BenTasker.co.uk

GitHub Feed is a simple module designed to call the GitHub API so that you can display the latest commits to a repository on your Joomla! site. During development of the module, the ability to optionally display a list of issues was added, as was the ability to display a (very) basic profile for a single user.

This documentation details how to configure mod_BGitHub_feed

When you're managing Joomla sites it's reasonably easy to keep track of updates, especially if you use something like Watchful to help you. When you're running a server and only managing some (or none) of those sites, it becomes a little more difficult (especially on a busy shared hosting server).

It's quite easy to shrug and say 'Not my site, not my problem', but the simple fact is that it is. The second someone manages to compromise one of the sites you host, they're going to try and find a way to run arbitrary code, once they've done that they'll try to run an auto-rooter. If they succeed, it's game over for everyone you host!

The extension that always comes to mind, is the Joomla Content Editor (JCE) as they had a nasty vulnerability involving spoofed GIFs some time back. You'd hope that everyone would have updated by now, but there still seem to be a lot of sites running versions older than 2.1.1!

In this post, we'll be creating a script designed to automatically check every one of the sites you host for a version of JCE older than the latest. Adjusting it to check other extensions is easy, so long as that extension has an update stream.

One thing I often come across is sites that load slowly due to a single module needing to load data from an external source. Caching helps with this considerably, at least until the cache expires.

As a prime example, let's use a Twitter module. To load the feed data, the module needs to access Twitter's API. This happens when the page request is received by the hosting server, and one of two things will then happen. If the cache data exists and is still valid (i.e. hasn't expired) the page will load lightning fast.

Unfortunately, if the cache has expired, or just doesn't exist, the module will need to access Twitter's API. Occasionally the API runs slowly and so the user has to wait for your homepage (or whichever page the module is on) to load. This provides the user with a bad experience, made worse if the module doesn't actually form part of the core content that the user is (im)patiently trying to view.

This documentation details a quick and easy way to resolve this issue.

Joomla! 3.0 was released in September 2012, and I've been planning an upgrade of the site ever since. As should be obvious by the change in layout, the migration is now complete. 

There are quite a few changes that have been made at the same time, some obvious, some far less so...

We've placed a caching NGinx reverse proxy in front of our Joomla site, but haven't yet addressed the issue of the content that we do want to remain dynamic. We might, for example, have a module such as mod_GoogPlusFeed embedded on a number of pages, but with the configuration we've used so far, this won't update until the cached copy has expired.

In this guide, we're going to walk through the few easy steps to ensure the content is regularly updated - without undermining what we were originally trying to achieve - fast response times.

The primary basis of what we're going to do is very similar to Dealing with Slow modules and Caching, so much so that some of the set up is the same

Joomla! now runs a fair proportion of websites, and it's interface obviously appeals to a great many users (over 30 million downloads as of April 2012). For big busy sites, however, the performance isn't always as good as it could be. It's not bad, by any means, but can certainly be improved upon.

To clarify: by busy, I mean numerous visitors all hitting at more or less exactly the same time.

Aimed at developers and owners of large Joomla sites, the tweaks in this documentation will help you improve the performance of your site. However, it should be considered advice, and not a step-by-step instructional, if your site is that busy, the database tweaks in particular may actually hinder performance slightly.

If visitors are reporting long load times, especially during busy periods, then these tweaks may be of use to you.

In previous documentation, we've configured sites to use NGinx as a Reverse Caching Proxy, leading to hugely improved response times on popular content. We've also implemented a custom configuration so that we can refresh the cache periodically, ensuring that dynamic content (such as Twitter modules) updates.

One thing we haven't done as yet, though, is to address the issue of internal hitcounts. We've looked specifically at using NGinx with Joomla, and noted that a side effect would be inaccurate hitcounts displayed within Joomla (which remains true even when using the internal page caching).

In this documentation, we'll be implementing a small script to ensure that hits served from the cache are still recorded within Joomla (or Wordpress, Drupal - whatever you happen to be using), albeit a little while after they happen.

I've written previously about configuring NGinx to act as a reverse proxy for Apache, as well as some of the specific tweaks you need to make if you're serving a Joomla! based site. In this documentation, we're going to look at how to use NGinx's Reverse Proxy caching feature to make your site really fly.

There are a small number of technical hurdles which we'll overcome to ensure that the user is experience is fast and smooth without losing interactivity on those sites which demand it. 

Microdata For Joomla was a Virya Technologies project

The concept was to provide Joomla extensions, template overrides and plugins in order to automatically generate semantic markup within a Joomla site - this was at a time when Joomla didn't generate any.

My involvement was to create the products we'd be selling, including a plugin - Microdata Library - allowing Schema.org to be both manually specified, and automatically generated

mod_CatImplode is a Joomla module designed to display all articles within a com_content category as one indexed article. It was designed to increase the manageability of API documentation for VehicleFuelTracker.

This article forms the user documentation for the module

mod_BTwitter is a simple module designed to embed a users timeline into Joomla based sites. At the core of it's design is the principle that there should be no un-necessary chrome and page load speed should not be adversely affected.

This documentation details how to use mod_BTwitter

Google+ Feed (Mod_GoogPlusFeed) is a module designed to embed your Google+ posts into a Joomla site in the way that mod_btwitter does for Twitter. The core principle of the design is that it shouldn't contain un-necessary chrome and shouldn't slow page load.

The module can also display all posts within a Google Community - Simply specify the community ID instead of a user ID!

This documentation details how to configure mod_GoogPlusFeed

LivingStreets is a national (UK) charity that "stands up for pedestrians", working to create safe attractive and enjoyable streets.

This free module interfaces with the Living Streets Site to capture walking statistics for display on a Joomla website. Stats for individuals are not currently available, though they are planned for a future release.

All that's required is to set your Company name as it appears on LivingStreets.org.uk and to set how you want your company name to appear on your site.

To download the Joomla 1.5 Version click here.

LivingStreets is a national (UK) charity that "stands up for pedestrians", working to create safe attractive and enjoyable streets.

This free module interfaces with the Living Streets Site to capture walking statistics for display on a Joomla website. Stats for individuals are not currently available, though they are planned for a future release.

All that's required is to set your Company name as it appears on LivingStreets.org.uk and to set how you want your company name to appear on your site.

To download the Joomla 2.5 Version click here.

To download the Joomla 3.x Version click here.

mod_lotto (AKA LottoPredict) is a module for Joomla 2.5 onwards. It fulfils a range of functions including the display of recent results.

This documentation details how to configure the module to suit your needs