Contact forms in Joomla and loading modules inside of articles

So I'm wanting to put a contact form up on a page in Joomla in the main content area. The easiest way looks to involve installing a plugin.

Found this free plugin called Rapid Contact. Once installed it is a module.

To load the module up where the main content should go require a little tweaking. Found this article on it.

Basically you make an article which contains a module position:

{loadposition testposition1}


Make a menu item which loads this article.

Then you make the module have the position "testposition1" and make sure it's loaded with the right menus item.

Done


Just found an even better alternative with Joomla 3. Here's the tutorial. Basically:

1. Create a Contact and make sure the contact form is set to Show.
2. Create a menu item to link to that contact!

enabling and installing pureftpd on Mac OS X 10.7

So, my computer is also acting as a web development server. As such, I'd like to access the files from anywhere so I decided I'd like something like FTP setup. But reading the forums FTP is a big no-no. Which is probably why Apple switched it off for OS X 10.7.

So, what are the alternatives:
PureFTPd

But how to install? Well, it needs to be compiled and then installed. Found the process here on an Apple Forum 3rd one down. He states:

find /usr/local -type f -name 'pure-*' | tar -czf pure-ftpd_backup.tgz -T -

curl -O 'http://download.pureftpd.org/pub/pure-ftpd/releases/pure-ftpd-1.0.32.tar.gz'

tar xzf pure-ftpd-1.0.32.tar.gz

cd pure-ftpd-1.0.32

./configure --with-everything --with-tls --with-certfile=/etc/pure-ftpd/ssl/pure-ftpd.pem --sysconfdir=/etc/pure-ftpd/ --with-sysquotas --mandir /usr/local/man --with-pam --with-virtualchroot  --with-peruserlimits --with-ldap --with-rfc2640

make

sudo make install-strip

cd ..

rm -r pure-ftpd-1.0.32.tar.gz pure-ftpd-1.0.32

After this you can install PureFTPd Manager which should provide you with a GUI, although it states it works for OS X 10.6. Apparently works for 10.7.

Seems to work alright, although I'll have to read up about changing ports and setting up sftp stuff

website widths

Whenever I start making a website I'm always looking up what the current standard is. Here is an example of some peoples opinions.

General consensus is that in 2012/13 min size screen is 1280, but people don't necesarily use full screen browsing. So perhaps 980px is fine.

Another person has posted up some more fluid designs alternatives:

http://framelessgrid.com/

http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/

http://www.getskeleton.com/

These look good

Social networking sites and joomla

Just looking into enabling login via other site logins. i.e. facebook, google etc.

Found quite a few in the joomla extensions.

The best one I think I've found is LoginRadius Social Login. It's got a nice tutorial on how to install. Only problem is that you make an account through them, so they sort of act as the middle men.

I shall add to this once I've done a bit more research and tried it out.

For complete site jomsocial looks good

also joomlapolis.

Facilitates member interaction.


Just reading this article on creating a social network and it recommends SocialEngine.

Making test sites in a subdirectory of a live joomla site

So I want a website which is a front end, but I want to be able to develop websites in subdirectories of this front-end site.

I just found this tutorial of how to do the reverse. Mainly editing the configuration.php file.

Also found this documentation from Joomla on how to move sites around in directorys/sub-directories

So, after much trial and error I finally got it working:

1. So, I changed MAMPs directory to my new setup website:
1. /Applications/MAMP/htdocs/mynewwebsite
2. I then moved other websites within its' directory structure
1. moved /Applications/MAMP/htdocs/testsite1 to /Applications/MAMP/htdocs/mynewwebsite/testsite1
3. edited the configuration.php file in testsite1
1. I actually found it had changed itself! But just to note:
2. public $log_path = '/Applications/MAMP/htdocs/mynewwebsite/testsite1/logs';
3. public $tmp_path = '/Applications/MAMP/htdocs/mynewwebsite/testsite1/tmp';

This sort of worked. It worked on the localhost machine perfectly, but when browsing externally it came up with:

404 - Article not found joomla error

I had a quick search and found this forum topic about it. Turns out a temporary fix is to turn off "Search Engine Friendly URLs" under Administration > Global Configuration > Site:

Viewsonic VX 800 blinking/flashing green LED light

A strange problem is occuring with a Viewsonic VX 800 monitor. Whenever it is switched on the green LED flashes constantly (every 0.5 seconds) and nothing appears on screen. But, after a prolonged period, the blinking will slow to once every 7 seconds. Perhaps not even after a long period. It is attached to an apple mac and when it reboots the screen sometimes comes on. Quite random. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I've not fully tested the situations out.

I found a few mentions of stuff but not very helpful. I guess because the screens are quite old.

Here I found a service manual but it's not very helpful

Finding the gradient of a graph

Having installed Octave I now want to find gradients of gradients of gradients...... of gradients.

This is a note to remind me to do this.

So, turns out there is a function which does this:
gradient(F)

so, here's me plotting a sine wave, and then drawing gradients of that graph:


x=0:0.1:20
y=sin(x)

plot(y)
hold all
plot(gradient(y)*10)
hold all
plot(gradient(gradient(y))*100)
hold all
plot(gradient((gradient((gradient(y)*10))*10))*10)
plot(gradient((gradient((gradient((gradient(y)*10))*10))*10))*10)