The Joomla! Forum ™

Hi,

This my sixth, and very likely my last task (due to time frame ). I am going to create a Joomla 1.5 site for my church denomination, "The Presbyterian Church of Eastern Australia". I set up a Joomla! 1.0 site for the church just over 9 months ago now, but, they are keen to move to Joomla! 1.5 and this time I will create training videos for the people who need to add content so it doesn't fall on a single person.

Cheers,
James

P.S. Current site, www.pcea.org.au

_________________
Zebras don't have stripes, every photo you have ever seen has been Photoshoped!

Yea! 

What a perfect "conclusion task" for this event. Excellent choice James.

Let us know if you have questions!
Amy

_________________
http://Twitter.com/AmyStephen
http://www.alltogetherasawhole.org/

Hi,

I have been a busy bee, and have set up on my server (hosting expires 1-Feb) temporarily. Should have moved the site to its final location by then.

Database is up and running. I have added 160 (I think, very nearly) articles. However, front side the site is empty because I havn't done the menus or got the template sorted out.

TODO:
- Menus
- Modules
- Template
- Install Docman (for monthly magazine)
- Congregation Information
- Google Maps (got to work out what extension/s to use for that)
- ... and more, that doesn't currently come to mind...

Cheers,
James

Amy-
If you want to have a wander around the backend, email me and I can set you up an account.

_________________
Zebras don't have stripes, every photo you have ever seen has been Photoshoped!

Hi,

I have added a few menu items, so you can see some of the content.

VIEW: www.bhsnerd.net

I have one problem which is confusing me a bit....
Clicking "About Us" on the menu on the left, then clicking "The True and Living Way" link from within the page brings up a table of articles in that category but they are not sorted by order. "Introduction" is in the correct place, and the rest of the articles are in the reverse order to what they should be.
But if you click "About Us" on the menu, then the child item "The True and Living Way" on the menu, the ordering is correct. I am unsure what is going on.

I will try to work out things, but any suggestions would be appreciated.

Cheers,
James

_________________
Zebras don't have stripes, every photo you have ever seen has been Photoshoped!

Something wrong with the link?

_________________
http://Twitter.com/AmyStephen
http://www.alltogetherasawhole.org/

Well, the "About Us" page is a "Section Layout - Displays a list of Categories in a Section", so the link is automatically generated by Joomla.

Cheers,
James

_________________
Zebras don't have stripes, every photo you have ever seen has been Photoshoped!

I meant this link doesn't work for me --> http://www.bhsnerd.net/

_________________
http://Twitter.com/AmyStephen
http://www.alltogetherasawhole.org/

Woops, typo... 

http://www.bhsnerds.net

Cheers,
James

_________________
Zebras don't have stripes, every photo you have ever seen has been Photoshoped!

Hi,

I can't see any setting for the ordering of the category links within the section list, so I have started looking at the code to try and work out what is being called.

I think the correct PHP file for constructing the Section List is "\components\com_content\view\section\tmpl\default.php"


(lines 28 - 30)

I am not sure if the link is what is causeing the problem of if I should be looking at the "category" code, or I could be missing something very obvious.

Cheers,
James

_________________
Zebras don't have stripes, every photo you have ever seen has been Photoshoped!

James - first of all, I want to see you activate SEF URLs. Turn all three options on..

That will provide two benefits:

1) you can get rid of those ugly parameterized URLs. (And people can say, go to http://example.com/about-us.html - a bit easier than remembering the parameters.)

2) The even bigger benefit is that Joomla! v 1.5 SEF URLs ensure Joomla! will not create system generated duplicate content -- that being more than one URL leading to the same content.

Then, I want you to think about your menu items very carefully. With Joomla!, each menu item creates a web page, and, of course, a URL to that webpage. So, people frequently - and on accident - create "User Generated Duplicate Content" by making more than one menu item each leading to the same webpage. (That gets confusing for lots of reasons I will not mention.)

Now, you might be thinking, BUT AMY, I want more than one menu item pointing to the same page! That's okay, too. Just create the first menu item, then, for an additional menu items you want, use the "External URL" menu type *and* the URL from the first menu item.

