Between 30-August-2013 and 01-September-2013, Complete, Concrete, Concise had its web hosting suspended with a demand that the WordPress installation be deleted.

Not wanting to delete my installation and then reinstall (and hopefully restore all data correctly), I investigated.

Symptoms

Most likely, your web hosting provider will inform you that your account has been suspended because your WordPress (or other PHP based application) is generating a lot of core dumps and playing havoc with their server. In my case, I was asked to delete my WordPress installation.

Alternately, you may notice there are a lot of core.xxxx (xxxx being a four digit number) files in your WordPress directory.

The Cause

When your error_log file gets to be 2,147,483,647 bytes long, PHP will start crashing and generating core dumps. This is because PHP cannot handle files larger than 2GB.

error_log is where PHP stores messages about any errors it encounters.

The most common cause of errors is a corrupt MySQL database file.

The Fix

1. Delete the file error_log.
2. rename index.php to something else (xxx_index.php is good)
3. inform your hosting provider that:
   1. you suspect the problem was PHP’s inability to handle and error_log larger than 2GB and you have deleted it
   2. you have deactivated your WordPress account by renaming index.php
   3. you would like access to your account restored so you can run MySQL applications to check and repair your database if necessary
4. Fix the database (if it is corrupted). Instructions for checking and repairing a database can be found here.
5. restore the name of the file in step (2) back to index.php
6. go to your website and browse a few pages.
7. verify that core.xxxx files are not being generated. If they are being generated, than you probably have some other problem.
8. verify that the file error_log is not being generated. If it is being generated, it is a good idea to look at it and see what errors are occurring. Depending on how quickly error_log is growing, it might be a good idea to suspend your site again by renaming index.php

The post WordPress Generating Core Dumps appeared first on Complete, Concrete, Concise.

This tutorial is for people using a web host that uses the cPanel interface (version 11.34.1).

Instructions may be the same for other versions or interfaces, but not guarantee is made.

When we set up a website, we expect it to keep working. Maybe we have to apply periodic updates and patches, but, in general, we expect it to keep working.

Unfortunately, after a while, you may find your website, powered by Joomla!, WordPress, Drupal or some other CMS, stops working correctly.

Common symptoms include:

• Some or all of the comments disappear
• Some or all of the content disappears
• You get database connection errors
• Your layout / template starts looking a bit funny
• Pages you know exist start generating HTTP 404 Not Found errors
• URLs start looking funny

A common cause of these problems is a corrupted MySQL database.

Checking if the Database is Corrupted

1) Log into your web hosting control panel. This is not your website’s admin panel. For this tutorial, I am assuming it is cPanel. It might look something like this (this is how mine looks):

2) Click on MySQL® Databases:

3) Locate the section titled Modify Databases. On the line titled Check DB: select the database to check from the dropdown box. Click the button Check DB (located on the right side):

4) Examine the report generated. There should be no errors. If there are errors, then your database is corrupted and needs to be repaired.

This is an example of a corrupted WordPress database:

This is an example of a corrupted Joomla! database:

Repairing the Database

1) Locate the section titled Modify Databases. On the line titled Repair DB: select the database to repair from the dropdown box. Click the button Repair DB (located on the right side):

This will begin a repair operation on the database.

After the operation has completed, check the database again. If there is still a problem, then run Repair DB again. I have, sometimes had to run it twice.

Restoring the Database from a Backup

1) Click on Backups (located on your cPanel home page):

2) Locate the section called Restore a MySQL Database and click on Browse… and select the backup database from your computer. Click on Upload to upload the database.

During this process, not much may seem to be happening.

The backup database has to be uploaded from your system to your service provider.

Once it is uploaded to the service provider, the existing database is rebuilt from the uploaded one.

The whole process looks something like this:

What you see happening is a whole bunch of MySQL transactions that delete the contents of the old database and replace it with the contents of the backup database.

If you are interested in database development, this is a good instructional example of some MySQL commands in action.

The post When Your Website Stops Working Properly, it may be a Corrupt Database appeared first on Complete, Concrete, Concise.

This installation procedure is for Movable Type XMLRPC for Joomla! 1.7.1 under Joomla! 2.5.0. It is likely the same for other version combinations, but there is no guarantee.

This installation procedure is NOT compatible with Joomla! 1.5.x. Instructions for installing the Movable Type API for Joomla! 1.5.x can be found here.

