Joomlander.Scherzinger.Org

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Demos


Demos and Hints

Hints have been provided for most extensions. Click on the appropriate tab below, then on the slider bar below the extension description for hints.

User List Modules

Newest Users

The Newest Users module lists users who have registered as members on your site within a timeframe you specify. How many new users each member sees listed depends on how long you decide "new" is and whether your reference date is the current date or the date the logged-in user last logged in. There are lots of options, including Community Builder integration. Download Newest Users here.

Newest Users Pro

The Newest Users Pro module extends the capabilities of Newest Users by providing MANY visual enhancements, including mouse-over effects, country and state flag icons, and more sorting and filtering options. This module works best if installed after the CB Profile Flags Plug-in is installed. Download Newest Users Pro here.

Online Users Pro

The Online Users Pro module lists members currently logged into your site. It has all the same visual capabilities as Newest Users Pro, as well as the ability to integrate with Flash Chat by showing which members are in chat rooms. Download Online Users Pro here.

Mouseover Popup (a.k.a. "tooltip") Styling 

Community Builder and Joomla! use overlib to create tooltips. So do both Newest Users Pro and Online Users Pro. However, Joomla! and CB do not follow the rules for using overlib, which state very clearly that certain references (tags) should be included in the <head> section of the page and one at the start of the <body> section. Both Joomla! and CB insert these tags inline with the content just prior to each spot where an overlib popup is output. This method causes problems with Internet Explorer 6 and earlier and possibly with other browsers, though it does appear to work properly with Mozilla browsers.

The above extensions are written to assume that these rules are being followed, but since they are not being followed by Joomla! or CB, you may have to make some adjustments outside the modules to get a consistent look to your popups. First of all, note that Joomla! itself does not define any styles for its overlib popups, but CB does. The CB style information is located in the user profile template files, which are located in /components/com_comprofiler/plugin/templates/xxx/template.css (look for the word "tip" to find the styles that affect tooltips). In addition, the CB primary class code (comprofiler.class.php, initToolTip function) invokes the overlib_pagedefaults function, which is quite handy since it defines the styles to use if no other styles are specified. The problem is that this style sheet is not invoked unless CB is outputting something that needs it.

The installation instructions for both Newest Users Pro and Online Users Pro specify the proper overlib tags to add to your site template. And although adding these tags will make your tooltips work in most cases, the styles defined in the CB template will preside when CB uses tooltips, for instance in the user profile editor, because CB outputs code to reload overlib and this causes the styles to be reset to CB defaults. The solution for this is to modify the CB template.css file to use the same color scheme you specify in your Joomlander.Net "Pro" modules.

Unfortunately, there are other Joomla! extensions that do not allow you to specify styles for overlb tooltips, and if you are using any of them you will probably see the out-of-box default overlib colors. I have successfully used the following technique to overcome this problem. Immediately following the tags added to the <head> template section, add the following tags (substitute your site name and your CB user profile template as applicable).

<link rel="stylesheet" href="http://mysite.com/components/com_comprofiler/plugin/templates/ winclassic/template.css" type="text/css"/>
...
<script type="text/javascript">
overlib_pagedefaults(WIDTH, 250, VAUTO, RIGHT, AUTOSTATUSCAP, CSSCLASS, TEXTFONTCLASS, 'cb-tips-font', FGCLASS, 'cb-tips-fg', BGCLASS, 'cb-tips-bg', CAPTIONFONTCLASS, 'cb-tips-capfont', CLOSEFONTCLASS, 'cb-tips-closefont');
</script>
The above example uses the CB "WinClassic" user profile template to define the default styles to use for ALL overlib tooltips. Note that when a specific tooltip refers to a specific set of styles, these defaults will not be applied. Since the Joomlander.Net "Pro" modules require that you define styles specifically for them, you need to specify styles that are consistent with the default styles specified in the CB template (or modify the modules' code to not specify any style information). 

 

General Modules

Cool Hits Counter

The Cool Hits Counter is a Joomla site hit counter module modeled after mod_visitors_counter but which shows the count using graphics instead of text. The counter is used right here on Joomlander.Net. 18 styles are provided. The benefits of using this counter is that it does not rely on any external source that benefits from hits to your site. It is completely contained within your site and uses hit statistics built into Joomla. Download Cool Hits Counter here.

  1. The Cool Hits Counter module does not actually count hits. In fact, it doesn't count anything at all. That is left up to Joomla! itself. The module just extracts the visit count information from the statistics database table. You need to enable statistics in the site Global Configuration in order for this to work.
  2. The option to use J!Stats is provided, however may not function the way you think it should. Feel free to modify the code to use whatever J!Stats information you wish.

Pony Gallery Random Image

This module displays a random thumbnail or full-size image from your Pony Gallery ML library. There are lots of options. Download Pony Gallery Random Image here. Sorry there is no demo, but my family website has it installed and you can check it out there.

  1. You can download Pony Gallery ML here (please drop me a line if this changes).
  2. You can arrange random images either horizontally or vertically, but not both. There is no capability to have multiple rows of random images. Though you could use multiple instances of the module arranged to achieve this effect, doing so may result in the occasional duplicate image in two different instances.


CB Plug-ins

CB Profile Flags Plug-in

The CB Profile Flags Plug-in installs two sets of country flags and one set of U.S. State flags. The flags can be shown in a tab in member profiles and can also be used by both the Newest Users Pro and Online Users Pro modules described below. Download CB Profile Flags Plug-in here.

The CB Profile Flags Plug-in is undoubtedly the most difficult Joomlander.Net extension to install and maintain. This is quite evident if you read through the forums. The following is an attempt to explain why this is the case, and hopefully will shed some light on how to deal with issues that can arise when maintaining this extension.

