For workspace, I used the folder that will go hand in hand with XAPP a bit later:

C:/xampp/htdocs/

There was no need to change the httpd.conf file in folder c:\xampp\apache\conf\

To install PHPEclipse, I used the repository

http://phpeclipse.sourceforge.net/update/stable/1.2.x/site.xml

That’s about it, Eclipse is working with PHP. The only thing that is missing is debugger, but it will come later on, I’m sure.

I’m having several older sites that need to be updated to the latest versions of Joomla, in this case I am targeting versin 2.5.1. For WordPress, it is now really easy: if there is a new version, the system will tell you, and you just click and voila! the new version of WordPress is on your site. It works regardless of the version that you start from.

This is not so for Joomla, or at least, it starts to be so from the last two versions 1.75 and 2.5.0, up to 2.5.1. But if you have to start from the lower versions of Joomla, then you have a problem. The path is to upgrade in little increments up to 1.5.25, which is the latest version of 1.5 fork, then to use other software to upgrade to version 1.6, and then to piggyback on version 1.7.x up to 2.5.0 and 2.5.1, finally.

How To Find Upgrades for Old Joomla Versions

First find the page for Joomla downloads. Let us start with the version 1.5.22 and upgrade it to 2.5.1. The recommended path is to use the patch from 1.5.0 to 1.5.25, this seems to be a “one-size-fit-all” upgrade patch. If you want to, you can still find separate patches, by following the following advice from Jommla forums:

The patch packages are still available, you just have to search a bit harder (well, a little harder )

Type ’1.5.23′ in the Search box on the Joomla! home page. This returns the ‘Joomla! 1.5.23 Released’ news article, which has the link to the packages on Joomlacode.org

The same applies for other releases.

An advantage of this method is that you can check each package what files are updated in case you have any core hacks.

The older versions of patches up to Joomla 1.5.23 are here. So I have downloaded the patch from 1.5.22 to 1.5.23 and uploaded the files directly to the Joomla directory, via FTP.  Then enter the Joomla backstage for administrators (/administrator) and refresh the screen, it dully shows version 1.5.23.

From Joomla 1.5.23 to Joomla 1.5.24 and then Joomla 1.5.25

Entering 1.5.24 into the search box in Joomla site, we get the location of the 1.5.24 upgrades. From there I download the patch and again FTP it to the site, extract it and check in the Joomla backend.

Repeating the process, we reach the final 1.5.25 stage of old Joomla versions. The upgrade packages for Joomla 1.5.25 are here.

Done.

From Joomla 1.5.25 to Joomla 1.7

I have found that the easiest way to jump from 1.5.25 to 1.7 is to export the data from 1.5.25 and import them into 1.7. For export we use J2XML for exporting and J2XML Importer for importing the data.

From this page we see how to use it:

I used this extension as an alternative to Jupgrade to migrate my 1.5 site to 1.7 since Jupgrade also migrates useless 1.5 extensions that you can’t get rid of except by editing your database. It worked perfectly. All I had to do was export all my articles and set it to also export users and images and then use the import tool on the 1.7 site to import the .xml file and, like magic, it structured all my categories and put the articles in where they belong. The only con is that it doesn’t export modules or menus but those are easy enough for me to rebuild, so I’m not concerned about that. This is a great way to perform a clean transition from 1.5 to 1.7.

Now erase the base files and directories for a Joomla installation, then use QuickInstall or Fantastico to install Joomla 1.7.3. Then install J2XML Importer and point it out to the file of data the you downloaded somewhat before. If all is OK, you will now have Joomla 1.7.3 with the proper data, just in the place in which the previous site was too.

All good, now from 1.7.3 up to 2.5.1. The instructions are here and I have tried the first method, using the Extension manager. It was easy, click on Purge cache, Find updates, and Update. Voila! here’s my Joomla 2.5.1!

Aftermath

Still not done, now you’d have to recreate the look and feel of the original site. Install the same or a new template, recreate the menus, upload the images needed. However, not all that dificult and I’m glad I did it!

Now, only 8 sites more to go!

 

embed a video file in Joomla 1.7. Here’s what I have done and it appears to have worked for me.

You may want to try this:

Go to Plugin Manager/Editor – TinyMCE

Click Basic Options
On the right side of the page almost at the bottom, you’ll see

URLs: relative
New Lines
Prohibited Elements: script,applet,iframe
Extended Valid Elements

First, change URLs from relative to absolute
Next, go to Prohibited Elements and remove “iframe”

Save and Close.

