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In early July, JFBConnect v6.1 was released, which added Instagram, Github and VK authentication[1] and profile integration for Joomla, along with the new social streams and other features. Just 3 short months later, there's another release right around the corner.
JFBConnect v6.2 is scheduled for release in late September, and we wanted to give you a preview of what to expect. We've been working on hard on some highly requested features, new providers, new widgets and performance improvements. There's something here for everyone, so lets get started!
One request we hear most often is that administrators want to reward their Joomla users for engaging with social networks. If you're using Alpha User Points, JomSocial or EasySocial, you'll now be able to award points to users for doing any of the following activities on your site:
All of the actions above are great ways for users to be promoting your site, so it makes sense to want to reward them for their efforts, and soon, you'll be able to.
Of course, for the actions that can be undone (Un-Like, deleting a comment), there can be point reductions for the user as well to prevent gaming the system.
Coming to the stable of authentication providers will be Meetup, Amazon [2]and Windows Live. As with each of the other providers we support for Joomla social network authentication[3], the new ones have advantages, but not all sites will want to implement all of them.
Meetup[4] is the largest event organizing site on the web. If your site, in any way, interacts with Meetup or even relates to events in general, you'll want this integration. Your users likely already have an account, and importing their profile into Joomla will make registering for your events even easier.
Along with authentication and profile import will be 6 new Meetup widgets for listing information about your group, a specific event, comments and more.
It's possible you didn't even know that Amazon supported single-sign on[5]. We didn't, until a few months ago. Well, they do, and soon, you can let users sign on to your site with their Amazon account. Unfortunately, Amazon only allows you to access the users name and post code, not email address, but it still can be a time saver during registration.
Amazon provides multiple widgets for showing their products on your Joomla site. If you conduct sales on your site, Amazon may not seem like a great addition. However, Amazon has an amazing affiliate program where you can earn up to 10% on referrals, and their widgets make it simple to generate some income.
Starting with Windows 8, Microsoft has pushed almost all computer users to have a Windows Live account whether they want it or not. With Windows Live, users from Hotmail, Outlook.com, MSN and multiple other Microsoft destinations can easily authenticate on your site.
This year has seen a crazy fast introduction of new social networks to JFBConnect. One year ago, we supported 2: Google+ and Facebook. With 6.2, we'll support 10! Going forward, we expect the amount of additions to slow down drastically while we focus on other features.
On the docket for upcoming releases is definitely Yahoo and a few other regional providers, though. Of course, if you have suggestions for what we should add (and we know you do), please let us know!
In addition to the widgets with Amazon and Meetup, mentioned above, there will be need 'Embedded' widgets from Twitter and Instagram. With these, you can easily embed a Tweet or Instagram image or video directly in your Joomla content or anywhere on your page. It's fully interactive, allowing you to grow your followers by promoting a special Tweet or image.
Upcoming in JFBConnect: Point rewards in EasySocial for authentication, sharing and other social network engagement! #Joomla @stackideas[6][7]
— Alex Andreae (@sourcecoast)
With JFBConnect v6.2, you'll have access to over 50 social widgets from 10 social networks!
Want to let users quickly access your social feeds? Use the new Find Us module and setup the links to Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and RSS feeds that you'd like users to visit. There are also flexible options for a 'floating' bar on the sides or top/bottom of your page, or in a standard module position.
JFBConnect v6.2 will have multiple improvements to speed up page creation and loading time for your users.
First, we've implemented a new parsing scheme for our Easy Tags which should improve performance on very large pages. For these large content pages, with 500k+ of HTML, we're seeing, on average, a 10x speedup of our parsing. That boils down to 100-400ms, depending on server and other factors, but it should be a big jump for the few users that have run into some slow-down issues.
Other improvements include asynchronous loading of the Twitter Javascript library, optimized loading of our CSS assets, additional caching in various places and other tweaks.
Integration with 3rd party extensions is what we'll be focusing on over the next few releases, with of course other new features added as well. New profile plugins supported in this release are:
There's over 40 mid to large level changes in this release, and dozens of minor improvements or fixes. But surely, we're missing something you've always wanted. That's why we want to hear from you.
