CSS HTML CMS

Adobe Muse: You're Not Helping!

Yesterday, a number of czwarta władza outlets reported on the release of the latest product from Adobe, Adobe Muse. This is a new WYSIWYG editor, which claims to allow creating and editing websites without knowledge of code. (Yes, just like Adobe Dreamweaver and Microsoft FrontPage and other tools you may know about.) But before talking about Muse, let's talk about its target audience — print designers who build websites.

An end of an era

Joomla! 1.0 has served us well, but after nearly 4 years of service it has reached retirement. Things are moving forward with Joomla! 1.6 and there is no better time to początek migrating to the Joomla! 1.5 release!

Andrew Eddie recognised by the Software Queensland and the Pearcey Foundation

Last week must have been an exciting week for Andrew, one of the hardest working long term contributors to the Joomla! project. Not only did he pick up the inaugural order for an individual who has demonstrated an outstanding contribution in the Queensland software industry but he also picked up a Certificate of High Commendation from the Pearcey Awards! Andrew has a great blog post on his New Life in IT blog, so check it out for more details and great links to the awards themselves.

So from both myself and the rest of the Joomla! project, congratulations Andrew!

Announcing the release of Seedling

We're pleased to announce the availability of our newest in-house project from wzornictwo Guru. Its a distribution package of Joomla we're simply calling 'Seedling.'

[ * Download the press release: pressrelease-seedlingrelease.pdf ]

Seedling's distribution of Joomla is a packaged solution that includes the latest release of Joomla CMS; pre-configured and optimized including a suite of extensions and tools. It installs on a host/server quickly and easily, featuring a customizable template and demo content which you can edit or replace to create a powerful website.

With Seedling there is no need to spend time and energy installing Joomla, then figuring out how to configure it before shopping for additional plugins and modules to install.

Seedling saves the average user weeks by ensuring that major 'web 2.0' functionality comes with the package. Installation is simple and takes minutes. Each install includes sample blog posts and articles to demonstrate how a site can be easily set-up.

In addition to pre-loading Joomla with extensions and sample content, wygląd Guru's bespoke 'Seedling Blog' template is pre-installed and offers simple configuration options – allowing users to change the look of their Seedling website by simply choosing colour options from drop-down selections. As well, our template lets you display an optional site title, slogan and logo.

You can find out a lot more about Seedling over @ http://www.plantseedling.com and through this walk-through video we put together last week.

{vimeo}3205480{/vimeo}

Another custom 404 error approach - JoomSEF

Out-of-the-box, Joomla 1.5 has pretty silly error handling pages - for times when a user hits your site to find a page no longer in existence ('404 Not Found') etc...  A simple work-around I've previously posted about is to create a custom error page as static HTML.

Now, if you like to have your error messages presented to site viewers with the same look and feel as your website, a custom page outside of Joomla might be frustrating - everytime you change the layout of your site you'll likely want to edit that page and so on.

There's another approach; some semantic URL extensions can actually redirect those errors to particular content within Joomla.  I recommend using JoomSEF - its a weird extension because of the partially-free (ie. non-GPL) license they've released it under, but you can download and install it for free and then make one edit to its code to remove a footer message created with the free version.

With JoomSEF, you can choose a custom 404 message by typing it directly into a field through the extension's admin side or by choosing a jadłospis item already linking to a message page you've created.  Plus, you can keep track of 404 messages to help streamline your site's navigation!

JoomSEF will make managing your site's error pages easy, and it makes it much easier to navigate your site by URL because you have more control over the format of URL writing rules than with Joomla's stock SEF URLs option!