When I searched the forums, I did not manage to find a solutions… was anybody doing this, or was I the only one?

Finally a nice guy on LinkedIn managed to help me out!

The solution is two-fold: quantity_box_general.tpl.php needs to be changed and theme.css needs to be changed (to make it look pretty…).

In the steps below, I assume you are using the default template for VirtueMart. If not, read your template name every time you see the word 'default'.

Step 1

• open file components/com_virtuemart/themes/default/templates/product_details/includes/quantity_box_general.tpl.php in a text editor
• look for these lines at the bottom of this file:

   case "none" :
   default:
    $html .= '<input type="text" class="inputboxquantity" size="4" id="quantity'.$prod_id.'" name="quantity[]" value="'.$quantity.'" />
    <input type="button" class="quantity_box_button quantity_box_button_up" onclick="var qty_el = document.getElementById(\'quantity'.$prod_id.'\'); var qty = qty_el.value; if( !isNaN( qty )) qty_el.value++;return false;" />
    <input type="button" class="quantity_box_button quantity_box_button_down" onclick="var qty_el = document.getElementById(\'quantity'.$prod_id.'\'); var qty = qty_el.value; if( !isNaN( qty ) &amp;&amp; qty > 0 ) qty_el.value–;return false;" />
    ';
    break;
  }
   

• replace these lines with the following lines:

   case "none" :
   default:
    $html .= '<table>
  <tr>
  <td><label for="quantity7" class="quantity_box">'.$VM_LANG->_('PHPSHOP_CART_QUANTITY').':&nbsp;</label><input class="inputboxquantity" size="2" id="quantity7" name="quantity[]" value="1" type="text"></td><td>
  <input class="quantity_box_button quantity_box_button_up" onclick="var qty_el = document.getElementById(\'quantity7\'); var qty = qty_el.value; if( !isNaN( qty )) qty_el.value++;return false;" type="button">
  <br>
  <input class="quantity_box_button quantity_box_button_down" onclick="var qty_el = document.getElementById(\'quantity7\'); var qty = qty_el.value; if( !isNaN( qty ) &amp;&amp; qty > 0 ) qty_el.value–;return false;" type="button">
  </td>
  </tr>
  </table>
    ';
    break;
  }

Step 2

• open file components/com_virtuemart/themes/default/templates/theme.css in a text editor
• look for these lines:

  /* The quantity box beneath the "add to cart" button  */
  .quantity_box { 
   vertical-align: middle;
  }
  .quantity_box_button {
   width:10px;
   vertical-align:middle;
   height:10px;
   background-repeat: no-repeat;
   background-position: center;
     border:1px solid #000;
  }
  .quantity_box_button_down {
   background-image: url(images/down_small.gif);
  }
  .quantity_box_button_up {
   background-image: url(images/up_small.gif);
  }
   

• replace these lines with the following lines:

  /* The quantity box beneath the "add to cart" button  */
  .quantity_box { 
   vertical-align: middle;
  }
  .quantity_box_button {
   width:10px;
   height:10px;
    background-repeat: no-repeat;
    background-position: center;
   vertical-align: middle;
   margin-top: 3px;
   border: none;
  }
  .quantity_box_button_down {
   background-image: url(images/down_small.gif);
   margin-top: 2px;
  }
  .quantity_box_button_up {
   background-image: url(images/up_small.gif);
  }

That is all there is to it!

Have fun!

Robin Roelofsen

"I think complexity is mostly sort of crummy stuff that is there because it's too expensive to change the interface."
Jaron Lanier

When you want to show links to more articles, Joomla! automatically inserts a heading saying 'More Articles…'. While this may be alright for a news website, on most websites this is not how we would like to introduce our links to the other articles.

Or course, you can change the words 'More Articles…' in the language file, but that will still show up for every blog view in your site, which can be quite awkward.

For most of us, the best way is to get rid of the heading all together!

I have been searching for a long time to find the solutions, and finally I did find the answer:

The heading is placed from the templates for the category and section blog views. This means we need to change these PHP templates.

Warning! Make sure you make a security copy of the original files, just in case!