Installing the Movable Type API allows frontend clients (such as Windows Live Writer) to manage Joomla! articles via a blog interface. The Movable Type API is widely supported.

Downloading the Plugin

1a) Download the plugin from here. The download link is the package icon – you will need to scroll about halfway down the page:

1b) Accept the GNU license terms to begin the download:

1c) Save the file since you will need to upload the package to your Joomla! install (remember where you saved it):

Installing the Plugin

2) Log into the Joomla! backend:

3) Select Extension Manager from the Extensions menu:

4) Install the movable type module downloaded in step 1:

1. click on Browse, select the file you downloaded in step 1,
2. click on Upload & Install.

5) Confirm the file was correctly installed:

Enabling the Movable Type API

6) Select Plugin Manager from the Extensions menu:

7a) Click on the ID header to sort the extensions in descending order from when they were installed (normally, you will have to click twice – the first time sorts in ascending order). You’ll know when you got it right because the ID numbers will be big (over 10000):

7b) Observe that the top 2 entries are the extensions installed from step 4:

1. System – RSD
2. XMLRPC – Joomla

7c) Click on the red disabled icon for both System – RSD and XMLRPC – Joomla:

7d) Confirm that the icons have changed to green enabled icons:

8a) Verify that XMLRPC is functioning by selecting XMLRPC from the Components menu:

8b) Observe that both joomla and Enabled are in green:

8c) Click on Options

8d) Click on Save & Close:

Information You Need To Provide Client Applications

When connecting a client application (e.g. Windows Live Writer) to your Joomla! site, you will need to provide the following information:

1. Your main site address – what people type to get to your website. Applications vary, some require the full address starting with http://, others will accept just the site name without the http://.
2. The address for the API server.

• For most people using Joomla! to power their website, this is:

  [your site]/index.php/component/xmlrpc/

  e.g. http://www.example.com/index.php/component/xmlrpc/

  Clients differ, some will require you to enter the full address and path, others will work fine with just /index.php/component/xmlrpc/. Modern clients, like Windows Live Writer 11 and Scribefire Next are able to discover the address of your API server, so you would probably never need to enter this.

• For people using Joomla! on only part of their website, you need to enter (1) the website address, (2) the path to the Joomla! install, (3) the path to the API server:

  [your site][your Joomla! path]/index.php/component/xmlrpc/

  e.g. http://www.example.com/joomla/index.php/component/xmlrpc/

  Clients, like Windows Live Writer 11 and ScribeFire Next will not be able to discover the address of your API Server in this case (unless you had entered your site address and Joomla! path in step 1).

4. The user name you use to log into the Joomla! backend.
5. The password you use to log into the Joomla! backend.

Free Clients Supporting the Movable Type API

This is by no means an exhaustive list and only includes those I have been able to try out in Windows. Windows Live Writer used to be my favorite (and it is still probably the best blogging client for most people), but some issues with it (and other blogging clients) made me switch to w.bloggar.

Windows Live Writer (for Windows Vista and Windows 7)
Post2Blog (at the time I wrote this, it was sixth from the bottom of the page)
Zoundry Raven
Scribefire Next (a Firefox plugin)
BlogDesk
w.bloggar

The post Joomla! 2.5 – Installing a Movable Type API Plugin (XMLRPC) appeared first on Complete, Concrete, Concise.

This tutorial shows you how to display Google Adsense ads on your Joomla! 2.5 website without installing an extension.

Requires you have a Google Adsense account. Should work for other ad providers that provide you with a code snippet for ads on your site.

It is less convoluted than it was for Joomla! 1.6 and Joomla! 1.7

Some images may be clicked for larger sizes.

It is very easy to place Google Adsense ads on your Joomla! site without installing an extension.

Yet, the last time I looked, there were at least 30 different Joomla! extensions to help you display Google Adsense ads on your site.

Embedding ads directly within your article requires a plug-in and is not covered by this tutorial.

Determine Ad Placement

You need to find a place for the ads on your site.

Ads are typically placed at the:

• top of the page
• bottom of the page
• side of the page

See this article on how to enable Joomla 2.5 to display module positions.

To reveal the module positions available in your Joomla! template, append

?tp=1

to the end of your URL. As shown below, the various module positions available on this site are revealed:

You can choose to place ads in a currently empty module position, for example: position-6, position-8, position-3, position-0, position-12, position-2 , position-9, position-10, position-11 or position-14 in the case of this template. Or you can place them in already occupied module positions, for example, position-5.

