OpenAppDotOrg: Open Source CMS

5 reasons why should you be using open source content management system?

openappdotorg — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 04:13:31 +0000

There are several techniques or methods one can use to accomplish
certain productivity task. To manage documents, organizations can use
plain document repository or document module as found in popular CRM
systems such as SugarCRM or Salesforce or can think of full fledged
best-of-breed content lifecycle solution.

Choice is largely a function of business process maturity and level of
automation desired. So the question is at what stage you would need a
grown-up enterprise strength content management system like Alfresco?

If following are some of the pains you are having then probably you are ready for Alfresco open source CMS:

1. Document management is in chaos. To tame this chaos company needs versioning, workflow control and archiving solutions.

2. Not ready for the rich media based IT architecture.
With explosion in video, audio and rich content based on flash
components, companies need a common platform to manage them and do it
in a way which will enable flexible content repurposing.

3. Document Interoperability - wide support for document conversion capability. PDF, Word, OpenOffice, etc

4. Number of disparate websites keep growing
- challenge of managing multiple websites from a single system. This is
by far the most common problem causing stale web content.

5. Compliance management.
Record keeping and archiving is a painful but necessary step in staying
clean on the legal front. There is not much choice here thanks to
Sarbanes Oxley.

Switch between secure and non-secure server in Joomla versions 1.4 and lower.

RS — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 17:18:59 +0000

Switching between secure and non-secure servers in Joomla versions 1.4 and lower.

Step:1
This can be done in configuration.php OR in index.php just after the line define( ‘_VALID_MOS’, 1);

In configuration.php, replace
$mosConfig_live_site=”http://www.xyz.com”;
with
if ($_SERVER[”SERVER_PORT”] == “443″){
$mosConfig_live_site=”https://www.xyz.com”;
}else{
$mosConfig_live_site=”http://www.xyz.com”;
}

If modifying index.php, add these line just after the line define( ‘_VALID_MOS’, 1);
if ($_SERVER[”SERVER_PORT”] == “443″){
$mosConfig_live_site=”https://www.xyz.com”;
}else{
$mosConfig_live_site=”http://www.xyz.com”;
}

Step:2 - To secure the site after login.
In modules/mod_login.php, replace the line

MBString Php extension issue

openappdotorg — Mon, 24 Jul 2006 23:41:55 +0000

Error handling in php libraries can be made little less initimidating -

“The mbstring PHP extension was not found and you seem to be using a
multibyte charset. Without the mbstring extension phpMyAdmin is unable
to split strings correctly and it may result in unexpected results.”

This is from phpMyAdmin. Fix is in php.ini extensions path.

How to populate the database from dump in Joomla?

openappdotorg — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 14:47:39 +0000

Once you have taken the dump of the database then you can restore using the dump.sql files(learn here to take the dump/back-up from database).

In phpMyAdmin simply click on the SQL tab and then from there you can browse the dump.sql file that you have stored after taking the dump. If the structure is not there then first of all import the structure file which will create the structure of the table and later you can import the dump.sql file which is having the data.

Through phpMyAdmin it that simple. If you find any problem in importing the whole file. Then you can cut and paste the queries and populate them in the database.

Through the command prompt you can simply use these commands to restore the database. First of all go to the directory where the dump.sql file is stored and from there run these commands:

mysql -u USERNAME -pPASSWORD DATABASENAME dump.sql

Put the less than sign between DATABASENAME and dump.sql

This command will populate the dump in your database and then you will have your data back in your application.

How to take Joomla back-up?

openappdotorg — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 14:02:58 +0000

It is very important to take the back-up of your data as well as the application to keep things moving and to be on the safer side. It is wiser to take the back-up of data and structure both. There are several ways to take the back-up.

If you are using phpMyAdmin then you it very easy to take the back-up. Simply select Joomla database and then export that database. Now it will show you all the tables within and the options to save that file. Select all the files and then check the radio button to take the dump as SQL, LaTeX or CSV. If this is the first time you are taking the back-up then I would prefer to take the Data and Structure individually meaning there will be two SQL files created at the end, one which will be having the structure of table and the another one which will be having the data. It is wiser to take the back-up of data as it changes every time and the structure remains the same most of the time.

The other method of taking the back-up is through the command prompt. In the Linux (DOS on Windows) go to the mysql/bin folder and run these commands:

mysqldump -u USERNAME -pPASSWORD DATABASE-NAME dump.sql

Replace the USER, PASSWORD and DATABASE-NAME with your MySQL settings respectively. This command will take the dump of structure and data both. To take the individual run these commands:

mysqldump -u USERNAME -pPASSWORD -t DATABASE-NAME dump_data.sql

This command will give you the dump of data only(no structure).

mysqldump -u USERNAME -pPASSWORD -d DATABASE-NAME dump_structure.sql

Put the greater than sign between DATABASE-NAME and dump.sql

This command will give you the dump of structure only(no data).

Running these commands will create the dump.sql files in the same directory where you are present. In this case, these files can be found at mysql/bin directory.

Managing content without technical expertise

openappdotorg — Tue, 30 May 2006 14:33:21 +0000

Joomla! being open source content management system, benefits the content author to dynamically manage the content of their website without having the technical expertise. This helps in changing the content of the website anytime anywhere. It’s as easy as 1, 2, 3, and go.
1.Create the content.
2.Save the content(Joomla! Saves the content in database).
3.Now the content is published and available on the website.

Control Panel: Global Configuration

openappdotorg — Fri, 26 May 2006 11:24:46 +0000

You can also configure your site settings after logging in Joomla! as admin. Select the Global Configuration and then you can change all the cofiguration settings like database, content, server, etc.

Go easy and create your own dynamic website.

Admin Control Panel

openappdotorg — Fri, 26 May 2006 08:24:11 +0000

After logging in as admin, the very first page that you see is the Control Panel. This is the page which shows you the most of the controls in Joomla! like adding the new content in the website, managers like user, language, static content, section, categories and menu. You can select any of the category to edit that and save it.

Installing Joomla!

openappdotorg — Fri, 26 May 2006 07:20:05 +0000

The lattest version of Joomla! is version 1.0.8, you can also find the patches and earlier versions also. Download the zip package from here and uzip it on your localhost directory, that is /var/www/html/MyJoomla. Now open the web browser and write http://localhost/MyJoomla in the address bar, this will lead you to the browser installation of Joomla!

It will check the pre-installation requirements and will display the results there. The main thing to notice here that you have to set the permission of configuration file to be writable. You can skip this step as the configuration script will be given to you latter in the installation and that you can paste in the config.php file and save, but the main thing is to set the permissions of directories and files to be writable by Joomla! Onc you have given the permissions then proceed further.

Now you have to configure MySQL for your Joomla!

Hostname: Generally it is localhost
MySQL Username: Give the MySQL username e.g. root
MySQL Password: Give the password that you have set for the root in MySQL. e.g. root
MySQL Database: Give the name of the database that you have created for your Joomla! e.g. My Site
Once Joomla! connects to the database then it will ask for the site name that you want to set.

Now it will ask for the site URL, path and the will provide you with admin password to login as admin. You can change the admin password latter. Now your Joomla! is installed and you can create a dynamic website using Joomla!

The last step is to remove the installation directory from your Joomla! directory.

Wrapper component vs MyPortal module

openappdotorg — Fri, 26 May 2006 05:08:43 +0000

Wrapper is a Joomla component which can display any URL in your
web site.
To achieve the same thing SugarCRM uses the module MyPortal.
More precise term for both is iFrame.