE will serve their needs adequately. However, you might prefer to use a different editor. If so, this article will teach you how to install a new editor and make it your default editor.