Where you place the ad will determine the type of ad you place. For instance, if you choose to place an ad on the left position, then a narrow and tall ad makes more sense than a short, wide ad.

Remember the name of the module position where you want to place your ad.

Disabling the HTML Editor

Joomla! tries very hard to prevent users from entering malicious code. This also means it prevents adding legitimate code. To get around this we need to disable the HTML editor.

1) Select Global Configuration from the Site menu item:

2) Select Editor – None for the Default Editor:

3) Click on Save & Close to save the changes:

Adding Adsense

1) Select Module Manager from the Extensions menu item.

2) Click on New to create a new module.

3) Click on Custom HTML:

4) Fill in the module information.

Details

• Title: enter a title for this module. If you want to display the title, something like Sponsored by is a good choice.
• Show Title: select Yes to display the title, No to not display the title. NOTE: Adsense has strict rules about what you can and cannot display as a title. Usually, it is best to set it to No.
• Position:·from the dropdown list, select the name of the module position you decided on earlier when determining your ad placement at the top of this article
• Status: set to Published to show / display the module.
• Access: ensure Public is selected.
• Ordering: if there are other modules occupying your selected position, you can choose the ordering of the modules.
• Start Publishing: leave empty.
• Finish Publishing: leave blank
• Language: leave as All.
• Note: optional note to display in the module list.

Custom Output

This is where you paste the HTML code that Google Adsense gives you.

Menu Assignment

Ensure On all pages is selected. This will place the ad module on all pages of your Joomla! site.

If you want some pages to be ad free, then select one of the other Module Assignment options (No pages, Only on the pages selected, or On all pages except those selected) and then select only those pages were you want the ads to appear or not appear.

5) Click on Save & Close

6) Observe that the module has been correctly installed. To locate the newly created module, I find it easiest to click on the ID column and sort the column in descending order (the newly created module will have the largest module number):

7) Check that the ads show up and are correctly positioned on your site (in this case, I created a single Adsense module in position-6 (the ad unit is wider than the position, so it is clipped):

The post Adding Adsense to Your Joomla! 2.5 Site appeared first on Complete, Concrete, Concise.

These instructions are the same as for Joomla! 1.6 and Joomla! 1.7.

Some images may be clicked for full size versions.

(1) Login to the Joomla! backend.

(2) Select Template Manager from the Extensions menu:

(3) Click on the Options icon:

(4) Click on the Enabled button of the Preview Module Positions entry.Then click on Save or Save & Close to save the change.

(5) Observe that module positions are now visible on your Joomla! pages when you append ?tp=1 to the end of your URL:

When you are done examining module positions, remember to set Preview Module Positions to Disabled.

The post How to View Module Positions in Joomla! 2.5 appeared first on Complete, Concrete, Concise.

This tutorial describes how to install Joomla! version 2.5.0 under XAMPP version 1.7.3 on Windows 7.

The procedure should be the same or similar for other version combinations, but no guarantee is made.

Assumes you have already

• installed XAMPP. (Installation instructions can be found here.)
• created a MySQL database. (Creation instructions can be found here.)

Some images may be clicked on images for full size versions.

Downloading Joomla!

1) Download the full Joomla install from here Click on the zip link.

2) Click on Save as.

3) Choose a directory in which to save the file and click on Save. Remember where you saved the file.

4) After the download has completed, you can choose Open to open the downloaded file with the default application or Open folder to open the folder where the file was downloaded (which is what the next step assumes):

Extracting Joomla!

5) Go to the directory where the file was downloaded and open it by double-clicking on it:

6) Click on Extract all files:

7) Extract the Joomla! files to a subfolder of htdocs in your XAMPP folder. By default, XAMPP would be installed to your C:\ drive, so you would enter C:\xampp\htdocs\joomla as the directory to extract to. In my case, I extracted them into a folder called joomla250. Click on Extract to extract the files.

Setting up Joomla!

8) Launch your browser and type http://localhost/joomla into the address bar. What follows http://localhost/ is the directory you installed Joomla! into (in my case, joomla250).

9) Select your preferred language, then click on Next. NOTE: I have only ever tried installing it in English.

10) Confirm you meet the minimum installation requirements, then click Next. It is normal for Display errors to be set to On. NOTE: If having Display errors set to On is really bothering you, you can turn it off by following these directions.