Installing and Updating

The most common problem that occurs during installation is caused by the size of the distribution .zip file, which is slightly larger than 2MB. Many web hosts leave their PHP servers at the default settings, which among other things includes a limitation on the maximum size of a single upload file of 2MB. If this is the case for your service, you will get an error when trying to install the CB Profile Flags Plug-in that indicates files could not be written to the /media directory. To overcome this problem, there are a couple different things you can do.

First, you may be able to increase your upload limit by editing the .htaccess file in the root Joomla! directory. This is also discussed in the forums, but it is somewhat difficult to find. The lines to add to .htaccess to increase the maximum upload file size to 20MB are as follows. Note that your service may impose a hard limit that is smaller than 20MB, so you may have to use smaller values.

php_value upload_max_filesize 20M
php_value post_max_size 20M

Note that if you increase the maximum file upload size, you may also have to increase the default upload timeout. The values are in seconds.

php_value max_input_time 120
php_value max_execution_time 120

Second, you can decrease the size of the .zip archive by removing flag sets you don't plan to use. This is relatively simple to do. Simply remove the folder(s) containing the flag set(s) and then remove all references to them and the queries to create and populate the corresponding database table(s) from the XML file.

For example, if you want to exclude the "countries" flag set, delete the countries folder and all its contents from the .zip file. Then, edit the cb.profileflags.xml file and remove the two queries that create and populate the "jos_flags_countries" table.

<query>
    CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `#__flags_countries` (
...
</query>
<query>
    INSERT INTO `#__flags_countries` (`Location`, `Flag`) VALUES
...
</query>

Create a new version of the .zip file that excludes all the countries flag set files and the edited version of the XML file and install the plug-in. You can remove as many flag sets as you want in this manner, however, keep in mind that you must install at least one state and one country flag set.

Problems can also occur if you are upgrading to a new version of this plug-in. The uninstaller will not remove the records added to the jos_comprofiler_fields and _fields_values tables. To avoid duplicate options being created for your cb_country and cb_state fields, before you upgrade to a newer version make sure you remove the queries from the XML file that add records to these fields, namely the following (there are two queries like this one, one for each field):

<query>
    INSERT INTO `#__comprofiler_field_values` (`fieldid`, `fieldtitle`, `ordering`, `sys`) VALUES
...
</query>

Adding Countries to an Existing cb_country Field

If you discover that a country you need is not in the flag set you are using, you can add it quite easily once you have an appropriately-sized flag image file for it. First, upload the image file into the appropriate flag set directory.

Next, you'll need to add a record for the country to the database table for the flag set you are extending. For instance, if you are adding a flag for Palestine to the countries flag set and the image file is named "palestine.jpg", add this record using the following SQL query:

INSERT INTO jos_flags_countries (Location,Flag) VALUES ('Palestine','palestine.jpg');

Finally, you'll need to add the country to the cb_country field and reorder the options so that they appear in alphabetical order. Simply add the new country name using the CB Field Manager. After saving the updated field, the new country name will be the last option in the list, and most likely not in alphabetical order with the rest of the countries. To reorder the option list, issue the following SQL queries:

SET @neworder=0;
UPDATE jos_comprofiler_field_values SET ordering=@neworder:=@neworder+1 WHERE fieldid=65 ORDER BY fieldtitle;
Make sure to replace the value 65 with the fieldid for your cb_country field.

CB Profile Notifier Plug-in

The CB Profile Notifier Plug-in sends an email to the site admin (or other address) whenever any site member changes any profile setting. Standard Joomla and CB profile fields can be included or excluded by direct selection, and any user-defined fields can be excluded from causing a notification to be sent. Download CB Profile Notifier Plug-in here

  1. "Standard Fields" are provided so that you don't have to type-in their names as fields to exclude. Instead simply select "No".
  2. The "Exclude Fields" box is for entering the names of fields you DO NOT want to be notified for when changed.
  3. The option to be notified of back-end changes is provided so that you can be sent a notification email for changes you or any other admins for your site make in the back end. It is presumed that you want to be notified of all changes made via the site front end, so there is no way to disable notification for front end changes.
  4. You may need to enter an email address other than the site admin email address since some servers will not send an email to the sender. The site admin email address is always used as the "from" address when sending notifications.


Dada Mail

Dada Mail Manager Component 

The Dada Mail Manager Component bridges an existing Dada Mail email list system into a Joomla! website. Since a demo is not something I care to deal with on this site, here are a few screen shots. Download Dada Mail Manager here.

  1. You can download Dada Mail from http://mojo.skazat.com.
  2. Installation instructions for Dada Mail are located at http://mojo.skazat.com/installation
  3. Additional documentation for Dada Mail can be found at http://mojo.skazat.com/support/documentation. For instructions on converting the Dada Mail settings to MySQL database format, search for the "Misc" section. There are three Perl scripts you'll need to download to do the conversion.

Dada Mail Subscriptions CB Plug-in 

If your site uses Community Builder, you'll also want the Dada Mail Subscriptions CB Plug-in.

Last Updated on Thursday, 20 December 2007 17:07
 


Member Access

Donations Accepted

Joomlander.Scherzinger.Org is now accepting donations. Your donation, though not required to use this site or download files, will help to keep it online and keep the Joomla extensions coming. Donations are made through PayPal and are 100% secure. You can use your own PayPal account or any major credit card.

Joomlander.Scherzinger.Org is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Joomla! Project or Open Source Matters. The Joomla! name and logo are used under a limited license granted by Open Source Matters the trademark holder in the United States and other countries.