Joomla Help Blog

Find Joomla Version

2011-10-30T08:29:00.003-07:00

If you are unsure of the version of Joomla you are running, there is a very simple way to find out.

In Joomla 1.6, simply go to Site > System Information.

In Joomla 1.5, go to Help > System Information.

Needless to say, if you do not see the Site > System Information tab, that means you are not running 1.6 to begin with. Keep in mind, knowing the exact Joomla version is very important when you need help, especially regarding Joomla extensions.

Joomla Find Article URL

2011-10-30T08:20:00.000-07:00

If you have an article that you do not want to be part of any menu, but you would like to be able to link to it, then you might be unsure how to link to the article as you will not be able to access it and view it from the frontpage of your site.

All you have to do it go to your backend and find ID number of the article from the article manager. The link for the page will be:

index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=xx

where you should replace xx with the article ID. I suggest you link to these pages even if you are using SEF (search engine friendly) URLs, because if you decide to change the SEF URL in the future, than any links made to it will become invalid.

Dash (-) before Title on Each Joomla Page

2011-05-22T23:38:00.000-07:00

Dash (-) is used in Joomla page titles to separate the Site Name and the Page Name. For example: "Our Company Site - About Us." If you happen to see pages as " - About Us", then this implies two things. One is that you have chosen to show the Site Name in the title on each page and that is why Joomla is putting the dash in the title; to separate the site and page name. Second, it implies that your site name was left blank. As a result you have the dash separating a blank space and the page name. Simply check your settings and give your site a name!

404 Error After Deleting Main Menu

2011-05-22T23:30:00.000-07:00

If you accidentally (or knowingly) deleted your Joomla site's main menu and tried making a new homepage link with separator, this may not function correctly and you may end up getting a 404 error. To ensure that this doesn't happen, all you need to make sure is that "separator" is not chosen as the menu type, but rather choose "internal link." So, when you go to Articles/Frontpage, just make sure you don't choose "Separator and Alias."

Long Refresh in Joomla When Making Changes

2011-03-20T02:15:00.000-07:00

If you make changes from the backend and end up waiting sometimes even up to minutes for the page to refresh, the most probable reason is that this is a cache issue.

So how can this be solved? The easiest solution is to do the following:

Cache Settings >in Global Configuration > to No and disable a plugin called ( System - Cache)

This will most probably solve the problem. But if not, also check with your web space provider to see if it could be something caused by them.

Will I Lose My Work If I Re-Install?

2011-02-28T00:23:00.000-08:00

At times you might have problems with your Joomla, such as certain functionalities not functioning as they should. When that happens, you might be tempted to simply re-install Joomla.

The wonderful Joomla logo!

If that is the case, keep in mind that while this may fix the problems you encounter concerning the functionalities, this will also result in you losing any work you have done upto that point. Thus, instead of re-installing, give the below a try:

- Change your template to the default template to see if this changes anything. Many problems encountered are the result of faults in templates.

- Upload the Joomla files to your site to write over the old files. Sometimes there are corrupted files and everything could be fixed if you can replace that corrupted file with an uncorrupted version. But since you won't be able to determine which is the corrupted file (well, at least not the common user), you'll need to overwrite all of the files. However, do not FTP the installation folder. This will only affect the original Joomla files and will not touch any files that came with other packages (e.g. templates installed after installation will not disappear).

The fastest way to carry out the action presented above is to get your Joomla setup zip, take out the installation folder from it, upload the zip to your site and then extract the folder. This can all be done from cPanel, which I'm sure almost everyone has some familiarity with by now.

How to Find Out What Template is Used on a Site

2011-02-23T22:51:00.000-08:00

Sometimes you see a site and you're sure it's using Joomla.You really like the template being used and would like to know what the name of the template is, but the site contains no information on this.

One very simple trick you can try then is to view the source code of the site. This should be available from your browser's View menu. Once you view the source code, try to find which directory the template.css file is linked from. The name of the folder will generally give you the name of the template. If the name of the folder is not enough right away for you to get the whole name, make a google search for the folder name and I'm sure some information will be available on another site.

Hiding Information in an Article

2010-06-05T01:17:00.000-07:00

At times, you might not want to show some automatic information which is available when viewing an article. For example, you might not want to show the author or the creation date of the article.

Basically, there are three places where such information's settings exist. These are article settings, menu settings and the global configuration. What you need to keep in mind is that the article settings override the menu setttings and that the menu settings override the global settings.

Th changes are made in Parameters > Advanced. Once you go there you will see many options. Let us take the one called Author Name is a choice. You can see that you have Use Global, Show and Hide as the three options. The choice you will have within settings of the article at hand, will determine whether the author of the article will be shown or not. But this will only affect this article. Thus, from where you want to make the changes depends on what you wish to do. If you just want to hide certain information from a few articles or if each article will have a different info hidden, then you should make the changes within the articles' parameters.

