I built a time ago a plugin for Joomla to insert adsense inside the article content but this is another story.

The tricky part here is how to insert the javascript generated from your Google account.  This is easy and we will continue with a step by step guide to get your own Joomla Adsense Module.

1. Your first step will be to deactivate your Joomla default WYSIWYG editor, so, go to your administrator control panel and click on => Site =>Global configuration.  Look for the parameter: Default WYSIWYG Editor and change it to “Editor – no editor”.  Save your preferences.
2. Now that you have the editor deactivated we are going to add a new module to our site.  Go to => Extensions => Module manager and click the New icon.
3. Select Custom HTML and click next.
4. Add a title, enable the module and select your desired position.
5. In the custom output box paste the code you got from your Google account.
6. Click save and that’s it.  You have your own Joomla Adsense Module.

Finally don’t forget to activate again your Default WYSIWYG Editor.

As this type of solution is oriented to advanced developers I'm not going to explain here the concepts, how to add prototype or things like these.  If you are new to some concepts just Google them.

Ok, let's begin.

First we are going to use a prototype class named AJAX with the following syntax:

Our explanation is the following:

• We are using the method request of our Ajax prototype class
• sUrl is a variable containing the url of the external file we are linking to, remember that this URL can’t begin with http because of the same-domain policy of Ajax even if the URL points internally
• In the method we can use 'get' or 'post' off course
• Parameters argument is an object that can contain any number of property/value pairs
• onSuccess defines a function to receive the results of our file, as we can send any kind of content here we are using JSON and I recommend you to use JSON to move great volumes of content, use the json_encode function in PHP to prepare your data.

As you see it's really simple to make an AJAX request using prototype.

As you already now, PHP is a server side scripting language that helps you program web sites so you will need to have a web server running in your Windows XP or Windows Vista computer.  If you need PHP to build complex application you will need a database to store your data, here is when MySQL appears on the stage.

So, in this short procedure we’re going to use Apache as a server, MySQL as our database and, off course, PHP as our programming language.

You have two methods to follow on:

1. Using ApacheFriends.org XAMPP distribution.

This is without a doubt the simplest procedure you can apply in order to get your Windows PC running PHP.  All you have to do is go to this link http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-windows.html, scroll down a bit and download XAMPP to your PC.  After that, just double-click the file and continue with the installation wizard steps.

This procedure will automatically install, Apache, MySQL and PHP (and some other stuffs) and you have plenty instructions to follow on at that site.

2. Using the manual step by step procedure.

This is my favorite procedure (I’m a developer do you remember?) because I have plenty control over every program.  Ok, let’s go…

First you need to download the files:

- Apache is at: http://httpd.apache.org/ - I recommend you to install 2.2.X version because as they say: “…represents the best available version of Apache HTTP Server”

- MySQL is at: http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/ - Click on “take me to the community downloads!” and download the last stable version for windows.  MySQL 5.1 at time of writing this.

- PHP is at: http://www.php.net/downloads.php - Go there and download PHP last available version.

Now we’re going to install each application as they were independent applications, later we will join them to work together.

2.1 Installing Apache

Installing apache is as easy as follow the installation wizard, the issue here is to know what to fill in every textbox in the fourth step.  So, doble-click the first wizard steps, I recommend you to take some time to read every screen, until you reach the fourth screen where you will type:

Installing Apache - Step 4

I'm adding the full wizard steps in this gallery:

[View with PicLens]

2.2 Installing MySQL

[View with PicLens]

2.3 Installing PHP

Finally, to add PHP to your current Apache installation just download and unzip the file and copy the whole folder to your C drive and rename it php (c:\php).  Then add the following lines to the end of your httpd.conf file:

# Loading PHP 5 Module
LoadModule php5_module C:/php/php5apache2_2.dll
AddType application/x-httpd-php .php
PHPINIDir c:/php

You can get this configuration file from: Start - All programs - Apache HTTP Server 2.2 - Configure Apache Server - Edit the Apache httpd.conf...

That's it.  Easy.  Right?

Clickbank guys have given us a useful clickbank script function for PHP to help us deal with this problem.  Firstly let me show you the function and later we will talk a little more about it.

Ok... the function:

This is a ready to call function to validate a buyer before grant access to our Clickbank product.

As this must be a black box for us we just need to update our key ($key='YOUR SECRET KEY') with the one defined in our Clickbank account and we're ready.

You need to add the function and the following code at the top of your Clickbank dowload page:

This option will prevent real buyers to return to our download page for downloading their product again, so you can add them to a buyer’s database if you want to give them access for downloading the product more than once.

If you have any question do not hesitate to write a comment.

The procedure is very simple.

First you need to create your paypal form in a way that it returns to a script on your site.  For example you could create a file named paypal-validator.php on your root site and create your paypal form this way:

You can build this form by hand or using the paypal wizard but the important field here is:

You will specify paypal that you want to return the client no directly to your download page but to your paypal php validator script.

Paypal validator file must contain the following code:

Feel free to copy and paste this code and begin testing, if you have any question do not hesitate to leave a comment.

Joomla 1.5

- Open the database using phpMyAdmin and go to the table, jos_users . (replace jos_ with your own table prefix if this is different than the default).

- Select the record for the administrator account - by default this is user 62 (admin).

- Copy and paste the MD5 # below to the password field and save the changes: 21232f297a57a5a743894a0e4a801fc3

- Logon to the back end http://yoursitedomain.com/administrator  using the username admin and the password admin in the login box.

- Select the user you have just logged in with using this password and username and change the password for the user to something else. This is extremely important otherwise your website might get hacked.

I applied these same steps to a Joomla 1.0 site and works fine for me, but you need to consider that there could be many situations related with the encryption procedure that could make your change to fail in Joomla 1.0 just because the encryption algorithm is not corresponding with the 'admin' word.

This task for Joomla! 1.5 could be easily confirmed by the following command:

Just in case the above command doesn't work then the issue could be a little more complicated and need to check if the current active menu item is the default one.  I saw this issue in some 1.5 early versions.

What we are doing here is really simple.  We're displaying a PHP date, off course, with a customized format 'F j, Y' this will print something like 'July 25, 2008'.  The tricky part comes with the formula for calculating the date, if you missed it this is the formula:

time() is current time, - 3 are the days in the past we need our date, but why days? Because (60 * 60 * 24). If you think a bit, this is the formula for calculating how many seconds a day has: 60 seconds multiplied by 60 minutes multiplied by 24 hours a day equals 86,400 seconds. You got it? Very easy, right?

So what portion of the formula are you going to change to display a date 5 days in the past? Right, replace -3 by - 5.

But if you need a date in the future? Right, don't subtract just add, replace - 5 by + 5. That's it.