Wow I haven't written here in a long time

Thursday, 18 March 2010 03:18

Seems that time is going faster and faster.

I have added many new things to this site since last I wrote.  I had been working far too much during that time.  Nowadays I am working more on converting my old Joomla templates to Joomla 1.5 and updating my Date and Time module.

I have recently spent a week or two updating it and adding some new features.  Getting used to working in Eclipse with my SVN.  Things aren't quite finished yet though but I think people are going to like it.  Then I will convert some more templates to Joomla 1.5 and eventually to Joomla 1.6 whenever it comes out.  Things seem to be changing a lot still in it so I am going to hold off on Joomla 1.6 for now.

I just finished adding a Suggest feature to this site that's using a component I found on the Joomla extensions site.  So now people can request me to do things and I will consider doing them when I have time.  If they are good ideas, hopefully people will vote on them and if they want it done sooner than later they can even bribe me a little bit.  It is a new extension from citizenjosh.com and Josh has done a great job except for a couple things I had to touch up in order for it to run on my servers.  Mostly I just removed the php notices and the shorthand echos but I also had to fix the controller in order for it to even run at all.  Chances are he is going to fix them up very soon anyway and release newer versions of it or I would publish it for download. (I actually ended up sending him all the changes I made anyway)

I guess that's about all I can think of for now to write in here.

Summer is over!

Monday, 22 September 2008 03:50

Yes, sadly the summer is over.  Today is the first day of Fall.  Fall isn't so bad.  It is the cold winter I don't like much.

I have been so busy and haven't even been home most of the summer that I have not, like usual, gotten what I want done.  I have continued working on things in order to finish converting all my templates to Joomla 1.5 but it is not such a quick process.  Especially when I am never around.

Also I want to find a way for the FeedBonder plugin to shorten all URL's and not just those created by Joomla feeds but I am no regex expert.  I will have to search for something that works because everything I have tried just doesn't seem to do the trick.

I have almost finished converting a couple of the free Joomla templates I have for download on this site - Vivacious and Comproleen to Joomla 1.5 but they still require a slight bit of work and testing which I haven't gotten to yet.  I want to finish them up this week some time and allow people to download them.

So my appologies to anyone who was looking forward to me releasing anything, if anyone even ever does.  I have no clue.  I intend to get them done soon.  I am shifting more of my attention to this site again and creating some more designs for people to download.

Hopefully there will be some new templates and extensions available in the near future here because that will not only be good for people who come looking for new and refreshing designs, it will be good for the extra cash that traffic brings.  And of course the freedom that cash brings.

Joomla Templates Will Be Converted to Joomla 1.5

Tuesday, 08 April 2008 11:49

Well I have finally converted the Joomla template I use on my site and my entire Joomla template site to Joomla 1.5 and I have some goodies in store.

Soon I will be releasing a "file download" plugin which will work for Joomla 1.5 in Native mode as well as Joomla 1.0 series. This plugin will allow visitors to download files which would normally not download by clicking them. It does this by sending the file in small chunks. This would include any file, such as image files, video files, and audio files, that when you click them they usually start to open right in your browser instead of prompting you to download them. Normally when you link to an image file it will show the user that file because apache knows it is a file which can be parsed a certain way by the browser. With this plugin you will be able to include files for download with a link or button so that the user can simply click the file and be prompted to download it.

Another thing coming soon is a Joomla templates store with some high quality Joomla templates for Joomla 1.5 series created by me. They will be offered for a small fee due to the time it takes to make them and this will also allow me to support them properly. Sounds fair doesn't it? I think so. Many people have asked me for support and I simply cannot answer all of their questions. This is about to change. But for now I have just published the Professional Templates link again which will show you a bunch of other professionally created Joomla templates of other peoples.

I have installed a comment system so people can comment directly under articles and whatnot. I was going to remove it because it may slow page load times but I have left it in for now. It seems pretty sweet! I removed the hidden copyright because I fear it will result in some sort of search engine penalty which I really don't want. It had a hidden h4 tag so the author could put hidden links to their site at my expense.

I have installed a forum so that it is easier for people to get support and to post comments and bug reports, etc. I have decided to go with Fireboard for now because of its power and simplicity. I almost went with PHPBB with the RokBridge but I would prefer something that displays through Joomla and not through a Wrapper, and I haven't figured out how to make PHPBB do that yet. Besides Fireboard is much simpler to set up and has everything I could want.

And finally, I intend to update all my templates and extensions eventually so that they work in Joomla 1.5 Native mode. This will be a fairly large project because I also intend to fix some various bugs that have been mentioned to me over time. My apologies to anyone who has reported bugs and not received any fixes, etc. I am still working on things when I have time. I just tend to skip over emails if I have too many and am in a hurry.

I have begun to dedicate more time again to this Joomla website and to offering free Joomla templates as well as some higher quality Joomla templates. So you should bookmark this page and come back soon to see some nice changes and some great, new Joomla templates and Joomla extensions =)

Ryan

Adsense and Image Placement

Monday, 19 February 2007 08:34

Lately I have been seeing an increasing number of sites using AdSense and placing misleading images next to the ads. This is against their policies!

On the AdSense blog last December there was a post about this that I read and since then I have seen many, many sites using these and similar techniques that they must have learned somewhere to try and increase their click-through ratio.

"We ask that publishers not line up images and ads in a way that suggests a relationship between the images and the ads." - Ad and image placement: a policy clarification

I fear this will eventually get some peoples AdSense accounts closed so I am just posting the above link so you can check and see if your site is in danger.