That's how you tell Joomla! it's the same page. Don't allow Joomla! to create a new URL. Give Joomla! the URL, instead.

+++

Joomla!'s SEF URLs --> prevent System Generated Duplicate Content.

Only creating one menu item per webpage destination --> prevents User Generated Duplicate Content.

No Duplicate Content? --> Navigation is easier and Google loves your site.

+++

What does that have to do with your question?

You have created User Generated Duplicate Content by creating two menu items - each of which lead to the same article - each of which create a unique URLs.

1st URL

About Us (menu item: Article Section List)

                        "The True and Living Way" link from within the page (generated URL for Category from Article Section List menu item)

    1st URL  http://www.bhsnerds.net/index.php?view= ... t&Itemid=2
+++
    2nd URL http://www.bhsnerds.net/index.php?optio ... 1&Itemid=4

About Us (menu item - Article Section List)

-- The True and Living Way (child menu - Article Category List)

+++

You should change the second menu item to be a menu type of External URL - and give it the URL from the Section List (the one marked 1st URL).

++++

Now, you are saying, but that is the one that is not sorted the way I want it sorted!  So, in the 1st menu item, check the parameters on the right and adjust the ordering as you wish.

See - gave you lots to learn and do!  Let me know where the questions are.
Amy

_________________
http://Twitter.com/AmyStephen
http://www.alltogetherasawhole.org/

This would be GREAT, BTW. AmyStephen@gmail.com (of course, you know that.  )

_________________
http://Twitter.com/AmyStephen
http://www.alltogetherasawhole.org/

Hi,

Got you posts, andyou should have an email waiting in your inbox.

I have made the changes you suggested. Although, we may need to something further to get the URL's the church was after, but I havn't gotten that far yet, currently working on content and menu first

If you have a look, I have set the parameters to order but it doesn't seem to change anything. Still puzzled by this!

Cheers,
James

Lol, I see you have already found your way in I wasn't fast enough typing this post

_________________
Zebras don't have stripes, every photo you have ever seen has been Photoshoped!

I can't believe I forgot to respond to you yesterday. 

I reported what I consider to be a bug for the sequencing error. I don't know if it will be resolved before v 1.5 goes, or not. But, essentially, the menu item "order by" value appears to be used to sequence the categories, but the "order by" is not used to sequence the articles. The articles are merely presented in date order.

So, we'll wait to see what comes of this - but might also think of other things to do.

Any other issues? I like the new template.

Sorry, again, for not responding in this thread.
Amy

_________________
http://Twitter.com/AmyStephen
http://www.alltogetherasawhole.org/

Hi,

Don't worry! I am sure you have plenty of things to do besides posting of the forum.

I am glad that I am not just cofused, because the sorting stuff did seem rather strange. When I stepped through some of the code it seemed exactly as you said. Unfortunatly my skills with PHP are very minimal, but maybe once I have got the site finished, enough, I will take a look at trying to fix this, but by then I am sure someone will already have becaus I can imagine this problem will affect a lot of people.

I am glad you like the template, it was purchased just this morning. My current challenge is trying to work out the YooTheme modules as they are giving me trouble (they don't have ny of the images or styling that they should). Hopefully I can get the YooTheme account details off the PCEA Webmaster so I can check out the forums.

Cheers,
James

_________________
Zebras don't have stripes, every photo you have ever seen has been Photoshoped!

_________________
Zebras don't have stripes, every photo you have ever seen has been Photoshoped!

Hi,

Status update. I am working back on a local installation because I was using up downloads really quickly.
I am currently working on adding content. Once the local site has got the majoity of things done I will upload the site.