What do you think about the above features? What should be in JFBConnect v6.3 and beyond? Let us know in the comments below.
Read more https://www.sourcecoast.com/blog/jfbconnect-v6-2-preview-points-providers-performance-and-widgets
The purpose of different types of web design is to make best use of the existing technologies to create eye-catching websites, serving the very purpose of their conception.
Two of the different styles of web design available today are static and dynamic web design. Today I will show you some creative web designs which are popular nowadays that you should know. It's time to break any old habits and try out different types of web design:
Illustration is an incredibly versatile tool that can find many different uses in design. And when it comes to web design we can find an extremely wide variety of implementations.
Illustrations and cartoon drawings can really bring a web design to life. Drawing is a creative activity by definition, and incorporating it into a website’s design is one of the most creative methods of presenting information on the web. Check out the examples below.
DE VLAAMSE KUST EXTRA DELUXE[1]
The purpose of minimalism is to expose the essence a design by eliminating all non-essential forms, features and concepts. In web design, minimalism erases potential distractions and strips away elements into their most basic forms.
It’s a style that continues to be trendy, being a reaction to the chaos and overflow of information that’s inherent to the Internet. And if your portfolio’s sole purpose is to showcase the best work you’ve ever created, the biggest favor you can do for yourself is to simply get out of the way.
First impressions are lasting impressions. Whether you realize it or not, your typography helps to create an experience for users before they’ve even read a word or clicked a button. Typography has the potential to go beyond merely telling a story — it shows the user who is behind the website and what they’re about. The treatment of type creates an atmosphere and elicits a response much the same way as tone of voice does
As one of the core design principles, typography can really make or break a website design. Despite recent advances in web type technology we’re still fairly limited when it comes to creative typography layouts, meaning image replacement techniques are still common, but these days we have massive choice when it comes to selecting fonts for our designs.
Single page web designs certainly aren’t a new trend. Its continuance suggests that it’s more practical and effective than most. Like all trends, single page sites have their advantages and shortcomings, but in a world where thousands of new websites are created daily, a single page web design may be the best way to cater to the ever-shortening human attention span.
It should be noted that the single page web design isn’t perfect for every purpose. Having a refined purpose for your design, your content to fit a single page, and creating an interesting layout are some of the most important focal points to make your single page design meet its full potential.
Flat design is a minimalistic design approach that emphasizes usability. It features clean, open space, crisp edges, bright colors and two-dimensional/flat illustrations.
Microsoft was one of the first to apply this design style to its interface. Instead of converting a real-life object, such as a calendar, into a tiny realistic illustration, advocates of flat design identify apps with simple, icon-like images. Rather than bringing aspects of real life to an interface, this illustrates a clear separation between technology and tactile objects.
I have shown some popular types of web design in 2014. How about you? Do you know any types of web design that are popular in 2014? Don't hesitate to comment below. I hope this collection will give you some useful information that you can use.
Read more https://www.joomlashine.com/blog/5-popular-web-designs-you-should-know-1.html
There are two main reasons to speed up a website:
You’ve wondered why your Joomla website loads so slowly, even it was upgraded to version 3.x, haven’t you? Well, let’s check out 5 tips you can use now to speed up your Joomla 3.x website.
Your site was probably put on the same server as hundreds or thousands of other sites. It could lead to slow speeds when many clients try to access this server at the same time.
Therefore, ensure that you choose the right hosting from a reputable provider – one who can meet all of Joomla’s hosting requirements: a limited number of sites per server, server hardware support, server caching support, Joomla expert support… Some popular and well-known hosting providers recommended by Joomla user are: Bluehost, Inmotion, HostGator, Arvixe…
Data Center of HostGator
Using the Gzip Compression feature, you can compress your website pages before sending them to the user. After that, they will be uncompressed by the user’s browser. And this process takes less time than transferring uncompressed pages.
By default, Gzip Compression is disabled in Joomla 3.x. Therefore, you have to enable it manually by following these steps:
On the Top Menu, select Site > Global Configuration > Server tab, and switch the Gzip Page Compression to YES option.
