An artist asked, on a forum, for advice about template creation and plugins that would be helpful for an artists portfolio site, built using the Joomla! CMS. He said that...

An artist asked, on a forum, for advice about template creation and plugins that would be helpful for an artists portfolio site, built using the Joomla! CMS. He said that he doesn’t know HTML or coding, but would like to build it, for the most part, himself.

This is my brief reply to him:

You don’t need to know HTML thoroughly, to use Joomla. The only place, where some knowledge would be needed, is for the construction of articles or modules that contain text and images. Even there, there are tools to help you.

I recommend the ‘Joomla Content Editor’ (JCE), which can replace the primitive editor, that comes with Joomla (MCE).

N.B. In case you don’t know, the editor is the software that allows you to write pages in a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) window, whilst it constructs the HTML, behind the scenes, for you.

With a bit of study, you can make JCE, to a great extent, write all the HTML for you.

I would also recommend buying a license to use the advanced version, which has great tools, such as ‘Image Manager Extended’. This could prove very useful to you, as an artist. It allows image editor right on the server.

It also comes with an extra plug-in to easily add light-boxes (those pop ups which darken the background to highlight a new area on a page containing special content, such as has been utilised extensively, in the Joomla back-end). This is very useful for image galleries among other things.

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A client has asked for a button/icon within each page, that will allow a screen-shot of the page, to be printed by the site visitor.I have thought and thought about...

A client has asked for a button/icon within each page, that will allow a screen-shot of the page, to be printed by the site visitor.

I have thought and thought about him wanting to give the visitors the capability of getting a printout of a web page, as if it were a screen-shot. I wondered why I couldn’t find any useful information on the subject, in spite of a lot of research.

Then it came to me that the request, itself, is 1) technically non-feasible 2) not really useful to the visitors. That’s why no-one has considered the possibility.

Let me explain:

A website consists of a ‘design’ and ‘content’, each of which (in the modern web world) is not essential to the other.

A design, with its layout, style etc. – i.e. template – can be used with any content.

Similarly,  site ‘content’ can appear in any template, so styled differently. To understand this best you could visit CSS Zen Garden. (http://www NULL.csszengarden NULL.com) There, they show the same content, but using different styles for each menu option. Click around to see what it does. Amazingly beautiful web-sites designs, but all with the same content.

Now, the site, itself, has no idea how it will appear in the browser. In fact, since CMS sites are dynamic, by definition, and the browser could be any software that reads HTML, on any platform, with any settings, all the site knows about is ‘content’ of the pages and the instructions sent for display purposes (the template).

The browser may interpret these instructions in various ways, but are only intended for display in a browser. A printer cannot interpret HTML, CSS or use javascript. I have had a considerable job just to get the site to display roughly equally, in all 5 of the major browsers.

In any case, all the visitor usually needs of a web-site is the content – maybe formatted in a pretty way, for a printer. Therefore, Joomla! templates have a printer-friendly version built in  to them, that renders the content for a printer, not a browser. N.B. This can also be manually re-programmed for special purposes, but doesn’t normally (& shouldn’t) include the web template elements.

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I remember well, back in the eighties, sitting at my little flickering 14 inch screen, hour after hour, day after day, writing software for this new thing called Internet and…

I remember well, back in the eighties, sitting at my little flickering 14 inch screen, hour after hour, day after day, writing software for this new thing called Internet and being laughed at, by all and sundry, for my geeky behaviour which ‘is going nowhere’ and ‘a waste of my time’.

(http://www NULL.businessinsider NULL.com/incredible-things-that-happen-every-60-seconds-on-the-internet-2011-12)I saw enough potential to dedicate my life to it. Now, look at it!

Was I right or was I right? See these amazing statistics, presented in a beautiful graphic form, for the answer, 25 years. later, when it’s all taken for granted by everyone, except absolute neo-luddites (http://en NULL.wikipedia NULL.org/wiki/Neo-Luddism), even by the main-stream culture:

Incredible Things That Happen Every 60 Seconds On The Internet (http://www NULL.businessinsider NULL.com/incredible-things-that-happen-every-60-seconds-on-the-internet-2011-12)

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/incredible-things-that-happen-every-60-seconds-on-the-internet-2011-12#ixzz1i0qSvjdi (http://www NULL.businessinsider NULL.com/incredible-things-that-happen-every-60-seconds-on-the-internet-2011-12#ixzz1i0qSvjdi)

Like many pioneers of technology, of lesser importance, our efforts are now forgotten – but not by those, who were involved in it all.

For us, it

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I have noticed, recently that many Joomla users are looking for some ideas for the best way to create a mobile version of a joomla site.It is evident that the…

I have noticed, recently that many Joomla users are looking for some ideas for the best way to create a mobile version of a joomla site.

It is evident that the demand for running a Joomla site on a smartphone, simple mobile device or, indeed, tablet, with its small display and navigation problems, is increasing exponentially.

To this end, I shall give here a really cut-down summary of what you need to know, first. Further research will also be needed, because each user’s demands may be different and because the whole issue may not be as simple as it appears, at first glance.

One user correctly suggested that:

there must be all sorts of different ways; I guess the simplest way to do this is to have a separate css file which loads depending on screen resolution;

Then he asked:

however is there another way of designing a mobile version of a website that you recommend?

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Even though the version for Joomla 1.6.x is still under development and quite broken, in places, I thought a word about the free ‘Joomla Content Editor’ (JCE) and the extra…

Even though the version for Joomla 1.6.x is still under development and quite broken, in places, I thought a word about the free ‘Joomla Content Editor’ (JCE) and the extra package available, for a small extra fee, may be useful to Joomla developers, who haven’t yet discovered it.

Anyone not currently using this powerful free content editor, should seriously consider it (at least for Joomla 1.5.x installations).

This was originally a reply to a forum request for a Joomla user to allow his site visitors (or some of them) to upload images with captions. It is a family re-union site.

I had told him about JCE that  “It’s free but, if you pay a small ($30) subscription fee, you get all the extras, including a caption plug-in and a great light-box system called MediaBox, a powerful media manager, a file manager etc. The extras aren’t totally free, as is JCE,

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I was watching ‘The Apprentice’ (UK version), the other day. It was about ‘creating a marketable app’.What these simple and foolish candidates did was come up with really dumb-ass ideas…

I was watching ‘The Apprentice’ (UK version), the other day. It was about ‘creating a marketable app’.

What these simple and foolish candidates did was come up with really dumb-ass ideas of apps that would be downloaded – but immediately dumped, because they were so useless, even for the children’s market. They made a big issue of ‘creating the entire app overnight’ and attempting to pitch it to websites and magazines the next day.

What actually happened was that the BBC (or Lord Sugar, himself) simply paid a bunch of developers at a big company, an unstated amount to do it for them. The apps were so simple that Google’s AppInventor software (http://appinventor NULL.googlelabs NULL.com/about/) would allow them to make both apps in about 1 hour – using a single developer. ‘Real’ apps – with any small chance of success – take lots of time, lots of programmers and lots of

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