Now, copy the EXACT full path URL to the file you want to embed.
Toggle the html editor.
Paste the code into the html window and you should get the results you’re after.

<form method=”post” action=”http://www.aweber.com/scripts/addlead.pl” target=”_new”>
<input name=”meta_web_form_id” value=”YOUR10Digit#” type=”hidden”><input name=”meta_split_id” value=”" type=”hidden”>
<input name=”unit” value=”CAMPAIGN-NAMEHERE” type=”hidden”><input name=”redirect” value=”http://www.YOURSITEHERE.com” type=”hidden”>
<input name=”meta_adtracking” value=”FORMNAME” type=”hidden”><input name=”meta_message” value=”1″ type=”hidden”>
<input name=”meta_required” value=”from,name” type=”hidden”><input name=”meta_forward_vars” value=”0″ type=”hidden”>
<table cellpadding=”0″ cellspacing=”10″>
<tbody>
<tr>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Name:</td><td><input name=”name” value=”" size=”20″ type=”text”></td>
<td>Email:</td><td><input name=”from” value=”" size=”20″ type=”text”></td>
<td>Phone:</td><td><input name=”custom Phone” value=”" size=”20″ type=”text”></td>
<td>Website:</td><td><input name=”custom website” value=”http://” size=”20″ type=”text”></td>
<td colspan=”2″ align=”center”><input name=”submit” value=”CONTINUE >>” type=”submit”></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</form>

There is also a corresponding video:

Here are several videos on how to create a custom Facebook fan page:

And then, there is this video:

Looking around I saw that there used to be a Joomla plugin doing exactly that, but it is left in the dark, not being supported by any means. But it was useful studying it, because I saw that I needed a plugin and not a module. From Joomla 1.5 the names of mandatory Joomla events changed quite a bit, and here is the list. Since the original plugin used event onBeforeContentSave()which now is called onContentBeforeSave(), the idea is to catch the event onUserAfterSave and see whether I could write a message “Hello, world!”.

BTW, you can also have a look at Adapting a Joomla 1.5 extension to Joomla 1.6, which is a more formal introduction to the theme.

Learning to Write a Joomla 1.7 Plugin

This link, from Andrew Eddie, caught my attention. but it seems I was running before I learned to walk. So I typed “write a plugin in joomla from scratch” into Google and here’s an excellent introduction to writing a Joomla 1.5 plugin. (Once I learnt that, it would be just a matter of technicality to upgrade it to a Joomla 1.7 plugin.)

Still surfing, here is a good explanation of what user events do in Joomla 1.5.

To learn programming in RadPHP, you can go to the Embarcadero help page.

An example how to create a comboBox in Delphi.

Speed Up FireFox 9 by Changing Preferences

Here is the gist of the article I used to increase FireFox speed:

Changing Preferences

Change or add the following preferences to the new values shown. If the preference is already set to this value then skip it and move on the next. If the preference does not exist then you need to add it:

browser.display.show_image_placeholders: false

Stops the display of placeholders while images are loading to speed up the page. Default is True

browser.tabs.animate: false

Disables all tab animation features (e.g. when you click the ‘New Tab’ (+) button) to make the tab interface feel quicker. Default is True

network.prefetch-next: true

This allows Firefox to automatically prefetch (load) the contents of pages linked to by the page you are viewing e.g. this site uses prefetch to load the TechLogon homepage in the background, making it quicker for you to view next if you want to For pure internet speed, keep this setting at the Default which is True.

network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server: 8

Increases the maximum number of persistent connections per server which can help speed up loading of multimedia rich sites. Default is 6

network.http.pipelining: true

Can send multiple requests to a server together in order to speed up loading of webpages. This is not supported by ALL servers – some servers may even behave incorrectly if they receive pipelined requests. Default is False

network.http.pipelining.maxrequests: 8

Sets a maximum number of multiple requests that can be pipelined to prevent overloading the server. Higher values will cause a delay before the first request completes but will make the last request complete sooner. Higher values will also cause more of a delay if a connection fails. The maximum value is 8. Default is 4

network.dns.disableIPv6: true

Disables IPv6 DNS lookups to prevent a significant delay with poorly configured IPv6 servers. Default is False

The last time I did something similar was to speed up FireFox 3, so I tried to find a video to make things easier.

Video to Boost FireFox Speed

Happy FireFoxing!