Episode 13 - January 13th, 2009
Tuesday, 13 January 2009 10:26
- Joomla 1.5.9 released—fixes security issues and a bad bug where "Finish Publishing Date" was set the same as "Start Publishing" for articles created from the front end.
- New look.
- This summer, will only be listing extensions for 1.5.
- Also this summer, will only be listing extensions that are non-encrypted and licensed under the GPL. What does this mean for users? For developers? Mike takes a look.
Question of the month: How do you reset a Joomla password? Use phpMyAdmin. Would be nice if this tool was built into Joomla.
Episode 13 Top Extensions:
These both grant additional controls and features to modules that you already use, such as start and end dates, etc.
Metamod
Mod on any page
Download Episode 13 today or stream it below:
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written by Mike B. , February 08, 2009
Well to be honest I'm not using Podcast extension so I can't help much with that.
You're correct, just link to the MP3 and Feedburner will take care of the rest.
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You're correct, just link to the MP3 and Feedburner will take care of the rest.
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written by Stephen Brandon , March 05, 2009
Hi Mike,
just wanted to say thanks for featuring MetaMod on your podcast. It was great to hear how you are using MetaMod to help free up your modules. You're right though, start and end publishing dates are just the beginning...
I thought I'd tell you about why I wrote MetaMod in the first place. I work for this non-profit, and we're putting in a big package called Blackbaud ECRM for financial management. One of the features of that is called NetCommunity which has lots of social networking features, blogs etc - great capabilities. Within NetCommunity there's this concept of "Parts" which are a bit similar to Joomla Modules.
So we were being told "You can target your 'Parts' so that if the user comes from a certain state, then it checks their donation record, and if they have given a certain amount then you can put in an advertisement to go to a fund-raising dinner. If you can see from their record that they have already signed up for it, then you can put up a notice reminding them of the time and date. If they are from somewhere different then you can show something different".
And I thought "hey I could do that in Joomla too". And hence MetaMod was born.
It's interesting to see how ModOnAnyPage has evolved a bit differently, although fundamentally MetaMod and ModOnAnyPage do a very similar thing - decide when to show particular modules on a page.
From the beginning I could see that MetaMod was going to be mega useful. On the main site I administer I kept finding new uses for it, from time-limiting when modules appeared, to GeoIP (targeting different modules for guests from different countries), to detecting exactly what was showing on the page and finding a suitable module to match it.
Suddenly modules became every bit as useful as main content on a page. I didn't have to make hidden menu items in order to target particular modules to an article, and I could target modules very directly to particular content. I could even make modules appear on "every page *except* a certain page", freeing me from having to go into the module manager and add certain modules to every new page I created.
Because of this versatility I have tried to not make an interface for absolutely every possible function (e.g. for categories, users, etc etc). At the end of the day it's the basis of what I call a "rule engine". And it's quite difficult to make a good user interface for that, that encompasses all the possible permutations of ANDs and ORs, and all the things that a user might think up, to base a rule around.
Unfortunately all this comes at the price of some usability, something which I normally prize above functionality. But I try to address that with as many "recipes" as I can on the web site, and helping people out who need help. I'm also working on a new web site with more info on it, and with better organisation.
ModOnAnyPage goes for the usability angle, giving options for lots of common things that people want to do. It's pretty versatile, but until I can design a truly flexible plugin-based system for MetaMod I'll probably try to resist putting more options into MetaMod's interface (unless, like the "I need to hide this module for logged-in users" thing, something is requested so often that it makes sense to give it an easier way to configure).
Anyway, MetaMod is going to continue to develop, and one day there will be a "MetaMod Pro" that does the rule-engine thing properly, and gets around some of the other niggles in MetaMod.
Thanks Mike for the podcast and for the mention.
Regards,
Stephen Brandon
MetaMod author
Votes: +0
just wanted to say thanks for featuring MetaMod on your podcast. It was great to hear how you are using MetaMod to help free up your modules. You're right though, start and end publishing dates are just the beginning...
I thought I'd tell you about why I wrote MetaMod in the first place. I work for this non-profit, and we're putting in a big package called Blackbaud ECRM for financial management. One of the features of that is called NetCommunity which has lots of social networking features, blogs etc - great capabilities. Within NetCommunity there's this concept of "Parts" which are a bit similar to Joomla Modules.
So we were being told "You can target your 'Parts' so that if the user comes from a certain state, then it checks their donation record, and if they have given a certain amount then you can put in an advertisement to go to a fund-raising dinner. If you can see from their record that they have already signed up for it, then you can put up a notice reminding them of the time and date. If they are from somewhere different then you can show something different".
And I thought "hey I could do that in Joomla too". And hence MetaMod was born.
It's interesting to see how ModOnAnyPage has evolved a bit differently, although fundamentally MetaMod and ModOnAnyPage do a very similar thing - decide when to show particular modules on a page.
