MDS BLOG

For most designers that would like to use their own custom template on Joomla, the 1.7 and 2.5 Joomla template system poses a little challenge . The most important thing as i have stated in the last article is to make sure that you have the templateDetails.xml file sorted.

You may experience this problem on a Joomla 2.5 custom template if you are using the discover option to install your template. “Call to member function of non-object: setDebug()”.

Do not panic if you experience this problem , please visit this site here to see how this could be solved.

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Following an earlier article on how to use discover to find your new custom template in joomla 1.7, you may find that even after discovering the custom template you cannot assign it as a default template to use on your joomla 1.7 site.

This can be very frustrating but if you go back and   follow these two simple steps  you should be fine.

1. Check that  your templateDetails.xml has been well configured to 1.7 standard.

2. In your templateDetails.xml file , please make sure that the name of your template is exactly  the same as the name you have given to your new custom template.

Hope this helps.

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We find that most people usually like to stick to the stable platform of joomla version  they are using as upgrading to a new version  usually pose serious problems or you would like to use your 1.5 version template on the new upgraded version of 1.6 or 1.7,  for the brave ones  here is a little tip. Mostly please pay attention to the difference in  headers in your templateDetails.xml.

Firstly you may wish to visit these links to learn how to adapt your 1.5 version template to 1.6,1.7 versions. Visit Joomla Documentation and then here also. These would help you with ideas on what to do , there are not much documentations available for 1.6, 1.7 templates as at the time of this writing and the 1.5 versions of joomla would not be supported anymore in some months time.

One of the major problems is not  being able to find the 1.5 converted template when it has been installed on a 1.7 Joomla version.  It appears automatically on 1.5 version but not the same in 1.7 version. if you experience these problems please visit your admin and then follow Extensions manager > click on Discover > then  Discover on top close to purge cache.  If you have done everything right, your template should appear .

Have fun.

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Let us call your attention once again to an issue with Oscommerce, especially those using the old versions. I had a client recently having problems with removing the rounded corner images on his shop based on Oscommerce.

I actually found this a bit challenging since i hadn’t used it for a while but lets get down to details.;

To remove the rounded images on the infoboxes  please find the file in your includes/classes/boxes.php and do the modifications there. One of the major problems is finding where the named images are embedded in the codes , you would find it in the above file. All you have to do is comment out the statement or remove the image link itself inside the quotes and leave the quotes there .

Example =

if ($left_corner == true) {
// $left_corner = tep_image(DIR_WS_IMAGES . ‘infobox/corner_left.gif’);
} else {
// $left_corner = tep_image(DIR_WS_IMAGES . ‘infobox/corner_right_left.gif’);
}

You can see from the above that it has been commented out.

Also find this line in the same file

$info_box_contents[] = array(array(‘params’ => ‘height=”14″‘,
‘text’ => tep_image(DIR_WS_IMAGES . ‘I removed the image here ‘)),
array(‘params’ => ‘height=”14″ width=”100%”‘,
‘text’ => $contents[0]['text']),
array(‘params’ => ‘height=”14″‘,
‘text’ => tep_image(DIR_WS_IMAGES . ‘I removed the image here‘)));

Please see the highlighted.

One other thing is that after you have done this, you will see the number “1″ appearing in the info boxes, please  remove this by visiting includes/boxes/categories.php and  edit this line by changing all to “false”

$info_box_contents = array();
$info_box_contents[] = array(‘text’ => BOX_HEADING_CATEGORIES);

new infoBoxHeading($info_box_contents, false, false);

Also visit includes/boxes/shopping_cart.php edit this line and make it false.

new infoBoxHeading($info_box_contents, false, false, tep_href_link(FILENAME_SHOPPING_CART));

Please see highlighted.

Hope this helps, you may visit this page here for more info

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Recently i had an arguement with a friend concerning the best open source  ecommerce softwares  to use , at the end of the day we agreed that they all serve different purposes but he actually made a case for wordpress ecommerce solution which i have never really been convinced about. After reading his wonderful article, i decided to publish it here as he has made a strong case for wordpress.

“Building Successful Store is very difficult Process But with wordpress its become easy. Recently the wordpress market folded with Free and premium E-commerce plugins and templates with quality function and easy management.  Today I will write about some of quality Plugins and wordpress that’s can help you to start up your online store not only this but also some premium service provided by E-commerce experts Like Shopfiy and Others.”

You can read from his personal  blog here .

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Hello all,

It’s me again, i just want to quickly call your attention to issue in drupal custom template where the new custom templates does not load javascripts. One little mistake to make when creating a new drupal custom template is to forget some little codes that call things up on your template. i would advice most people to look at the structure and codes in the original default templates that ships with drupal and take examples from there.

Recently i worked on a new template and found that when i installed a code editor module to my client’s site , it refused to load but after some few research i found that i forgot to include ” <?php print $scripts ?>" in the head section of the template, once this was done, i was able to view it, now there may be some complex problems that would arise with this even if the code is visible in the header, please refer to this thread in the drupal forum and see if it will solve your problem.

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Hello all, i just can’t explain why i am  so lazy to blog these days, there are so many things to blog about but let’s get down to business right away.

I know many people who run their sites on joomla would like to have a separate login page set up as a menu link as opposed to the normal login form appearing as a module, especially when you are using virtuemart. Well to do this is very simple.

Just login into your joomla admin > click on menu manager and try to set up a menu under the menu section you want > then afterwards choose type to link the menu to a type > choose “user” in the list and then choose “default login layout”  > Just publish your menu and you should be done by now.

Normally this works with virtuemart because by default, virtuemart is linked to joomla user database if you opted to make it the same.

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Hello All,

There is no  other excuse for not blogging daily these days other than laziness. I have loads of useful articles to publish but i am sure i would pick up in the coming days.

Now lets get down to business;

Problem: After installing Oscommerce and selecting your default currency, you might find that the prices are rounded up to the nearest highest figure.

ie. if you set item price to £2.99, it rounds up to £3.00. Now, we do not want our customers to see our items as being too expensive.

Solution: Go to your admin > then go to Localization > then click on the default currency > click on edit > set the parameter “Decimal Places : 2″, make sure it is set to 2 decimal places. You can use this to adjust the other currencies also.

Please note that this applies to Oscommerce2 and may be different in Oscommerce3.

Hope this helps out!

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