Cheers,
James

P.S. Sorry if this is incovenient for you but the internet in Australia isn't as fast as else where and we don't have a huge download limit

_________________
Zebras don't have stripes, every photo you have ever seen has been Photoshoped!

Hi,

I have made much progress in the past hours. I am currently looking a Joomla 1.5 Google Maps extension, but only one such extension exists and it is not native, so I will wait for a native extensions to be released. I will also need to add a document manager, most likly Docman.
Shouldn't be too long till I upload the site for you all to see

Cheers,
James

_________________
Zebras don't have stripes, every photo you have ever seen has been Photoshoped!

Hi,

I was hoping for some help. I shall begin by explaining my problem...
Information for each congregation needs to be available. Each congregation has a Sections. Within each section is a category called "Details". Within that Category are peices of content such as "Welcome", "Meeting Times" and "Map". Each Congregation also has a single uncategorised article which has "{loadmodule congregation-geelong}"(where geelong changes to match the congregation). This displays the 3 items of content in a lovely jvascript module that looks like http://tools.yootheme.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3&Itemid=7 with "List Styling". This works really nicely.

The problem is each congregation also needs a "Contact Us" item in that module. I am trying to solve this by creating a peice of content that loads a module within the module. This just leaves me lacking a "Contact Us" module that displays a list of contacts.

I decided that I would give writing one a go. I have made some progress in creating a module that essentially uses the same code as the component that displays a list of contacts. However, I have hit a wall where the code tries to retrieve the contacts from the database from the selected category. As my PHP skills are rather lacking, if someone who knows what they are doing could take a look at the module it would be much appreciatted.

Cheers,
James

_________________
Zebras don't have stripes, every photo you have ever seen has been Photoshoped!

Hi,

Due my lack of skills with PHP and my lack of time recently, I decided to use a free extension to do what I want which is probably better than anything I could have hacked together. So, don't worry about my above post.

But more excitingly and importantly, I am pleased to say that I re-uploaded the website from my local installation to http://bhsnerds.net. Please check it out. I have a number of links I need to update so hang on with those, but the vast majority of it should work.

Cheers,
James

_________________
Zebras don't have stripes, every photo you have ever seen has been Photoshoped!

Sorry to double post, but I have updated the links. Please check it out.

I also forgot to mention that just before Friday February 1st, the site will go offline (my hosting expires) and will not be moved to replace the PCEA site immediattly. This is due to the fact that the we hope to only use native 1.5 extensions, and we require a document manager (i.e. Docman) and custom SEF URLS (e.g. domain.com/congregation/victoria/geelong -> domain.com/geelong) and also statistics (Joomla 1.0 site isusing Stalytics Free).

It would have been nice to get it all done, but unfortunatly, I guess these extra steps come about when using brand new and not fully released/finished software. 

Cheers,
James

_________________
Zebras don't have stripes, every photo you have ever seen has been Photoshoped!

Hi James,

It's off topic, but i wouldn't hesitate to use docman in legacy mode. I don't think you will have to worry about the impactof any performance hit from using legacy.

For statistics, depending on what you want to use them for, you might want to look into google analytics.


I like what I have seen so far on your site.

One thing i do when I make a site is try to imagine how different kinds of visitors might want to use it. What is the information they are looking for? How many clicks does it take to find that? How do you draw them in to spend more time on the site once they find what they were looking for at first?

As an entry page, I'm not sure the Dawkins article is very welcoming. To me it feels like I have wandered into the middle of a conversation. If I were gogling Dawkins, it would be good, but if I were looking for a congregation to visit... it doesn't help me.  What about making a real introcutory page that gives people a roadmap to your site?

What are the categories of users that you envision?

_________________
So we must fix our vision not merely on the negative expulsion of war, but upon the positive affirmation of peace. MLK 1964.
http://officialjoomlabook.com Get it at http://www.joomla.org/joomla-press-official-books.html Buy a book, support Joomla!.

Hi,

-mcsmom
Thanks for your input. In the previous site I used "Stalytics" which worked really well and the other site users liked it and so we were planning on sticking with it. I did look at Google Analytics previously.

Regarding the front page, I definitly agree with you. I have made a new welcome page which is hopefully more welcoming and gives visitors some hints about where to go. In regard to audience, we are aiming for both members of the PCEA and visitors. The members are more likely to be less computer literate than people looking for a church.

Also, myself and the "Webmaster" are hoping to get other people regularly contributing to the site, and if that is the case we may be able to expand the site to be more dynamic, but at this stage, the sites content will most likely be rather irregularly updated.

