Or so I thought, until I stumbled upon the documentation, that mentioned the URL structure for the blog module. Unlike Joomla! PyroCMS generates these URL’s regardless of whether you created a menu item or not. This allows you to easily link to a single category from within the menu.

The best part? You don’t need to code anything.

Here is how it’s done.

First off, you will need the ‘slug’ for your category.

1. Go to Content > Blog
2. You will see a list of categories. Click “Edit” next to the category you want to link to.
3. In the next screen, take a note of (or copy) the info in the “Slug” box. You will need this later on.

Copy the info in the “Slug” field

4. Go to Structure > Navigation
5. Click on “Add Link” to create a new Menu Item (You can do this in any of the available menu’s)
6. For the new item, choose “Site Link” as the link type.
7. In the site Link box, add the following: blog/<Your Category Slug>.  For example, if your category slug was news-and-updates, type “blog/news-and-updates” in this box.

8. Click Save
9. Now, if you visit your front page you’ll see that you’ve got a menu item which is pointing to a single Category only, without having to change any code.

You know what’s a better idea?

“No” isn’t the right answer, I’m afraid. The proper answer is “crowd sourcing.” We’re opening Joomla & More to suggestions of you, the reader.

Have you got a question you’d like us to answer? Is there a product you want us to review for you? Do you want us to study the influence of the male-female ratio on inter-working-groups politics in Joomla?

Using the form below, you can make a suggestion, for a topic you want us to discuss right here. Except the third one above. That’s a joke. Obviously.

What are you waiting for? Submit your question!

Cleaning up your websites is something you should do, too. And not just for spring. Did you know that your /tmp folder is a haven for megabytes of files that you’ll never use again? This folder is used to temporary store files when installing extensions – and updates of these extensions.

Anything in this folder can be safely deleted – but you can’t delete the folder. There’s two ways to approach this: The wrong way and the right way.

• The Wrong Way: Delete the content of the folder manually. Possibly the worst method to do this is by FTP.
• The Right Way: Use “Cache Cleaner” by Nonumber

Don’t let the name “Cache Cleaner” fool you. The free version of Nonumber also cleans up the tmp folder for you. All you have to do is click the button in the top right corner of your site (Up until Joomla! 2.5) or the bottom left corner.

Clearing the tmp folder with Cache Cleaner only takes two clicks.

You can download or buy Cache Cleaner here. The Professional version offers you a bunch of other interesting features, such as: automatically cleaning your cache by interval, emptying folders that you define yourself, or even emptying specific database tables. For only €10 a year, this is a tool you should consider adding to your toolbox.

If, like me, you’ve got some domain names parked at Godaddy you’ll inevitably receive e-mails encouraging you to renew them near the expiration of the domain. By which I mean “They’ll start mailing you about 2 months before expiration and send an e-mail with an offer you can’t refuse every week after that.”

These mails promise you a “Great offer”, and should you click the mail you’ll be taken to their site, where they once again point out how much they’re saving.

When you’ve arrived at this point, use the following trick to save even more money.

1. Navigate to the tab you’ve opened their site in.
2. Click the “X” and close that tab. It’ll be okay, I promise.
3. Open a new tab
4. Navigate to either Name.com or Namecheap.com
5. Transfer your domain names.

That’s right. The secret is to buy your domain names elsewhere.

THeir best price? Not so great!

What makes me give you this advice? Well, today I was domain name renewin’ at Godaddy. Their best offer would save me €10, which sounded great.

Until I did a quick check (my experience told me I had gotten better prices elsewhere), and much to my surprise (not really) two other registrars’ made a way better offer. At either Namecheap.com or Name.com I’d pay $42 instead of €42 (Approximately $55). 

Now, I’m not telling you what to do with this information. I’m just telling you that the “best offer” of Godaddy isn’t that great compared to regular prices of other registrars. But, you say, maybe you’re paying a premium for great add-ons? Well, you’re wrong.

The point of all of this?

The point I’m trying to make, is that if you’re a Godaddy customer, you could save a lot of money by taking your domains elsewhere. I’m sharing this information with you, for free, as a fellow domain name buyer. There’s nothing in it for me whether you use this advice or not. I’m not sponsored by either of them, there’s no affiliate links in this post… Just friendly advice.

While our statistics prove that we don’t have many regular readers, I thought it was time to make using the site a bit more worthwhile for them. For as long as this site exists – about 4 years or so – the site didn’t have a menu. All pages were shown on the front page. Not very user-friendly for those revisiting the site.

We were also told that our “Website is ugly” in a blog post (which also named Joomla & More a “Blog of interest”, so they are forgiven) and they probably weren’t wrong.

Anyway, to solve those issues we’ve made the following changes:

• We’ve got a menu! We’ve now got a genuine top menu linking to the most popular categories, for your navigation convenience. (Although “Joomla” is still missing from the list)

• We are now using a new template. Ten Twelve is simple but stylish with a focus on content. Just the way I like it. It’s also responsive which isn’t just a big “plus”. It was a requirement.

• Joomla & More now has its own Twitter account, for those that aren’t comfortable with following @torettox84.  Yes, I tweet a lot, I can’t blame you for that. Hopefully the low-pace tweeting of @jandmore is more to your liking.

