Phil Taylor – Joomla Expert & PHP Developer

Joomla Extensions

Forms for Joomla 2.5 Discount (Doh!)

Ok some eagle eyed visitors have noticed that the special offer for bfForms for Joomla 2.5.x has continued past the midnight expiration – simple answer was that I went on holiday and forgot to take down the special offer page – and now I can’t from my holiday destination because the sFTP Port is firewalled on the free wifi – so if you have been hanging on – quickly grab bfForms for Joomla 2.5.x for only £7.99 before I return from my holiday and expire this offer :-)

Check out this offer now →

All good things eventually come to an end

UPDATE: Since this article was written, bfForms/Forms for Joomla 2.5 has been resurrected and is now available at http://www.forms-for-joomla.com/

Dear visitor,

“So long and thanks for all the fish“

We will soon be withdrawing our Joomla products from public download. Existing customers can re-download a copy from the customer download area for a limited time only.

Very shortly all our Joomla products will be withdrawn from public download from our websites, this is the first stage. The second stage will be our support site, this will continue for a short while, however this too will removed, after which all support of our legacy Joomla extensions will cease.

Its never easy to retire a product or business, however after two years of battling major health problems, contractual obligations, divorce and child contact issues, 18 hour days, increasing work loads, financial issues and lifestyle changes – now has to be that time.

There are only so many hours in a day, and I’ve decided to use my days more productive to to my health and wellbeing, slowing down and working on new exciting projects.

Thanks for your business and support for so long.

Phil.

FAQ

Appears people need more answers, recorded below for all to see:

  1. “Why?”  I believe I have answered that above
  2. “Is this the end?” No its the start of some down time before something new
  3. “But I need X for Joomla 1.7 NOW!”  My extensions were never generally released for Joomla 1.6 or Joomla 1.7 and I have no future plans to undertake this
  4. “Where can I get support for my product?” For a limited time you can get community support in our forums, however this will very shortly also be removed.  Support takes a huge amount of time and is one reason for this important decision.
  5. “Are you still accepting new work?” No. I’m not accepting any new Joomla Consultancy at this time.
  6. “You previously announced testing of bfForms for Joomla 1.6?” Yes I did, however things change, there will be no public release of bfForms for Joomla 1.6.

Joomla Forms – An update

I had a worrying email this morning, someone thought I had abandoned Joomla Forms! Well I know its been a long time since the first release of Joomla Forms was made but really :-) I apologize for the long time between releases, however Christmas, New Year, Wife separation, Kids etc all got/get in the way..

I’m working very hard on the code base for forms, along with a rebrand to a new name (Blue Flame Forms (bfForms)) and wanted to blog about the upcoming release as a taster for those waiting (patiently – Eighteen 5 STAR Reviews) and those critics that leave negative reviews (One person!).

So what has been acheived so far:

+ NEW FEATURE !! – Manual resize of textareas when submitting forms
+ NEW FEATURE !! – Automatic resize of textareas when submitting forms
+ NEW FEATURE !! – Fancy Multiple Select Alternative
+ NEW FEATURE !! – Redirect Browser with POST/GET of submitted data
+ NEW FEATURE !! – sh404SEF SEF Extension, now all urls to forms are SEF
+ NEW FEATURE !! – Automatically Generate the content of the emails send – ONE CLICK!
+ NEW FEATURE !! – Ability to set the default checked checkboxes and radioboxes
+ NEW FEATURE !! – Ability to copy form elements and have them actually work :-)
+ NEW FEATURE !! – Integration with ListMessenger to subscribe/unsubscribe behind the scenes
+ NEW FEATURE !! – Execute ANY PHP script on form submission – thanks Kenneth

And the number one requested feature:

+ NEW FEATURE !! -Ability to embed forms in module areas or content items!

Along with this over 50 bugs have been identified, researched, fixed and are awaiting this next release.  We have also made some sweeping changes to our own framework so that the overall speed of the application has increased, making creating great forms with Joomla even faster!

However, with all these changes we have had some regressions, in-particular the handling of validations has had to be completely overhauled to make it work under the new framework, and as a solution we are implementing a brand new way of displaying the validation errors :-) This will all improve the ability for YOU to modify the layout and style of the validation errors (yeah we admit it looked rubbish in the first release :-) )

When can you get the next version?
Again, I’m sorry its taking so long, but I will get there and release when I am happy of the quality of the product and its new features, and not before.

Thanks for all your support, for a tiny sum that most of you paid for this application (Only £9.99) I think you are getting a lot more than your moneys worth ;-) :-)

Update: WOW It was 12 July 2008 when I last released forms! Sorry about the delay – it seems a long long time ago because it is…

Joomla Forms :: Update On Development Progress

Dear Fans :-)

Well its been a while since we released a version of Joomla! Forms and now a lot of you are asking for it!

I want to apologise for the delay in this version, which is not only a bug fix version, but also has a MAJOR new feature which can be found in a, so-called, “competing product” but was not really a core feature of phil-a-form or Joomla Forms before.  We need a bit of time to implement this as it meant major structure changes in our code, plus we also wanted all forms to be backwardly compatible.

I am pleased to say we are “almost” there!, but not quite.

Recently I have been forced to move house and have had other personal issues to resolve this side of my monitor, and therefore code has taken second place to support and emails.

The number one requested feature so far has to be the inclusion of forms in Content Items and Module Positions.  This feature has not yet been coded, but I am hopeful that it will make it in the next release mentioned above.

