Joomla! How-To's

There are a lot of things to consider when choosing a web host. Usually the first things we look at are price, storage, and bandwidth, but I would argue that storage and bandwidth are mostly irrelevant as criteria for choosing a host. Buying a hosting service because it offers a huge amount of storage and bandwidth is like buying a car because it has tires. Every web host offers tons of storage and tons of bandwidth for a reasonably low price, so that really takes those two things out of the equation. Price is important, but I would also argue that it should not be the most important factor either. Read on to get some tips for what to look for in a Joomla! host.

One of the most annoying things about Joomla! (in my opinion) is that the default images directory (or folder, whatever you want to call it) is yoursite.com/images/stories, and the default directory for the media manager is yoursite.com/images. That makes no sense to me. Read on to find out why this makes no sense, and how you can easily fix it.

I recently read an article over at blog.joomlatools.eu that shared an ingenious method for creating a site map in Joomla! using your existing menus, menu modules, and the built-in Joomla! plugin that enables you to load a module position within a content item.

Super Secret Sitemap Trick - by Mathias Verraes

Thanks for the tip, Mathias!

Update: (12/26/2008) The JoomlaTools team have changed their TLD from .org to .eu. The links in this article have been changed to reflect this new TLD. Thanks, Alpine, for the heads up.

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.