Google's Sheets product is their version of Microsoft Excel.

It is really easy to add Google's spreadsheets to Joomla sites, using our OSEmbed extension.

You can embed Google Sheets into your Joomla site with just a URL.

This new release fixes various bugs our customers reported and also adds an important, much requested feature: migration of DOCman between sites.

Migrating DOCman between sites

Many of our customers requested to move DOCman data between different sites. With this release EXTman gained support for exporting and importing DOCman data between sites.

You can find extensive instructions on how to run the migration in the documentation.^[1]

And more

This release also contains many bug fixes on our framework making all our extensions more stable and robust.

Upgrading

Simply download the latest EXTman version^[2] and make sure you have DOCman 2.1.4^[3] installed which was released last month.

If you have an active Joomlatools subscription you have immediate access to EXTman 2.2 at no additional cost. If you do not have a subscription you can purchase a bundle or single extension subscription^[4] in a matter of minutes.

Joomla offers a menu type "Category List" that allows you to display a category and children subcategories in list format.

Normally a Category List layout looks like the image below. In this example, we're using Protostar as a template. Not really appealing, is it?

We can do it better. For example, we can add an image next to the title of each subcategory. I'm going to show you how do that, using Joomla's template overrides.

Step #1. Create your categories and articles

• Create your categories and subcategories. For each category you should select an image:

• When you're finished, you will have a tree of categories:

Step #2. Change the Article options

• Go to Content > Articles > and click on the button "Options".
• On the tab "Category" change the options as you see below:

Step #3. Create your menu item

• Create a new menu item of type "Category List".
• Select the category containing subcategories as the top level.

• When you go to the frontend and click on the newly created menu item you will see this:

Step #4. Create an override

To change the appearance of this list you will need to create an override of this file: com_content/category/default_children.php

• Go to Extensions > Templates. 

• You will see a list of the installed templates. Click on "Templates" in the left-hand menu.
• Click on the "Details and Files" of your template (in the example, I’m working with Protostar).

• Now you can click on the tab "Create Overrides".
• Under Components, select "com_content" and then "category".

Joomla has now created all necessary files for the override inside the HTML folder of your template.

• To edit the file you want to override, click on the tab "Editor", then select the folder html > com_content > category

• Now you can select the file default_children.php. On the right side of the page, you'll see the text editor with the content of the file, the code you want to change.
• To add the images of the subcategories on your view, you have to add a line of code between lines 44 and 45:

The code is very simple:

<?php echo '<img class="xt-lazy-img" src="'.json_decode($child->params)->image . '" />'; ?>

I decided to insert the code inside the link that encloses the title, so is the image also clickable.

• Save the changes and reload your frontend. Now your list will look like this:

Much better than before!

Step #5. Add some CSS classes to improve the view

Protostar is a Bootstrap 2-based template. We can use the CSS classes from Bootstrap to improve how the images are showed.

You can go back to the editor and add the class "img-polaroid" (the class "img-thumbnail" is the pendant in Bootstrap 3) to the image:

<?php echo '<img class="img-polaroid img-thumbnail" src="'.json_decode($child->params)->image . '" />'; ?>

• Save the changes and reload the frontend again.
• Now the images have a nice border thanks to Bootstrap and the class "img-polaroid" (or "img-thumbnail").

Summary

With a simple override, a very nice and useful feature of Joomla, you can change the appearance of your pages. In many cases, you don’t need to install third party extensions to achieve what you want.

If you want to learn more about overrides, you can check the Joomla! Documentation and also visit the website of the Community Project j!-over (www.j-over.de/en^[1]). Here you will find some interesting overrides for your next project.

Joomla comes with a search component that can look inside articles and other components. However, the search component does have some limitations. For example, it can't index content that is included in modules or plugins.

To search through all of the content on your Joomla pages, Google Search Engine provides a powerful alternative.

In this tutorial, I'm going show you how to integrate Google Search Engine in Joomla.

Step #1. Install the ITP Google Search extension

We're going to use an extension called ITP Google Search.

Go to the extension page^[1] and scroll down to download it.

• Login to your Joomla administrator area.
• Go to Extensions > Manage.
• Upload a Package File.
• Browse the zip you just downloaded.
• Click "Upload and Install" button.

Step #2. Get the Search Engine ID

Go to the Google Custom Search Engine^[2] page.

If you don't have a Google account, click "Sign in to Custom Search Engine" button and continue the process. On the other hand, if you're already logged in, click "Add".

Fill in the required fields:

• Sites to search. Type the URLs of the sites where you want to use the Google search box.
• Choose the language.
• The name of the search engine.

• When you're done, click "Create" button to reach the success page.

• Click the "Search engine ID" button.
• Copy your search engine ID.

Step #3. Configure ITP Google Search 

• Go to Components > ITP Google Search.
• Click "Options" in the right-top of the screen.

• Paste the Search Engine ID from the previous step.

Step #5. Create a module

Let's display the search form on our website:

• Go to Extensions > Modules > New.
• Choose the "ITP Google Search" module type.

• Show or hide the Search button.

• Choose a valid module position and enable it in all pages.
• Click Save and close.

Step #6. End result

Go to your public site and test the search form.

The search results will be displayed right away.

Note on using Google Search

There are some disadvantages to using Google Search. For example, Google won't be able to index and show search results for private content on your site. And you have less control over your customization of the search. However, for many sites, Google Custom Search Engine is a great option.