Joomla! Forum - community, help and support

Hello! My name is Chad. I was instructed to create a thread here to let you all know that I am working on Issue 26. Some people may recognize my user name as I post fairly regularly in the Support forums for Joomla! 1.0.x.

I've been around Joomla! Forums for a while, but I've had experience in using Joomla! for about 1.5 years. I am 17 year old home schooled high school student, and live in a small town in New York. (I also attended Joomla!Day NYC). I've actually finished my last year of high school (home schooling is awesome!), and will be attending a community college in the summer of 2008. I'll be attempting to get an Associates Degree in web development, and possible when I finish that an AS in Photo/Video Journalism.

So, I claimed Issue 26, which was creating a document on how to use Joomla!'s 'Register to read more' function. I actually didn't know how to do this in Joomla! 1.5, so before I accepted the task I went and taught myself. I am writing my document in Microsoft Word. I'm also using a lot of screen shots, and photoshop (CS2) in the document as well.

I've written a few tutorial documents, mainly in using computers, photoshop etc...This is the first one I will have ever done for Joomla! But, hopefully, it won't be the last.

Well, I guess thats about all I can think of that is important to tell you all.

I have a few questions, though. I was planning on providing my document as a PDF. I read somewhere that you were supposed to use Open Office...I don't have Open Office, and wasn't intending on using it unless it was absolutely required. (If I do I have to use it then I'll probably do my entire tutorial on Ubuntu, it comes with Open Office). Should I just provide my MS Word document? Or will a PDF be acceptable, or should I do both?

Thank You,

-Chad

Google Task

[me=AmyStephen]Changed subject slightly for sorting all threads to match against Google resource  [/me]

Hi Chad,

Welcome to the GHOP contest! You can get Open Office for Windows and Mac (NeoOffice) as well and it's usually easy to install. I'm personally unsure of whether we were planning on providing the docs for direct download or if we were going to do some sort of batch job on them. Does someone else want to chime in?

Hi Chad -
Thanks for introducing yourself and your task for the community.  :-*

We would like the documentation produced using Open Office Writer.  That way, we are utilizing open source tools and making available a common format that people can use cross-platform. A PDF might be used when shared with the community, but it makes it impossible to change. So, save the output as an Open Office .odt file and it will be most beneficial.

It's cool to see that, in doing the task, you learned something new. That is especially cool knowing you are already a long-term Joomla! user. I am certain this won't be your last documentation for Joomla!, either.  Or, at least I hope! That will depend on how rewarding you find it! (And, I hope you will enjoy it.)

Thanks and good luck to you with the contest,
Amy

Okay. I've never really used the Open Office Writer, is it possible for me to just change the extension on my MS Word file? Or do I need to actually save the file using Open Office Writer? Whatever the case I'll make sure you guys get the file in the proper format.

Hi Chad,

Your contest entry will need to be in OpenOffice Writer format.  OO Writer is available for most major platforms and can be downloaded free of charge.  I believe that OO Writer can import most MS Word documents and they can then be saved in native OO Writer format.  So if you really, really want to use MS Word to create your document(s) that is up to you, but your contest entry will be judged on the OO Writer version that you upload.

Good luck!
Chris.

Open Office it is, then. I've downloaded/installed Open Office 2.3. I am assuming it is the latest version.

So I thought I had posted here last night to inform you all that I had completed the task and it could be reviewed, but either my post was deleted, or I forgot to click the 'post' button. Anyhow! I have finished, and if you follow the link at the end of this post it will start a download to a .zip file. The zip contains a Open Office Writer file, as well as a MS Word doc, and a PDF. Lastly, it contains all the images (jpg format) used. The file is 2.3 Megabytes.

Download Link

I saw your post on the Google site and waited for it to be posted here. I think you must have forgotten to hit the post. 

Certainly, such fabulous work would not be deleted! I looked at it last night and was very impressed. I would like to see a few community members print it out (or view it online) and walk through your instructions, step by step, to ensure it is helpful.