By the way, the site is running Joomla 1.5 Stable with out a problem

Cheers,
James

P.S. I was wondering about the Category sorting bug that was mentioned somewhere earlier in this thread. It does not seem to be fixed, and although it does not cause any "fatal errors", the sorting problem is rather annoying if you want things to be sorted in a specific order.

_________________
Zebras don't have stripes, every photo you have ever seen has been Photoshoped!

Sounds great James.

Category sorting is definitely an issue that is being looked into. Like everything, it's more complicated than you might think to change, or at lease to make a change that works the way all kinds of users would want it to work. In the meantime, what I usually do is use a menu rather than the of the fly method of letting the menu link create the category list. That way I have total control.

_________________
So we must fix our vision not merely on the negative expulsion of war, but upon the positive affirmation of peace. MLK 1964.
http://officialjoomlabook.com Get it at http://www.joomla.org/joomla-press-official-books.html Buy a book, support Joomla!.

Hmm, yes, when I looked at the code earlier, it is not so simple when you have to keep in mind everyone will want to use it differently.

I will start on my video feature tour thing which is part of the task, but was wondering what the main purpose of the video was. And what is the target format/output. In a previou video based task, it was found that screencasts are essentially incomprehensible at YouTube quality, but a compressed MOV with the correct settings could be of a higher resolution and much clearer for a very similar file size. (NOTE: This question isn't very urgent because these settings are the final stage in the process )

Cheers,
James

_________________
Zebras don't have stripes, every photo you have ever seen has been Photoshoped!

I think the main purpose of the video is to show the process of site creation, not so much as an instruction guide (like the other ones) but more conceptual, showing people what Joomla! can do for them.

From what Amy tells me, a  MOV file  is good, and you should submit it to Viddler

_________________
So we must fix our vision not merely on the negative expulsion of war, but upon the positive affirmation of peace. MLK 1964.
http://officialjoomlabook.com Get it at http://www.joomla.org/joomla-press-official-books.html Buy a book, support Joomla!.

Ohk, then! I shall have a go!

Cheers,
James

_________________
Zebras don't have stripes, every photo you have ever seen has been Photoshoped!

Hi,

Here it is...

SITE: www.bhsnerds.net
VIDEO: http://bhsnerds.net/ftp/PCEA-Site-Demo.mov

Cheers,
James

_________________
Zebras don't have stripes, every photo you have ever seen has been Photoshoped!

Hey James!

I'm very impressed. I love the menu. Where did you get the template? (Custom?)

_________________
-Chad Windnagle
Please use the search feature as your question might already have been answered.

http://www.s-go.net/ ~ Website Hosting - Strategic Marketing - Website Development - Print Work

James, the site is looking great! I really lke the landing page you made. Really  good well organized information.

The video is very useful as well.

I think you're ready to finalize. If possible, I'd love to also have a copy of a letter or emai lfrom the denomination about the site, but that's totally optional. Amy and I talked about what should be uploaded to google. I'll have to ask Leslie for sure, but I think A link to the site, a short description and link to the video would be fine.

_________________
So we must fix our vision not merely on the negative expulsion of war, but upon the positive affirmation of peace. MLK 1964.
http://officialjoomlabook.com Get it at http://www.joomla.org/joomla-press-official-books.html Buy a book, support Joomla!.

Hi,

Thanks for your positive comments. 

-drmmr763
The template is commercial and made by YooTheme (www.yootheme.com). The menu in my opinion was one of the stand out features of the template.

-mcsmom
Great, but just a few things..
(a) I can give you the link to where the site will be in a few weeks (The time frame is really uncertain because the person from the church who is overseeing my work wants to go some testing and possible further modification to the site)
(b) My webhosting expires on Friday 1st of Feb. I am will possibly purchase more and move the files to the new server but that is sort of up in the air.

I am terribly sorry about the above uncertainties and possible "roadblocks". 

Cheers,
James

_________________
Zebras don't have stripes, every photo you have ever seen has been Photoshoped!