From the beginning I could see that MetaMod was going to be mega useful. On the main site I administer I kept finding new uses for it, from time-limiting when modules appeared, to GeoIP (targeting different modules for guests from different countries), to detecting exactly what was showing on the page and finding a suitable module to match it.
Suddenly modules became every bit as useful as main content on a page. I didn't have to make hidden menu items in order to target particular modules to an article, and I could target modules very directly to particular content. I could even make modules appear on "every page *except* a certain page", freeing me from having to go into the module manager and add certain modules to every new page I created.
Because of this versatility I have tried to not make an interface for absolutely every possible function (e.g. for categories, users, etc etc). At the end of the day it's the basis of what I call a "rule engine". And it's quite difficult to make a good user interface for that, that encompasses all the possible permutations of ANDs and ORs, and all the things that a user might think up, to base a rule around.
Unfortunately all this comes at the price of some usability, something which I normally prize above functionality. But I try to address that with as many "recipes" as I can on the web site, and helping people out who need help. I'm also working on a new web site with more info on it, and with better organisation.
ModOnAnyPage goes for the usability angle, giving options for lots of common things that people want to do. It's pretty versatile, but until I can design a truly flexible plugin-based system for MetaMod I'll probably try to resist putting more options into MetaMod's interface (unless, like the "I need to hide this module for logged-in users" thing, something is requested so often that it makes sense to give it an easier way to configure).
Anyway, MetaMod is going to continue to develop, and one day there will be a "MetaMod Pro" that does the rule-engine thing properly, and gets around some of the other niggles in MetaMod.
Thanks Mike for the podcast and for the mention.
Regards,
Stephen Brandon
MetaMod author
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written by Mike B. , March 06, 2009
Hi Stephen,
Thanks so much for sharing the history behind MetaMod--I've found it invaluable on www.cruzio.com. Some of the things you mention I didn't even know you could do with Metamod--eg putting modules on all pages except for those specified--that is huge! I'm going to have to go read the documentation some more.
I agree that the user interface has to be the hardest thing to design. Many Joomla extensions suffer from either too little or too many controls (heck, even the core utilities suffer from this).
Anyway, thanks for the comment and for everything you do for Joomla.
Votes: +0
Thanks so much for sharing the history behind MetaMod--I've found it invaluable on www.cruzio.com. Some of the things you mention I didn't even know you could do with Metamod--eg putting modules on all pages except for those specified--that is huge! I'm going to have to go read the documentation some more.
I agree that the user interface has to be the hardest thing to design. Many Joomla extensions suffer from either too little or too many controls (heck, even the core utilities suffer from this).
Anyway, thanks for the comment and for everything you do for Joomla.
report abuse
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written by Stephen Brandon , September 07, 2009
Hi again Mike - just wanted to let you know about the new MetaMod support site, http://www.metamodpro.com. There's lots of new stuff on it including a forum (at last!).
Also, I've just released MetaMod Pro which properly handles the 2 main niggles with MetaMod. It allows MetaMod to place modules directly onto the page (instead of being wrapped in extra html from the MetaMod), which helps with some CSS issues, and also makes the MetaMod completely disappear when it doesn't include any other modules.
Just thought you might be interested.
Regards,
Stephen Brandon
MetaMod author
Votes: +0
Also, I've just released MetaMod Pro which properly handles the 2 main niggles with MetaMod. It allows MetaMod to place modules directly onto the page (instead of being wrapped in extra html from the MetaMod), which helps with some CSS issues, and also makes the MetaMod completely disappear when it doesn't include any other modules.
Just thought you might be interested.
Regards,
Stephen Brandon
MetaMod author
report abuse
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written by radii supras , October 09, 2011
Many smart senior people (un-named because their companies are involved in this snake-oil sale) have confirmed this for me, saying "sentiment analysis software? don't bother",http://www.radiisupras.com
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I'm a bit of a newbie to Joomla and someone else has been helping me set up the site but he's new to podcasting and the technicalities of feeds. I'm planning to put our feed through feedburner (google) anyway to get the stats but I must sort out the main feed anyway.
OK so right now we have two feeds for the podcast, one from the podcast extension:
feed://snnsite.com/index.php?option=com_podcast&view=feed&format=raw
And the standard joomla one:
feed://snnsite.com/snn-podcast/podcast?format=feed&type=rss
There are problems with both.
The first one doesn't have the show notes in the feed and the second one doesn't replace the {enclose 155_Podcast_is_making_some_announcements_-_155.mp3} with the file.
I will use feedburner anyway for the statistics so I'm wondering, in the end, what am I gaining from using the podcast suite in this case? And if I don't use the podcast suite, do I just link to an MP3 in the post and that would take care of it instead of using the podcast suite's {enclose } tag?