I am very new to web development and CMSs. I want to make a Joomla site that features articles with a lot of graphs at the top of the page and written content below them. The charts will probably be done with fusioncharts and some controls directly below them to dynamically influence the data displayed in the charts preferably without reloading the page.
My question is what is the most appropriate way to do this in joomla? Can I get the sourcer add in and simple create articles using inline javascript calls to place the charts and controls directly in the article? Is this how people usually embed non text based content in joomla? Is it possible to access the database with code directly embedded in the article to generate the chart?
I dont really want to learn too much of the joomla API right now, I'm more interested in using the CMS features to create the pages and then just coding everything else in javascript/php directly in the page but I'm not sure if that is appropriate or if it would introduce security concerns to my site.
Why not try the FusionCharts extension for Joomla -
This will be much easier than coding this yourself, the work has already been done.
I believe the best thing to do is just use a good WSIWYG and then use the source code feature.
TinyMCE does the work just fine.
Are you looking for plugins or components to add and do this or do you just want to log into administrator and start doing this right away?
Related
I have a website running with Joomla!, and I'm using PhocaGallery, which is a component used for managing a photo gallery.
In my articles, I simply put a tag, for example :
{phocagallery view=category|categoryid=2|limitcount=2}
This tag displays simply 2 images from the category which has 2 as ID.
I'm developing my own application for this website, and when I load an article on it, I have simply the tag displayed, without images, that's normal.
I have the long PHP code for this plugin.
I would like to know how :
1. Detect the tag when the article is loadind in application
2. Call PHP script in the application to browse good images
3. Display images
The problem I think, is that the PHP code may call to folders on the website, and I think the application can't...
Do you think it's possible ?
detect the tag: use a regular expression to parse the parameters you need
inkoking the plugin is pretty straightforward, just make sure you're making all the necessary resources available i.e. most likely you will want to load the whole joomla framework. Since you're just querying a single table you might be better off doing it on your own with mysql, it will save you a lot of time both developing and at runtime
just output the
I'm familiar with HTML, CSS, and some PHP and Javascript. I've made several fairly complicated websites for which I've acted as webmaster, manually adding all content in HTML.
I'm about to put in a proposal for my first outside client at a larger business. They have an IT person that would be responsible for updating the website that I create for them.
My question is what to do about content management. I've looked into things like Drupal, but they seem overly complex for this kind of situation, with a single person adding updates of things like text, images, and PDFs.
What would you recommend as the next step above the simple way of manually uploading files and editing HTML like I'm used to? Something like a MySQL database and PHP calls? Would I then store all the images in the database as well?
I guess I'm just trying to figure out what's most common at a medium-sized business. I appreciate any guidance you can offer!
Nathaniel
My company has built large scale projects and medium scale as well. What we like to do is setup a outer page with navigation and an inside page that the client has control of by a control panel with FCK Editor or TinyMCE.
So essentially we have a wrapper page (in our case a MasterPage but in PHP you would use an include or a index.php with a query string to pull the content) and then we drop in HTML content from the database.
That database is populated by the client in their control panel. FCK Editor allows them to upload images and manage links, etc.
For our bigger clients we get very specific in our control panel allowing them to add videos, PDF attachments, blog entries, FAQ content, etc.
Some examples we have are http://pspwllc.com and http://needsontime.com and http://nwacasa.org
Drupal can be bit complex at first but if you stick with the basic modules - it is great for website content management.You can write your own mini content management system - store text and images(MySQL blob format) in MySQL.It will be couple of PHP admin pages and a good render() function responsible for page rendering.
Also have a look at wordpress, it is much easier than drupal. It is less powerful but it may serve your needs. You will NOT need to configure modules like FCKeditor, with it bcoz they come inbuilt. Anybody will be able to edit the content easily. Do note that wordpress is not just for blogs, you can create different kinds of websites with it. Another choice is Joomla, it is also simpler than drupal. But, wordpress is the simplest.
Currently, I work in an existing php web application with sybase database connection.
The web site is built using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Photoshop, Flash, PHP, IIS, and Sybase.
I would like to add some web pages to this web application so I take a copy of one web page like AboutUs.php for Example and I determine a certain area inside it to change the content either static (text and HTML tags) or dynamic (connecting to the database) and its appearence using CSS.
This web application uses a web template with *.dwt.php Extension and applys for all web site pages as the master web page contains some fixed data like header,footer,rightside,leftside,center and this data includes images and flash objects with predefined sizes and types.
How I can disable the template or modify it to get rid of the design and view changing problems ?
Is there any alternative to replace this template with a new customized template developed by me ?
The problem I face now is when i add my content in the web page the display and the view of it becomes strange and some items and elements overlapped especially in the header, the footer and the sides of the page.
It gives a bad looking for the web page as when data is got from the database or any change happened, the web page design differs especially the images and their borders change and overlapped and intersects.
I do not know Photoshop very well as i think to edit or change the sizes and revise all the web application images properties and sizes to know what is the cause of that.
Is there a fast and proper way to solve that problem instead of rebuilding the web application or testing and verifying all objects and items as this will take long time ?
.dwt is a Dreamweaver template format, so it sounds as if the site has been built in Dreamweaver (a WYSIWYG programme made by Adobe). If you don't know much about web development, or aren't comfortable editing the template then the easiest option may be to use Dreamweaver to edit the site, since this is the format it is currently in.
Well I think you need to invest some time and or money in webapplication development. It is hard to expain you how to do it if you have no experience in web application development.
So, no there is no fast way to solve your problem.
I want to build a plugin for piwik which can plot graphs by reading a json file. I want to bypass the whole process of having to acess a mysql database, is there an easy way that I could achieve this. Also I want to build a UI with standard things such as checkboxes, textfields etc, can I do that using piwik
This is a very vague question. Piwik seems to be a locally-installed web analytics program written in PHP.
You haven't told us what your plugin would do. How would it do whatever it needs to do without touching the database?
Have you read their plugin documentation? It's conveniently titled "How To Write a Plugin", btw. Hard to miss. It looks like the plugin is responsible for creating it's own HTML, so that at least answers your question about building a UI.
You will want to look at the developer friendly example plugin called ExampleUI, which shows how to plot line graphs, pie charts, tag clouds, and report 'tables' with automatic links to the API export, etc.
Enable ExampleUI in your Piwik installation, and click on the ExampleUI tab.
Maybe it is to much to ask...
I want to make a online WYSIWYG HTML / CSS builder where the graphic designer can build a website template without knowing CSS /HTML. For that purpose there should be a GUI to build a website template.
That means HTML and CSS are created out of the choices selected in the GUI.
http://www.constructyourcss.com kinda does what I want. But I can't set width/height etc + I need to integrate it into my system (I use PHP, MySQL,jQuery)
Question:
Do you know any html/css builder tools like ala jquery sortables?
I don't know of any online tools, but I really like the way this standalone program called Stylizer enables users who don't know CSS very well to modify web site layouts. But honestly, there's no way I'd pay $89 for it. I recommended it to some friends to use it for the trial period, but learn how to use Firebug as well.
That being said, I tend to agree with the comments above. A designer is more likely to learn CSS/HTML and do it themselves or pay a service to convert their pdf into a page.