If you wish for the global settings to be used, you need to choose

The Article is Currently Being Edited by Another Editor

2010-06-02T04:15:00.000-07:00

If you have more than one editor at your Joomla site, you need to keep in mind that only one editor can edit an article at a time. So, once an editor has gone inside an article to make edits, the other editors will not be able to go in that article until the first editor has finished his or her editing.

But what might happen at times is that the editor who went in the article could end up not making any changes and rather than closing the article with the cancel button, he or she might just close the browser or browse away from the backend. This will result in the article being locked.

If this is the case, you simply need to go to Tools > Global Checkin. This will get rid of the locked status of any article which might have ended up staying as locked.

More Than One Joomla Template On One Site?

2010-05-30T13:13:00.000-07:00

A functionality I personally never needed, but one which might be quite useful for others is the ability to have more than one template on a single site. For example, you might want the frontpage to have one template and the rest of the site to use a completely different template.

To do this, needless to say, the first thing you need to ensure is that you all the templates you wish to use already installed. Then, go to Extensions > Template Manager. As you know, there you will have your default template already selected and indicated with a star under the default column. What you need to do is to click on any other template you wish to use within the site and look over to where it says Menu Assignment. Change where is says None to Select from List and simply select where you wish to have this other template to be used. Thus, anything selected will use this template, while anything not selected will have the default template.

Home to Remove the Welcome to Frontpage Title

2010-05-30T12:17:00.000-07:00

This is something fairly simple. But for many new users, it is difficult to figure out from where exactly to get rid of the "Welcome to Frontpage" title after a fresh Joomla installation.

From the backend, fo the Menus - Main Menu. Click on the Home link to edit it. Go on the right of the page where you have Parameters (System). There you should see Page Title. Simply delete what's there or replace it with the text you want to have. If you delete the text, you will see Home as the title since that's the name of the link in the menu. Furthermore, see below that you also have the option to hide the page title. For that, simply select No next to Show Page Title.

How to See the Module Positions

2010-05-30T04:38:00.000-07:00

As you know, each theme can have different module positions. In fact, some of them can be quite different from what the default theme's positions are. When that is the case, you might not be able to show a certain module in where you think it needs to show up.

For example, usually there is an area called top, just at the top of your theme. Similarly, you might have a left and a right area. The problem is, this does not necessarily mean that the person who made the theme called the top area of the theme, "top." He could have just as easily called it "user4" or something else. Thus, you need to see the names of the module positions to be able to place a module in the right place.

To do this, simple add index.php?tp=1 to the end of your site's main address when viewing your site. Easy as that, you will be able to see all your site with the module position names in place.

Multiple Images Next to Each Other?

2010-05-30T04:31:00.000-07:00

If you're new to Joomla or have difficulty in using its editor, dealing with the images might be problematic. One question I've seen raised is when site owners would like to have a few images next to each other one the same line. When they do this in the editor, things look fine, but when they view the article after publishing it, the images are centered and one below the other.

To solve this, all you need to do is left align each of the images using the image icon in the editor. This way, the images will appear on the same line, given that they do actually fit the width of the line. Otherwise, you might need to just resize the images (by simply going to its properties or dragging the size from the bottom right of the image).

RSS Feed on Frontpage of Site?

2010-05-30T04:02:00.000-07:00

Some Joomla users were wondering if there's a way to show RSS feeds right in the center of your frontpage, rather than in the modules and without the need of any extensions to be installed. Well, there is, and it's much simpler than one thinks.

In your backend, you should go to Menus and find your main menu. Once in there, click on Home. Once in, you will see on top that you have the option to Change Type. The type you want to switch to is News Feeds.

Once you select that, you will be presented with three choices: Category List Layout, Category Layout and Single Feed Layout. The choice here is totally up to you. But do remember that to be able to select a feed, you will need to first create your feeds and categories under Components > News Feeds.

Can you post articles from the frontpage?

2010-05-30T03:50:00.000-07:00

The answers is, yes. But to be able to do so, you will need to have the login module and the submit article link show in your template. The login should automatically be there when you install Joomla, but you might have removed it at one point. If so, look under Extensions > Module Manager to locate the related module. Its name is mod_login. This module is necessary because unless you are logged in from the frontpage of your site, you will not be able to publish and article.

You should have your settings in such a way that once logged in, user levels for which you have provided the option should see a user menu. Under this user menu, you will need to have the Submit Article link. If for some reason you don't have this, don't worry. You can just create a new one. In your administration backend, go to Menus. From there, go to the User Menu. Then click on the green New button to create a new menu item. From there, select Articles > Article > Article Submission Layout. The ability to submit articles will only work for user levels Author and above. So even if you were to make the related link public, only you and people you have designated as authors and above will be able to make use of it.