• You can now sign up for our newsletter.  Which exists for about a year. But we forgot to link you to the sign-up page. Well, that’s sorted out now, you can find the link under “Contact”.

• New category: I’ve added a new category, “Reviews”. I guess you can already guess what sort of articles will be posted to this category. (*)

• Last but not least: People kept pointing out that I’m using WordPress for a site that’s (partially) about Joomla!. I’ve realized that this is silly, and to correct this error I’ve migrated this website to Drupal. You’re welcome. (***)

(*) If you’d like me to review your (Joomla!) product, hit me up at Twitter or send me an e-mail at jandmore@toralkolabs.net

(**) I’m kidding, obviously. I migrated the website to Concrete5.

When we tried the feature, the result wasn’t quite what we expected:

The problem was located in the ‘popup engine’ we chose in the Simple Gallery Pro plug-in, or rather, didn’t choose as we used the default option.

The default option, Slimbox2, doesn’t quite work as planned. We could now go into details on how to fix this particular problem, but sometimes less is more.

The simple solution

Use one of the many other popup engines available in Sigpro. We decided to pick SimpleBox, ourselves, but you’re free to mix and match.

Here’s how you change the popup engine:

1. In the top menu, go to Extensions > Plug-in Manager
2. Find Simple Image Gallery Pro in the list of plug-ins, and open it. Tip: use “Simple” as a search term.
3. Under Basic Options, look for “Popup engine for image galleries”
4. Choose an option that isn’t “Slimbox2″
5. Click ‘Save’.

This should solve the less than aesthetically pleasing mess that Slimbox2 created on your site. Enjoy!

P.S If you’re a tinkerer, you can try to fix the Slimbox issue yourself.

• Location of CSS files (You’ll have to find out what version you’re using): /plugins/content/jw_sigpro/jw_sigpro/includes/js/mootools/slimbox/ 
• Changes to be made: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15336690/slimbox-overlay-in-front-of-the-image

Best of luck, you elite hacker you

I almost wish I hadn’t, since I’ve lost almost half an hour trying to figure out why Prestashop kept moaning about redirect errors, Redirect loops and other things about redirecting.

The domain name turned out to be the problem. Since I’m used to Joomla! I’m familiar with a straight forward approach: you enter the full path, and you’re done.

But for Prestashop, you’ve got to change your logic a bit when working on your localhost (be it Wamp, Xamp, LAMP or MAMP).  The guide below explains how to setup your domain when you’ve moved your site to your localhost

The Steps

I am going to make two assumptions: You’ve managed to unpack Prestashop, your database is up and running and you can access the backend locally. If that’s the case, do the following:

1. Login to the back-end of your site

2. Go to Preferences > SEO & URLS

3. Go to the Set Shop URL Section of the screen.

4. Configure the fields in this section like this:

• 
• Shop Domain: http://localhost:<Ports&gt;
• Replace <Ports> by the port Apache is listening to on your localhost. If you’re using Port 80 just write http://localhost
• Base URL: the path to your Prestashop installation, relative to your root folder. If, for example, the store is located in a “MyPrestaShop” folder under your root, enter /MyPrestaShop here.

Once you have configured both the fields, click “Save. This should help you get rid of that nasty “Redirect” error!

A proposal has now been made to create a Joomla! hub (following our colleagues of Drupal and WordPress), but it needs “commits” before it becomes reality.

So if you are both a Stackexchanges and a Joomla! User, you’ll probably want to take a minute of your time to make this happen.

It still needs a ton of votes, so any “commit” counts. What are you still waiting for?

Simply head over to the proposal page and click that “Commit” button. You know you want to.

Our very first guide is available for download on Toralkodocs.com right now. It’s written in our no-nonsense style you’ve gotten used to. It focuses on getting things done instead of explaining what each button does. The Toralkodocs site describes the e-book as follows:

The Joomla! Manager Manual covers the basic actions for people with the “Manager” role. It’s focused on users that quickly want to learn how to quickly use articles or categories.

It is available for free. A Premium version is also available for members of the Founders club – and Premium Members – we are working on this new subscription level as we speak.

We hope you enjoy this manual, and hope it’ll be the first in a series. Enjoy the reading experience!

Case in point: A client told me that, after for a long time, his Ogone integration suddenly stopped working. It was showing a cryptic error message instead of processing the sale. (Seriously, people, just tell us what’s wrong so we can fix it…)

Unknown order /1/r/ . Almost as usefull as a Microsoft error.

The error above means that there’s a problem with the URL for the “order page” you’ve provided in Ogone’s (PITA) panel. 

As it turns out, enabling a second language in Prestashop is enough to trigger this. When you enable a language, the URL’s change and Ogone, unable to deal with change, refuses to play nice unless you add the proper URL.

Unfortunately, it isn’t documented very well what URL you should add at this point. Until I wrote this blog post, I suppose.

What to do

1.  Open your Ogone account.

2.  In Technical Configuration, open the “Data and origin verification” Tab.

3. In the first field, enter the new URL. The URL should look like this: http://yoursiteurl.com/languagecode/index.php?controller=order

For example, if your site is webshop.com and you want to use English and Spanish, you’d enter the following:

http://webshop.com/en/index.php?controller=order;http://webshop.com/es/index.php?controller=order

Save your settings, and try making a payment in Prestashop. You will see that the error is gone and that your payment can now go through!