Most websites have contents that are not changed frequently. Therefore, the theory of Joomla caching is very simple: the Cache system takes a copy of the whole page in its first load. When the user visits it again, this copy will be displayed without reloading the same images and files all over again.
Please make sure that you enable Joomla Cache system. This is a very simple step but it can increase the loading speed of your website a lot. You can do it as follows:
Global Configuration > System > Cache setting, and switch Cache to “ON – Conservative caching”. In ‘Cache time’, choose 30 (minutes) for a cache file to be stored before it is refreshed.
Here are the optimizations that need to be used to speed up your website:
Don’t forget the final step – check your website speed. You should do it before and after following all of these guidelines. And don’t be surprised when you see how much faster your website can be. You can do it by using one of these tools or services: YSlow Chrome plugin, Pingdom tools, Google PageSpeed or GTmetrix…
Google PageSpeed – a tool which is offered by Google
Ok, I think that’s enough to speed up your Joomla 3.x website. Please share your experience with us in the comment area.
Read more https://www.joomlashine.com/blog/5-tips-to-speed-up-your-joomla-3-x-website.html
In a recent project we had to implement a uniform commenting system across the site, Jomsocial included. Now obviously, Jomsocial comes with it’s own commenting system, and to make matters worse, there were already thousands of comments already present that needed to be migrated to the new platform.
We suggested the use of Disqus, which is a cloud based commenting system that easily integrates with a website. Thankfully, DISQUS provides a way to import comments from non-compatible systems by importing from a WXR file.
So the first challenge was to generate a WXR file. Each thread in DISQUS needs to have a unique disqus_thread_id, which is usually unique per page. In case of comments for Joomla Articles, this is usually the article ID. However, since we were using DISQUS for videos, photos and even blogs, we could have easily run into an issue where a video, a photo and a blog have the same id. To overcome this, we prefixed the id with a identifier, so the ID became video.345 or photo.345 or blog.345 Neat eh ;)
Once this architectural challenge was out of the way, it was as simple as writing a script to output a WXR file, and then importing the WXR file into DISQUS. Below is how we wrote a neat little script to generate the file -
To create a WXR file for jomsocial videos, we created a disqusimport.php controller and loaded it with the code to create the WXR. Placed this controller in com_community and we were good to fire the exporter. You could of course also create a neat little CLI script to do that.
https://example.com/index.php?option=com_community& controller=disqusimport& task=export_jom_video
Running this will give you a WXR file named export.xml
Now you need to upload this file into your DISQUS account. Login and go to admin section. Then on to Discussions > Import. On this page, upload the file that was created, and within a few of hours the comments should be in your account. Similarly, the export files for photos & albums were created. You can get the code from here - https://gist.github.com/vijaykhollam/456168f52b8fe985adf0#file-export-php
The next step was to take out the native wall based commenting from Jomsocial and replace it with DISQUS. That was as easy as adding a few overrides, one each for videos, photos & albums. Specifically, the following files were overrides
Included below is a link to the code that needs to be added at the bottom of these files to load the DISQUS comments. Next, you need to hide jomsocial comments on each page. We can hide jomsocial comments by overriding wall.form.php file. Code below. That’s it! Once you do these successfully, you should be able to see the existing comments for videos that already have some.
Grab the code here - https://gist.github.com/vijaykhollam/456168f52b8fe985adf0
Reference Links
https://help.disqus.com/customer/portal/articles/472150-custom-xml-import-format
https://help.disqus.com/customer/portal/articles/472098-javascript-configuration-variables[1][2]
Read more https://techjoomla.com/blog/joomla-development/jomsocial-gets-disqus-ed.html
Saturday, 16 August 2014 21:07
A new version of Advanced Module Manager has been released.
16-Aug-2014 : v4.16.6
# [PRO] Fixed issue with HikaShop category assignments not working when page doesn't have a menu item
# [PRO] Fixed issue with Virtuemart product list being empty
# JOOMLA 2.5 Fixed issue with errors after upgrade to Joomla 3
Read more https://www.nonumber.nl/news/releases/980-advanced-module-manager-v4-16-6-released