11) Read the GNU license and, if you agree with it, click Next.

12) Fill in the database configuration information:

• Database Type: Mysqli (default setting) NOTE: Mysqli is the improved MySQL interface available for use with MySQL 5.0 or higher. You can still use the Mysql interface if you like.
• Host Name: localhost (default setting)
• Username: if you created a MySql User, enter the name here. Otherwise, use root.
• Password: this is the password associated with the user name entered above. If you used root as your username, then leave the password blank (the default XAMPP install does not assign a password to root).
• Database Name: this is the name of the database you created. Database creation instructions are here.
• Table Prefix: a unique prefix for accessing the table. Using the default (or suggested prefix) is fine.

13) Ensure FTP is set to No, then click Next.

14) Enter a site name (for example, Complete, Concrete, Concise or whatever name you want this site to have).

Enter Your Email address. Joomla! will send notifications to this email address.

Enter an Admin Username. This is the username you will use to log into the Joomla! backend. By default, it is admin (and I leave it as admin). NOTE: if this is a production install, or you are worried about security, then you should choose a better admin name – it should be longer and include letters, numbers and symbols / punctuation. For example, the following admin name worked: -admin.123@sqig.

Enter an Admin Password – this is the password you will use to log into the Joomla! backend.

Confirm the Admin Password.

Choose if you want to install the sample data. I like to install it, since it saves me the trouble of populating the site with sample articles for testing. The sample data is only available in English. NOTE: don’t install the sample data if you are installing the site for “real” use because it is a pain to have to go and clean up all the sample data.

Click on Next.

15) Confirm you have successfully installed. Note that your user name for logging into the Joomla! backend is admin (if you accepted the default name, otherwise it is whatever name you entered into the Admin Username field in Step (14)).

Cleaning Up

As a security precaution, Joomla! requires you to remove the installation directory before the site becomes functional. In Joomla! 2.5, this can be done from the final installation screen.

16) Click on the Remove installation folder to remove the installation folder and complete the installation.

The post Installing Joomla! 2.5 Under XAMPP appeared first on Complete, Concrete, Concise.

This tutorial is for XAMPP 1.7.4 and XAMPP 1.7.7.

It addresses the problem of many errors being generated by popular PHP applications (notably Joomla!) that you would expect to work, but, instead, generate lots of errors.

If you have installed XAMPP 1.7.4 or XAMPP 1.7.7, you may have noticed that some applications (notably Joomla 1.5.x, 1.6.x, and 1.7.x) generate lots of errors along the lines of:

Strict Standards: Accessing static property JCache::$_handler as non static in C:\xampp\htdocs\joomla\libraries\joomla\cache\cache.php on line 420

This happens because these versions of XAMPP ship with default PHP settings that cause the PHP interpreter to choke on poor programming practices and deprecated (obsolete) language features. For developers, this is a good thing, but for the general user, it causes a lot of grief.

(1) Go to the php directory under XAMPP. Normally, this would be C:\XAMPP\php, but you may have installed it to a different drive or directory (mine is installed in C:\xampp-1.7.4). Locate the file named php.ini . Open this file using a plain text editor – like notepad. Using a word processor (like Word) will very likely seriously corrupt the file. (I use an application called Notepad++). Note: The icon associated with php.ini will depend on what application is associated with .ini files.

(2) Find the line error_reporting = E_ALL | E_STRICT . In the XAMPP 1.7.4 and 1.7.7, this is line 516:

(3) Change the E_ALL | E_STRICT to E_ALL & ~E_NOTICE & ~E_DEPRECATED.

(4) Save the file.

(5) Restart the Apache server. The easiest way is to open the XAMPP control panel and click on the Stop button. Then click on Start to restart it. (You could also reboot the computer, but that is not necessary.)

The post XAMPP – Fixing 'Strict Standards' Errors appeared first on Complete, Concrete, Concise.

I don’t do any advertising or marketing of this site, I rely on search engines to provide me with traffic.

I have always used what are termed “SEO friendly URLs” – i.e., my urls look something like http://complete-concrete-concise.com/friendly-url instead of http://complete-concrete-concise.com/article?id=0126334.

Originally, this site used Joomla! 1.5 as the CMS (Content Management System). I used Joomla! because I was familiar with it and use it on some other sites. After posting about a dozen articles, I was not not thrilled with the look of the site, nor the available functionality and I left the site fallow for about a year before deciding to change Joomla! for WordPress.

