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Joomla Tutorials – Add a Contact

admin — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 08:44:20 +0000

With it’s built-in contact component, adding a contact form to your Joomla site is a very easy process. You can create multiple categories of contacts, each with multiple contacts themselves. This tutorial will be a walkthrough of how to setup a new contact.

The first thing to do is login to the Joomla backend. This is at yourjoomlasite.com/administrator.

The first step in this process will be to add a new category to place our contacts in. Categories all you to group sets of contacts so you can have forms for all members of your sales team, or all of your managers. First go to Components > Contacts > Categories. The screen shows you an overview of any categories that already exist. By default there will be one category named “Contacts”. You will want to click the New button in the upper right corner of the screen to create a new category. There will be a form you’ll need to fill in. You can limit who can view this category by choosing the level in the Access Level select box. You can set an image to show for the category if you want. When you have everything setup you can click the Save button.

After the contact category has been created we can go add a contact. Go to Components > Contacts > Contacts. The screen shows you an overview of any contacts that already exist. Now, click the New button to create a new contact. Fill out the short form for your contact’s details. You can link a contact to a user, then you won’t need to write in their email address. You can also add your mailing and other important contact data. If you decide you want to add data to the contact’s profile but you don’t want visitors to be able to see if from your site you can control what is shown using the parameters. If you want to block certain email addresses or text you can do that under the email parameters. This is very useful for controlling contact form spam.

For people to be able to use the form it will need to be added to the menu. Go to Menus > Main Menu. This will show you all items in your menu. Click New to add a new menu item. Select the Contacts loink under Internal Link. To create a form with multiple contacts click the Contact Category Layout link. Clicking the Standard Contact Layout link will allow you link to a single contact.

If you choose Contact Category Layout you will want to add the title, which is what will show in the menu. The category that gets shown is set under the parameters. You can also control a number of other parameters.

If you go with the Standard Contact Layout you need to add the Title which controls what is shown in the menu. To choose which contact is displayed it gets set under the parameters. You can also control a number of other parameters.

Using these steps you can add as many new contacts and categories to your Joomla site as you’d like. To learn many other subjects you can view the Joomla tutorials at joomlademo.com.
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What Can Joomla Do?

admin — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 13:05:03 +0000

Right out of the box Joomla is a very powerful application for websites. The potential it has is amazing. You can have as many or as few pages as you want for your website. This can be great for those website owners that have a lot to say. Adding more pages doesn’t bloat the code or the site. Joomla was created to handle a lot of pages.

Joomla was also created to have organization on your site so you aren’t having a hard time trying to figure out where all your pages are. You can categorize them anyway that you want. If part of your website is about services you offer you can categorize them, if part of your site is specific information to your industry it can be categorized as well. This also works well for your visitors because you can link to individual sections and categories and let them choose what they want to look at without cluttering the site with different menus.

Once you get into adding things the potential expands even more. The need to pay for extra services becomes almost non-existent. There may be some extensions that do require payment but the majority of them are open source. The problems with linking the applications together, additional logins, and templates, are simplified because the extensions are specific to Joomla. You can access them all just by logging in to the backend of the site and they use the same template that is used for your website so no need to create another template that matches your marketing message.

Newsletter Manager

We are all familiar with the different newsletter managers such as constant contact, icontact, aweber, etc. All of these cost something plus you have to link it into your website. With Acajoom, (newsletter manager for Joomla) you don’t have to worry about extra fees or problems linking it to your website. The application is open source so there is no fee associated with it. You have the ability to have multiple lists. It even gives your subscribers the ability to easily select which one of your newsletters they want to subscribe to.

Shopping Cart

One of Joomla extensions is a shopping cart that is also free for use. You can provide discounts, keep track of inventory, accept payments through PayPal, and through other payment processors. All extremely simple to use, and setup fees are reasonable – there is no cost for the cart itself.

Seminar Booking

This is an extension that allows for easy seminar/event registration. Your clients can confirm or even cancel their attendance simply and easily. It accepts payments through PayPal. There are also many other scheduling or event registration options.

Social Profiles

The basis for a community networking site. User profiles that can be enhanced in a variety of ways, including personal guestbooks, personal photo galleries, personal RSS feeds, and much more.

Forum

This is a great add-on so that can provide the central communication area for either social sites, or for business support forums. It offers moderation, membership set up and much more. FAR simpler to use than PHPBB, and shares the template with your Joomla site, so setup is much easier and less costly.

Gallery

Galleries come in many flavors. They may be photo-community oriented, where users can submit photos and create new galleries, or they may be portfolio styled, where you are creating a gallery presentation. They come in both a grid style layout, or a slideshow style, and in varying ranges of complexity and flexibility. If you need a gallery, chances are, Joomla has one available that will do what you need.

Directory

More than a link directory. Joomla directories can manage just about anything, and can be used to catalog almost any kind of listing. Whether you need weblinks, course catalogs, resource listings, software libraries, or anything else, a directory is a flexible structure to add to a site to get just the right structure. With customizable forms for entering data, and many ways to extend the function, a directory can be much more than a list of links.

Article Submissions

Right out of the box, Joomla handles the process for both user article submissions, and an approval process (so nothing goes live until you say it can). This functionality can be enhanced in a number of directions, to give better control over the submission or approval process. It can even be integrated with social networking profiles.

This is just a sample listing of what can be added to Joomla and what Joomla can do. As I’ve stated many times, the possibilities are endless.
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How to Update Your Website In-House

admin — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 01:49:19 +0000

Every businessman does his best to widen his or her business sales on the one hand and cut the marketing costs on the other. In today’s market place it is necessary to watch out for every penny being spent on the marketing strategy. What methods could be used to cut your expenditures? Let’s examine for example your website; this is one area that you can easily start with. One of the ways is to perform a really fast saving is for you to keep or move updating in-house. But if you do not know how to do it properly you will need the help of a professional team. Let us talk about the advantages and disadvantages of the in- house tasks in question.

We all appreciate that it is a necessary thing to update your website. It is the face and reputation of your company as well as your online presentation platform for your goods and services.

Regular updating provides clients with fresh information and news. Thus shows that you are working well and your company is prospering, as is now often used as an indicator of your work. Remember the more frequently you update your website the better the impression you have on your visitors. What parts of your website should be updated? Put simply the answer is as much as possible. Thus, all sections of your website must be updatable if at all possible using a Content Management System. This includes menus, pages, banners, products, catalogues, news, special offers, discounts, events etc. In other words, keep your website always hot. For example, if you want to add a new element or product, advertisement or text. You normally need to contact a programmer or designer for help. You can do it on your own in-house system if you have a Content Management System or CMS which allows you to perform updating actions like these, without having any great knowledge in programming or design. If you are too busy to devote yourself to updates, then you can pass the responsibility to one of your workers. Again it is rather good if he knows something about HTML or at least has some knowledge and experience in working with Content Management System.

They must be however patience and be scrupulous and accurate in what they do. This is so you can be certain that all the changes will be done at the required level and standard. If you do not have any of the above abilities or a CMS then you can give your updating to a web design company or perhaps ask them to build you a CMS. It may well cost you some money in the short term but the long term pay back will be rich in saving time and energy.

Finally it is a must to update your website regularly, whether you do it on your own or with the help of other people. If you have any questions and want to hire a professional staff for your online business, contact any centre of web design company in Birmingham.
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