We have also made huge improvements in validation rules, new field types and custom submit actions – so keep all eyes peeled on this blog for more announcements to follow…

July 22 2009 – Joomla 1.0.x Will No Longer Be Supported

Finally, as speculated by some, the official announcement has now been made.

Joomla 1.0.x will receive no support or security updates AFTER July 22 2009

As of July 22, 2009, the Joomla 1.0.x series will no longer be supported. As a user, is it required that you upgrade from Joomla 1.0.x? Absolutely not since security upgrades will be supported until this date.

How to speed up Joomla Admin

Well our first release of Google Gears Support For Joomla 1.5 was very well received with a NINE, 5 star ratings on the JED listing !

We have just released v1.0.2 of this FREE PLUGIN that speeds up your Joomla 1.5.x admin console.

In the latest version we now have added support for Windows Servers/Hosts and Google Chrome browser (which doesn’t like comments in CSS files!)

Enjoy!

Sending Secure Emails to Us

Those that follow our blog and things we do online know that we take security very seriously. This is one of the reasons that we are (AFAIK) the ONLY Joomla Developer/Consultant that has an Extended Validation SSL Certificate (EV SSL) on their site (This means that someone in a position of authority, digicert in our case, have verified that we are who we say we are by researching our legal status, business, accounts and business relationships!) It really is a symbol of assurance of our identity and commitment to security.

Furthermore we subscribe to the very expensive daily scanning by McAfee Secure (Formally ScanAlert HackerSafe Mark). This scans our sites, servers and infrastructure daily to identify issues. This is what gives us the PCI Certification standard – meaning that VISA and Mastercard allow us to directly accept payments on our servers (although we personally dont, some hosting customers do).

We also use mod_security, complex passwords, ssh key login and a load more security procedures on our servers.

(Note: This is not an invitation to try and hack us :-) )

The reason for this post was to unveil a way of communicating with us in a secure manner. We understand that for whatever reasons, some people just dont “get” encrypting emails, or dont have time to understand this, or what GPG is… well GPG is a way to encrypt text with someones public key so only THEY can decrypt it.

You can now do this in a simple secure way over EV SSL at:

https://secure.phil-taylor.com/encrypt

The output of this form can then be emailed direct to us to read. Meaning you can now send us sensitive information by email – if you so wish :-)

Turbo Charge Your Joomla 1.5.x Admin Console

Have you noticed how slow Joomla Admin console can be when you have a WYSIWYG Editor installed and lots of other things installed?

Well take control! Turbo Charge your Joomla 1.5.x Admin Console today with this FREE Plugin! (requires Google Gears, free also!).

Just follow these instructions:

  1. Download the FREE plugin (CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD)
  2. Install it in Joomla 1.5.x Admin console the normal way for plugins
  3. Select Plugin Manager from the Extensions Menu
  4. Locate the “System – System – Google Gears Support” plugin
  5. Publish it and WAIT 5 Seconds for a new link to appear
  6. The new “Update Gears” link will appear top right next to the Preview link
  7. Click the Update Gears link and follow the prompts (this is where Google Gears might need installing if you dont already have it)
  8. Once the 900+ files are updated to gears you will be able to browse your admin console MUCH faster!!!

Based on the work done in WordPress (in the core!), this plugin will have a major impact on how you work with your site – well QUICKER!

Please provide feedback to phil@phil-taylor.com or leave comments here.

v1.0.2 – Support for windows web hosts and google chrome browser!

Update:

When you update gears, if you get a message: ”

Error: Invalid manifest - * Line 1, Column 1 Syntax error: value, object or array expected.

Then the manifest file is displaying an error.  To view the manifest file please load the followinf url in your browser (replace domain.com with your domain!)

domain.com/plugins/system/GoogleGears/gears-manifest.php

If you dont understand the error shown on that page then email me the URL and I’ll do my best to help out.

PHP5 Compatible ONLY

if, when viewing the gears-manifest.php file, you get an error like:

Parse error:  syntax error, unexpected T_STRING,
expecting T_OLD_FUNCTION or T_FUNCTION or T_VAR or '}'
in /plugins/system/GoogleGears/gears-manifest.php on line 16

Then you are running PHP4 and cannot use our plugin.  You should upgrade to PHP5 ASAP!

Joomla 1.5.x Install Addon from Directory Method

Several webhosts have set very stringent time limits and size limits on what you can and cannot upload.  For example 2Mb seems to be the standard maximum size for a file upload on the majority of web hosts (Joomla KB and Mailing List are both bigger than 2Mb!), Some other hosts limit the PHP excecution time to 30seconds – so if it takes longer to upload than 30seconds an error is produced.

To install a Joomla Extension using the “Install from directory” method follow these simple steps (Joomla 1.5.x):

  1. Download your components Zip file to your PC.
  2. Extract the Zip files contents
  3. Create a folder in your webspace (under the public_hmtl/tmp/ is a good place, for this example call it “kb”)
  4. Use FTP to upload your extracted Zip files to the /public_html/tmp/kb/ folder
  5. Login to Joomla Admin,
  6. Select Extensions
  7. Select Install/Uninstall
  8. In the “Install Directory:” path enter the full path to your files you uploaded (public_html/tmp/kb/ in our example above)
  9. Click “Upload File & Install” Button
  10. Thats It !

This will help you overcome any file upload or time limit restrictions set by your web hosts ! :-)

NEW ListMessenger For Joomla 1.5.x RELEASED !!!!

We are proud to announce the immediate release of ListMessenger for Joomla 1.5.x!

Please visit the main website for FULL DETAILS

http://www.Joomla-Mailing-List.com

There you can play with the 100% FREE DEMO

http://www.Joomla-Mailing-List.com/demo