Since I only had a few articles, it was easy enough to manually copy and paste them into WordPress (mind you, it still took me 2 days to do that – fixing up image links, and updating their look). It is not something I would do with my other sites – I would look for some automated way to transfer articles and comments. To date, I have not seen any plugin for WordPress that will import my articles and comments from Joomla!.

The Joomla! powered site always received a constant trickle of traffic. As soon as I switched over to WordPress, the traffic increased significantly. This was unexpected because I expected a drop in traffic – all the URLs had changed (even if the content hadn’t), so all the pages indexed by search engines were no longer valid – but since my site was barely visible, I wasn’t concerned about breaking the URLs.

Below is a graph of the number of weekly visitors to my site, it starts from my first post and ends four weeks after my changeover. Click for a larger image:

To the left of the red line are the weekly visits when it was powered by Joomla! 1.5. The green shaded area is the period (it might even be one to two months longer) during which I wrote articles for the Joomla! powered version of the site. Starting at the red line are the site visits after switching to WordPress 3.1. The result is startling, on the week of the changeover (at the red line) the site visits are as they’ve always been. The following week it starts shooting up and continues to grow (and still continues growing).

The only difference between the two sites, aside from being Joomla! or WordPress, is that on the Joomla! version, I never allowed comments because I’ve never found a Joomla! comment module I liked. On the WordPress version I have allowed comments since day 1.

What are possible explanations for this sudden jump in traffic?

1. I started writing articles again after switching to WordPress. But … I wrote articles before (see the green shaded area) and never saw any significant jump in site visits.
2. Revamping the site caused search engines to see it as a lot of activity and started indexing it, again. But … the content hadn’t changed and all the old content disappeared – in terms of where it used to be. I should be penalized for breaking those links. Search engines are in the business of delivering indexed pages, if I frustrate their attempts, why should they reward me by sending me more visitors?
3. The new articles I was writing were much more relevant (in terms of search keywords) than the older articles. But … the first newer articles were older Joomla! 1.5 articles updated to reflect Joomla! 1.6, so the content and keywords were pretty much the same.

This isn’t a sufficiently controlled experiment to show that a CMS can affect your ranking in search engines, however, it is interesting and suggestive.

The post Does Your CMS Affect Your Traffic? appeared first on Complete, Concrete, Concise.

This tutorial shows you how to display Google Adsense ads on your Joomla! 1.7.x website without installing an extension.

Requires you have a Google Adsense account. Should work for other ad providers that provide you with a code snippet for ads on your site.

Some images may be clicked for larger sizes.

It is very easy to place Google Adsense ads on your Joomla! site without installing an extension.

Yet, the last time I looked, there were dozens of different Joomla! extensions to help you with Google Adsense ads on your site.

Embedding ads directly within your article requires a plug-in and is not covered by this tutorial.

Determine Ad Placement

You need to find a place for the ads on your site.

Ads are typically placed at the:

• top of the page
• bottom of the page
• side of the page

See this article on how to enable Joomla 1.7 to display module positions.

To reveal the module positions available in your Joomla! template, append

?tp=1

to the end of your URL. As shown below, the various module positions available on this site are revealed:

You can choose to place ads in a currently empty module position, for example: position-6, position-8, position-3, position-0, position-12, position-2 , position-9, position-10, position-11 or position-14 in the case of this template. Or you can place them in already occupied module positions, for example, position-5.

Where you place the ad will determine the type of ad you place. For instance, if you choose to place an ad on the left position, then a narrow and tall ad makes more sense than a short, wide ad.

Remember the name of the module position where you want to place your ad.

Disabling the HTML Editor

Joomla! tries very hard to prevent users from entering malicious code. This also means it prevents adding legitimate code. To get around this we need to disable the HTML editor. A compatibility problem between Joomla! 1.7.0 and IE 8 means you will need to use a different browser to do this. FireFox 6.0 worked for me. Joomla! 1.7.1 does not have this problem.

1) Select Global Configuration from the Site menu item:

2) Select Editor – No Editor for the Default WYSIWYG Editor:

3) Click on Save & Close to save the changes:

4) Click on Article Manager from the Content menu (non-intuitive, I know):

5) Select the Options icon:

6) Click on the Text Filters tab:

7) Scroll down to Super Users and select No Filtering from the dropdown box.

