Help I need Joomla

[StuKeith]

Keep getting a page not found error when dl from the joomla site!

Can some1 stick it up here or email me link that works of the zip with it please!

[Harrison]

Do you just want the main install files for the latest Joomla 1.0.12 release?

If so I can attach them to this thread for you later tonight when i have time.

[StuKeith]

Got it sorted now cheers!

What plugins can you recomend? and how u add new groups?

I want to beable to once a user paid a subscription to have they membergroup upgraded!

Also how do I add new member groups?

Cheers

[Harrison]

Joomla doesn't let you create custom groups as it is (without third party components) and this can feel like a very big restriction when you are used to other web software such as forums that allow you to setup as many custom membership groups as you wish. I felt this way myself when first using Joomla, but it isn't actually as restrictive as you first think and contains enough control for most setups. That is unless you need to have custom membership groups that are each given access to different sorts of site content, in which case you would need something more such as the following.

The only way to add new membership groups to Joomla is via third party components such as JACLPlus but be warned that these alter key parts of the main Joomla source code to make them work. This can cause problems upgrading to newer Joomla releases and can cause conflicts with some other third party components and modules. I don't personally recommend setting up custom Joomla membership groups due to the core code changes, but the latest version of JACLPlus does state it will cleanly uninstall leaving everything as it was before which is better than it used to be.

Joomla 1.5 will have better membership group support once it is out of beta testing. I don't recomment Joomla 1.5 yet though as it is still in beta testing and most third party components have not yet been updated to work with it.

The best component I can recommend you install if your site is going to be membership orientated is Community Builder (CB). It has a large resource of supported plugins to add a lot of member abilities to a Joomla site. Have a look at the profiles on classicamiga to see much of what CB can do with plugins installed.

As for subscription based services and membership level upgrades via payment, I recommend you have a look at Account Expiration Control - Subscription Manager

It integrates with both JACLPlus and Community Builder and sets up a subscription based membership system that supports a lot of existing payment systems including Paypal.

I've not tried Account Expiration Control myself so you will need to test it and see if it is what you are looking for. But I highly recommend Community Builder, and although I personally don't touch custom membership components JACLPlus is the best one for Joomla if you need it.

There are a lot of other third party components and modules I could recommend, but first tell me a bit more about what you want the site to do and I can then recommend some more specific ones for you to look at.

The easiest way to find most of the best components, modules and membots is via the Official http://extensions.joomla.org/ site.

[StuKeith]

take a look. www.my-wii.co.uk

i want to beable to let users upload images for me to create galleries.

also, if I add the v+ members to say author group, can I hide a module from them so they cant see it!

[Harrison]

Yes, you can hide module from certain usergroups. But it's control isn't per usergroup.

To set the visibility of a module go into the Module Manager (Modules menu), click the module you wish to edit, and in the list of options down the lefthand side is a selection box called Access Level. You can use this to select the level of visibility and access you wish to give membership groups.

By default Joomla only has three Access levels built in. Public, Registered and Special. Public is for all unregistered visitors. Registered is the Registered usergroup level, and Special is to give access to all editing level groups (Author, Editor, Publisher, Manager, Admin and Super Admin).

So if you only want registered and above to see a module you would set it to registered. For anyone including unregistered you would set it to Public, and if you only wanted a module to be visible to Author and above then you would set it to Special.

Annoyingly you have no standard way of setting this any more finely on a per membership group level. If you wanted to do that you would need to install JACLPlus.

For a gallery there are a few different gallery components available. I am using one called Zoom Media Gallery on classicamiga and this allows you to set access rights to its backend on a per member basis (so you have more control than the standard three access levels of Joomla). Zoom still has some bugs but the newest version has fixed most of the major ones. If you want a fully integrated gallery on the site then Zoom Media Gallery is probably your best solution. Make sure you read the instructions fully for installing.

An alternative is to go with Coppermine Gallery. This is a separate self contained Internet Gallery, but it can be integrated into Joomla using a bridge to share the Joomla memberships. I also have this running on classicamiga. If you want to see this working and how it works with Joomla go to the Members Gallery in the User Menu on the site. I have it set to open in its own window, but you can also set it up to load inline on a page in your Joomla site so it is within the main site template. Doing this would require the Coppermine template to be remade to fit the main site's look. Coppermine also includes a lot of membership management tools to set different access rights and privaledges on the gallery.

It all depends what you want really. Coppermine has more features, but only one useful Joomla module is available to show a random image from the gallery. You can see this working on classicamiga in your profile. Zoom has more including a silmilar random image generator which I'm using on the frontpage.

[Harrison]

I had a quick look at the site. Looks nice and clean. Very Wii. Is that a premade template?

What Quiz component are you using with it? Simple, but works ok. I had a quick go at the intendo quiz and scored 86% with a rank of N64.

SMF is quite a good choice for an integrated forum too. Probably the best to directly link th site into the forum as one. I was very tempted to use SMF myself for classicamiga sue to the integration. That is one thing I was surprised at when looking, that but IPB and vB don't have much support for bridging into CMS's. Look at other things like the Coppermine Gallery and it has bridging built into it when you install it.

After looking at the site I suggest you give Zoom Media Gallery a try first for your Gallery section. It's got quite a clean default interface which should fit in quite welll with the site template without having to do anything with it.

Don't forget to remove the three menu links above administrator as these are just part of the Joomla default install for pointing you back to the Joomla sites.

Oh, and I think the Wii image on the right of site banner needs to be rescaled as it's doing some funny jaggy line stuff and doesn't look to good.

I had an idea that might work with the banner. Have a hand holding the Wii remote coming in from the left underlining the main my-wii text and pointing towards the Wii on the right. Maybe even try some sort of beam effect coming from the remote to the Wii, with the other items in the banner sitting on the beam. The hand doesn't need to even go right off the side of the screen, you could just have a suggestion of the hand quickly fading around the remote. Not sure that idea would work, but thought I would share it in case you liked the idea.

Maybe also include some Nintendo game characters in the banner? I created quite a nice Gamecube site banner a long time ago for a UK gamecube site running at the time. I can post a copy of the banner here if you are interested in seeing it?

[StuKeith]

Do you know any Flash video / mov players for jom? I have dowloaded loads and cant anyof them to work, just get blank boxes!

Also what is the download plugin on the site!!

[Harrison]

The download component I'm using is called Docman.

For video players I use a mambot called Allvideos that adds Joomla tags { } so you can insert video content into your Joomla page content. Once installed it works very easily. You can link to video content on streaming media sites such as youtube or you can link to video content you have on your own site. You can also use it to stream mp3 audio, which you can see working on some of the demo sections listings.

You can download the mambot from http://www.joomlaworks.gr/