Speed Up The Joomla Control Panel With Google Gears

Thursday, 25 September 2008 07:34

Feel like the backend of Joomla gets a bit slow sometimes? I know I do as I hop around menus, modules, and articles. Phil Taylor has helped fix this problem with the release of a plugin that enables Google Gears support, which will cache your Joomla administrator files to your local computer, greatly increasing the speed of Joomla. Learn more about the plugin or directly download it.

I've installed it on a test server, and here are my initial thoughts and impressions:

• Google Gears is a browser add-on for Firefox, Internet Explorer, and now Safari (Mac version only) that allows Web applications to speed up by caching files to your hard drive
  
• Google Gears for Joomla requires PHP5, which will leave some users out
• Don't install this on a public machine, only on your own
• That all being said, I do find it speeding up the backend quite a bit

Once you have Google Gears installed, you can use it to speed up Google applications, use Google docs offline, or use it to speed up other applications.

To install it:

• Download the plugin
• Enable it from the Plugins Manager (I did a search for Gears)
• Wait a few seconds, then click Update Gears in the upper right
• You'll then be prompted to either install Gears if you don't have it, or to enable Gears for Joomla
• Wait for it to cache the files, and then close the window when it's complete
  

Here are some screenshots of the installation process:

Overall this is great news for the Joomla community. Have you installed it yet? What do you think about Google Gears for Joomla 1.5?

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Comments (5)

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written by Henry , September 29, 2008

I love the turbo gears plugin for Joomla. Thanks for podcasting about this, I would never of found it if you had not, I use HSDPA Mobile broadband to work on my site while on the move the google gears cache really helps me do this.

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written by Mike B. , September 30, 2008

Hi Henry, thanks for the comment. I agree, this is a fantastic plugin that can really help mobile users, dialup users...heck everyone! I think it's the first universal plugin that everyone should use.

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written by website builders , May 20, 2009

When building Joomla websites gears is a fantastic website tool. It saves so much time. Only issue is that it does not appear to work on Windows 2000 as Gears does not support it. If anyone is aware of a workaround for this or alternative resource could you please let me know. Thanks.

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written by andersen , June 24, 2009

i cant get it to run consistently. keep getting "Update gears" button after updating. it updates, but so quicly indicating it is already updated. but then i get the "update gears button again". hmmm...i'm hopeful 8-) ((plugin and webservices are enabled)

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written by Mike B. , June 27, 2009

i think you only need to run it once, and maybe again after updates?

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