NOTE: this step assumes you are logged in as an administrator and thus have super user privileges.

8) Scroll back up and click on Save & Close:

Adding Adsense

1) Select Module Manager from the Extensions menu item.

2) Click on New to create a new module.

3) Click on Custom HTML:

4) Fill in the module information.

Details

• Title: enter a title for this module. If you want to display the title, something like Sponsored by is a good choice.
• Show Title: select Yes to display the title, No to not display the title.
• Position:·from the dropdown list, select the name of the module position you decided on when determining your ad placement
• Status: set to Published to show / display the module.
• Access: ensure Public is selected.
• Order: if there are other modules occupying your selected position, you can choose the ordering of the modules.
• Start Publishing: leave empty.
• Finish Publishing: leave blank
• Language: leave as All.
• Note: optional note to display in the module list.

Custom Output

This is where you paste the HTML code that Google Adsense gives you.

Module Assignment

Ensure On all pages is selected. This will place the ad module on all pages of your Joomla! site.

If you want some pages to be ad free, then select one of the other Module Assignment options (No pages, Only on the pages selected, or On all pages except those selected) and then select only those pages were you want the ads to appear or not appear.

5) Click on Save & Close

6) Observe that the module has been correctly installed. To locate the newly created module, I find it easiest to click on the ID column and sort the column in descending order (the newly created module will have the largest module number):

7) Check that the ads show up and are correctly positioned on your site (in this case, I created a single Adsense module in position-10:

The post Adding Adsense to Your Joomla! 1.7 Site appeared first on Complete, Concrete, Concise.

Joomla! 1.7 is now obsolete. Joomla! 2.5 is the newest release with long term support.

Instructions for installing Joomla! 2.5 can be found here.

Instructions for viewing module positions in Joomla 2.5 can be found here.

Click on images for full size versions.

(1) Login to the Joomla! backend.

(2) Select Template Manager from the Extensions menu:

(3) Click on the Options icon:

(4) Click on the Enabled button of the Preview Module Positions entry.Then click on Save or Save & Close to save the change.

(5) Observe that module positions are now visible on your Joomla! pages when you append ?tp=1 to the end of your URL:

When you are done examining module positions, remember to set Preview Module Positions to Disabled.

The post How To View Module Positions in Joomla! 1.7 appeared first on Complete, Concrete, Concise.

Joomla! 1.7 is now obsolete. Joomla! 2.5 is the newest release with long term support.

Instructions for installing Joomla! 2.5 can be found here.

Some images may be clicked on images for full size versions.

Downloading Joomla!

1) Download the full Joomla install from here.

2) Choose to either save the ZIP file or to open it over the web. Saving the ZIP file makes it easier to install Joomla again, if you have to.

Extracting Joomla!

3) Open the downloaded file by double-clicking on it. From the File menu, select Extract All. NOTE: this step assumes Windows provides archiving functionality for you. If you have installed a different archiving program, the specific steps for extraction will be different.

4) Extract the Joomla! files to a subfolder of htdocs in your XAMPP folder. By default, XAMPP would be installed to your C:\ drive, so you would enter C:\xampp\htdocs\joomla as the directory to extract to. (In my case, I installed XAMPP to my D:\ drive and specified joomla17 as the folder to extract to). Click on Next to extract the files.

5) Click Finish when the extraction is complete. You can uncheck the Show extracted files checkbox because we don’t need to see the files.

Setting up Joomla!

6) Launch your browser and type http://localhost/joomla into the address bar. What follows http://localhost/ is the directory you installed Joomla! into (in my case, joomla17).

7) Select your preferred language, then click on Next.

8) Confirm you meet the minimum installation requirements, then click Next. It is normal for Display errors to be set to On.

9) Read the GNU license and, if you agree with it, click Next.

10) Fill in the database configuration information:

• Database Type: mysql (default setting)
• Host Name: localhost (default setting)
• Username: if you created a MySql User, enter the name here. Otherwise, use root.
• Password: this is the password associated with the user name entered above. If you used root as your username, then leave the password blank (the default XAMPP install does not assign a password to root).
• Database Name: this is the name of the database you created. Database creation instructions are here.
• Table Prefix: a unique prefix for accessing the table. Using the default (or suggested prefix) is fine.

11) Ensure FTP is set to No, then click Next.