So, anyone viewing this - PLEASE - check out this work and provide your feedback. I will tap a couple of people myself.

Thanks so very much, Chad, for your contributions to our community. It is really appreciated!
Amy

Thank you so much for the kind words. I'm actually having a friend of mine who has never worked in Joomla! run through it today. I'm hoping for good results from her.

This looks like a great tutorial!  I was really impressed with how well-written it is and that it is very thorough.  I don't think that even new Joomla users would have any trouble following these instructions.  It follows through nicely and logically and gives a good basic explanation of how to achieve the goal of the project... and that is what most people need... a simple and thorough explanation of _everything_ they need to do to accomplish the goal.

One thing that I wished would have been included in some of the basic tutorials for 1.5 that I read starting out is the relationship between the Alias field and SEF.  Of course, this could (and should) have a page or three of its own somewhere, but even just a sentence explaining that the alias is used for SEF URLs and that title is used for mainbody and browser bar tags.  Real native SEF in Joomla is still a pretty new thing and, as such, is somewhat of a foreign concept to many new (and even a lot of more experienced) Joomla users.  This may be reaching a bit beyond the scope of your project though and I don't think it's something that you can or should address in this tutorial aside from perhaps a brief mention.

The only other thing that jumped out at me (and this is probably just my anal English degree nature) but it may help a little to have the titles like Article Manager capitalized wherever they appear, just so it matches exactly what is on the screen.... you'd be surprised what can confuse some people sometimes...

Very nice tutorial though....

Wow!  That's really good.

I have a couple of suggestions for you.

I use GNU/Linux, so I don't have the Times New Roman font installed.  Therefore, the bottom line of all of the text boxes are cut off.  I don't know what you can do about this.  My only idea would be saving the text inside as an image.  I think it is important that it works without Windows, though, because I am sure many Joomla! users use FOSS operating systems.  I know the equivalent to Arial, DeJaVu Sans, is good but still not perfect.  At least you didn't write it all in Comic Sans, though...


Mechanically:
On page 6, you spelled cursor "curser".
Throughout the documents, you refer to some components in italics, some in single quotes, and some in both.  You might want to make sure they are the same.
On page 11, in "Joomla! Registration form", registration shouldn't be capitalized.
On page 12, frontend should be two words.


Good luck!

Is there a more universal font? I actually thought New Romans would be rather cross platform. (then again, I didn't even  think about it). I'd rather not use a image because in the re-workings of the tutorial into a users guide, or whatever purpose that it may be used for, it will be impossible to get that text out without re-writing.

Thanks for picking up on the inconsistency of the italics/quotation marks. As well as my typos. I'll fix them.

Update on having a friend of mine use the tutorial:

My friend did very well, she only had one issue and that was that she couldn't find the 'read more' button because you have to scroll down to see it. I'm going to add some bold text there to point out that you must scroll down to see the 'read more' button.

GHOP Contestants Please Read: Task Process Start to Finish for important updates on the contest.

Excellent work! I have written instructions, too, and yours flow smoothly and logically. You don't step into the common pitfalls of skipping over important information or going into excrutiating detail. Your abundant use of graphics helped a great deal. I can't wait to try this! Good luck with the contest.

Dan

On page 6, you spelled cursor "curser".

Fixed!

Throughout the documents, you refer to some components in italics, some in single quotes, and some in both.  You might want to make sure they are the same.

I'm removing all quotation marks in these instances and just leaving italics. Let me know if I missed any, as there were a lot of them.

On page 11, in "Joomla! Registration form", registration shouldn't be capitalized.

I fixed this. MS Word capitalized 'registration' for me. It takes the '!' in 'Joomla!' as the end of sentence and automatically put the caps in.

On page 12, frontend should be two words.

Also fixed.

More updates:

-I bold faced all the (Figure: X) notes.
-Added a note about Title Alias and its relevance to SEO in J! 1.5.
-A few other random mistakes that no one else pointed out!
-Added a note on locating the 'read more' button.