12) Enter a site name (for example, Complete, Concrete, Concise or whatever name you want this site to have).

Enter Your Email address. Joomla! will send notifications to this email address.

Enter an Admin Username. This is the username you will use to log into the Joomla! backend. By default, it is Admin (and I leave it as Admin)

Enter an Admin Password – this is the password you will use to log into the Joomla! backend.

Confirm the Admin Password.

Choose if you want to install the sample data. I like to install it, since it saves me the trouble of populating the site with sample articles. The sample data is only available in English.

Click on Next.

13) Confirm you have successfully installed. Note that your user name for logging into the Joomla! backend is admin (if you accepted the default name, otherwise it is whatever name you entered into the Admin Username field in Step (12)).

Cleaning Up

As a security precaution, Joomla! requires you to remove the installation directory before the site becomes functional. In Joomla! 1.7.x, this can be done from the final installation screen.

14) Click on the Remove installation folder to remove the installation folder and complete the installation.

The post Installing Joomla! 1.7 Under XAMPP appeared first on Complete, Concrete, Concise.

This tutorial shows you how to display Google Adsense ads on your Joomla! 1.6.x website without installing an extension.

Requires you have a Google Adsense account. Should work for other ad providers that provide you with a code snippet for ads on your site.

Some images may be clicked for larger sizes.

It is very easy to place Google Adsense ads on your Joomla! site without installing an extension.

Yet, the last time I looked, there were dozens of different Joomla! extensions to help you with Google Adsense ads on your site.

Embedding ads directly within your article requires a plug-in and is not covered by this tutorial.

Determine Ad Placement

You need to find a place for the ads on your site.

Ads are typically placed at the:

• top of the page
• bottom of the page
• side of the page

See this article on how to enable Joomla 1.6 to display module positions.

To reveal the module positions available in your Joomla! template, append

?tp=1

to the end of your URL. As shown below, the various module positions available on this site are revealed:

You can choose to place ads in a currently empty module position, for example: position-6, position-8, position-3, position-0, position-12, position-2 , position-9, position-10, position-11 or position-14 in the case of this template. Or you can place them in already occupied module positions, for example, position-5.

Where you place the ad will determine the type of ad you place. For instance, if you choose to place an ad on the left position, then a narrow and tall ad makes more sense than a short, wide ad.

Remember the name of the module position where you want to place your ad.

Disabling the HTML Editor

Joomla! tries very hard to prevent users from entering malicious code. This also means it prevents adding legitimate code. To get around this we need to disable the HTML editor.

1) Select Global Configuration from the Site menu item:

2) Select Editor – No Editor for the Default WYSIWYG Editor:

3) Click on Save & Close to save the changes:

4) Select Article Manager from the Content menu:

5) Select the Options icon:

6) Click on the Text Filters tab:

7) Scroll down to Super Users and select No Filtering from the dropdown box.

NOTE: this step assumes you are logged in as an administrator and thus have super user privileges.

8) Scroll back up and click on Save & Close:

Adding Adsense

1) Select Module Manager from the Extensions menu item.

2) Click on New to create a new module.

3) Click on Custom HTML:

4) Fill in the module information.

Details

• Title: enter a title for this module. If you want to display the title, something like Sponsored by is a good choice.
• Show Title: select Yes to display the title, No to not display the title.
• Position:·from the dropdown list, select the name of the module position you decided on when determining your ad placement
• Status: set to Published to show / display the module.
• Access: ensure Public is selected.
• Order: if there are other modules occupying your selected position, you can choose the ordering of the modules.
• Start Publishing: leave empty.
• Finish Publishing: leave blank
• Language: leave as All.
• Note: optional note to display in the module list.

Custom Output

This is where you paste the HTML code that Google Adsense gives you.

Module Assignment

Ensure On all pages is selected. This will place the ad module on all pages of your Joomla! site.

If you want some pages to be ad free, then select one of the other Module Assignment options (No pages, Only on the pages selected, or On all pages except those selected) and then select only those pages were you want the ads to appear or not appear.

5) Click on Save & Close

6) Observe that the module has been correctly installed. To locate the newly created module, I find it easiest to click on the ID column and sort the column in descending order:

7) Check that the ads show up and are correctly positioned on your site (in this case, I created a single Adsense module in position-10:

The post Adding Adsense to Your Joomla! 1.6 Site appeared first on Complete, Concrete, Concise.