So here's the latest zip file, it contains everything the last file had, except updated. Size is about 2.11 Megabytes.

Updated Download Link

--

Thanks to all of you for the compliments on the work. It is appreciated!

One last 'issue' I have:
trombonechamp mentioned something about font issues with Linux. I do not know what to do to resolve this. The current font is 'New Times Romans', it is the only font I used. If anyone knows what I should use to get better cross platform compatibility please let me know and I'll change the font.

For some of the boxes, stretching them and making them longer helps.  But it doesn't work for most of them.  In both the pdf and the odt, the text isn't cut off, but some of the boxes go over other pieces of text.  (See attachment)  I uninstalled some of the fonts I never thought I would use, so I am wondering if that is the problem.  It shouldn't be, because I thought I just removed the foreign ones.  Are there any other Linux users who could check this, please! 

The thing in the screen shot was my fault. I had removed some line breaks and it caused the text to move up. Fixing that right now....

Updated yet again:

New New Download Link

Hey Chad,

Fellow contestant here

Just on fonts, I used Helvetica which although isn't standard, it is recommended by the "Joomla Brand Manual". Just a suggestion.

I took a look at your tutorial and it looks really good. I like how your screenshots are all greyed out except for the "area's of focus".

Keep up the great work!

Cheers,
James

The new pdf looks great, but the odt and doc don't.  I wonder which one needs to be submitted?

The judging is based on the odt. This is because they want to be able to edit it in and open source editor, OpenOffice.
Hope that helps,
James

P.S. PDF looks good (havn't looked at odt or doc). Have you thought about trying "jazz" up the appearance slightly?

I think they want the ODT.

I'm looking...and I don't have Helvetica...If I don't have it, is it likely that a linux user would?

From http://www.iliveonyourvisits.com/helvetica/

Once there was a typeface called Helvetica.

It was extremely popular.

Later came a software company called Microsoft.

They “borrowed” Helvetica for their operating system and called it Arial.

DejaVu is the Linux version of Halvetica.

I'll try it in Arial, then.

And here it is:

Ariel Version of the above:

Ariel Version

--

P.S. PDF looks good (havn't looked at odt or doc). Have you thought about trying "jazz" up the appearance slightly?

I'm gonna have to think about this. Any suggestions? I'm thinking maybe some more images to introduce the steps. I checked out your Tri-Fold pamphlet and I like what you did with the green circles. Would you be at all offended if I did something based off of that idea?

Sure, go crazy! Open Source is all about sharing. I will upload the ODT to rapidshare for you to make it easier.

DOWNLOAD: http://rapidshare.com/files/73885070/Jo ... p.odt.html (1.3 MB)

Cheers,
James

This is strange.  Maybe it isn't a font problem.  I opened the new one in Openoffice and it was just like the last one, but when I tried both of them in Kword, they both worked.  The boxes don't even show up in Abiword.  Did you make this on MS Office, Openoffice, or Abiword?  Openoffice also had the boxes overlapping the text again, but Kword didn't.  I tried converting the odt to pdf with media-convert.com, and the pdf turned out perfectly.

I created it in MS Word, and just opened it up in OpenOffice, and saved it as a ODT. I've never used KWord or AbiWord. Now when I open it in Open Office Writer I notice the some of the boxes overlap (the title and the text box directly below). But I didn't think anything of it. (aka, I didn't think it really mattered).

James I'm download/playing with Photoshop right now.

That is probably the reason.  Since you are submitting it as an odf, it would probably be a good idea to make it in Openoffice.  Openoffice can then export it to a Word document.

P.S.-Kword is (right now) only for Linux.  Don't bother with Abiword, it is garbage.
P.P.S.-

James I'm download/playing with Photoshop right now.

What about GIMP!?!?!

I don't have Gimp. I used it once, but I've used photoshop for YEARS, I'm much more comfortable with it. I already have all the images made. I'll provide the psd file but all images I made are going to be jpg's so it really shouldn't matter.

So you're saying I need to redo the entire thing in OpenOffice? *cries*

Fiiiiiine!