• make an FTP connection to your site and download either:
  • category: components/com_content/views/category/tmpl/blog_links.php
  • section: components/com_content/views/section/tmpl/blog_links.php
• open the file and delete the following lines:
  • <div>
       <strong><?php echo JText::_( 'More Articles…' ); ?></strong>
    </div>
• upload the file to:
  • category: templates/yourtemplate/html/com_content/category/blog_links.php
  • section: templates/yourtemplate/html/com_content/section/blog_links.php

Now your section and/or category blog view will show no heading text anymore!

Robin Roelofsen

"I think complexity is mostly sort of crummy stuff that is there because it's too expensive to change the interface."
Jaron Lanier

If a visitor sends an email from your form, CK Forms sends the results to you using the mail address you have given in in the Mail TO field in the E-Mail tab in CK Forms.

The problem with this is that, when you want to reply to the visitor, you cannot just hit the reply button but need to copy the sender's mail address to your To field in your mail client. Otherwise you send the mail straight back to yourself!

Is this logical? I don't think so!

It took me some months of living with it and trying to find a solution to the problem, and I finally came across the solution in the CK Forms forum.

A fine programmer going by the name of Rahul Chand made a hack that solved the entire issue!

The Solution

Fire up your favorite FTP client and go to folder components/com_ckforms/models/ in your Joomla! install.

Download file ckforms.php and open it in Notepad.

Search for the line that says:

$mailBody = $mailBody.JText::_( 'IP Address' ) . " : " . $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'] . "<br/>\n";

Under this line, add the following lines:

// Rahul Chand – Start Hack

// Rahul Chand – End Hack

Next, search for the following line:

$mail->setSender( array( $ckform->emailfrom, "" ) );

Replace this line with the following code:

// Rahul Chand – Call Email address from above hack
$mail->setSender($emails);
// Rahul Chand – End Hack

Replace the ckforms.php on the server with the altered copy.

Next time an email is send using the form, you will receive the mail from the actual sender!

Other Cleanup Hacks

While you are messing about in the ckforms.php file, you might want to consider cleaning up the mails CK Forms sends out a little.

Some of the changes I made:

Changing wording

The following line tells you at what date and time the mail is sent. The wording in it is 'registered at'… Not very logical in a mail, especially when you want to reply to it, now is it. I changed the line from:

$mailBody = $mailBody."registered at ".date("Y-m-d H:i:s")."<br /><br />\n\n";

to

$mailBody = $mailBody."Sent at ".date("Y-m-d H:i:s")."<br /><br />\n\n";

Taking out the IP Address and the ID number

The default mail CK Forms sends to you also has the IP Address of the sender and the ID number of the mail in it. I don't think this is very helpful, and it looks kinda techie when the sender sees it in your reply. I therefore commented out these lines (put // in front of the lines):

// $mailBody = $mailBody.JText::_( 'IP Address' ) . " : " . $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'] . "<br />\n";

and

// $mailBody = $mailBody.JText::_( 'Article ID' ) . " : " . $articleid . "<br />\n";

Taking out the form name and date on the sender's receipt email

What's the added value for the sender to know what form name the form was he send the mail from, or what date and time he sent it (he knows that!)? I suggest commenting out these lines:

// $mailBody = $mailBody."<br/><br/>Form : ".$ckform->title."<br />\n";
// $mailBody = $mailBody.JText::_( 'registered at' )." ".date("Y-m-d H:i:s")."<br /><br />\n\n";

Hopfully this solves some of the issues you may have with CK Forms. I hope that next version will have these options built in, so we don't have to hack files ourselves!

Robin Roelofsen

"I think complexity is mostly sort of crummy stuff that is there because it's too expensive to change the interface."
Jaron Lanier

I had this issue with CK Forms, and by the looks of it, the same issue was a problem for lots of people.

The Problem

When you use the CK Forms form plugin on a page, showing a contact form, the browser comes up with a mootools.js error. The form works, but it still shows 'error' in the footer of the browser (not so nice for your visitors) and other elements using mootools start behaving weird as well.

The problem I had with one site was that the fusionmenu dropdown boxes (I was using a Rockettheme template) could not be clicked on the page the form was on.

It took me quite some searching, but I finally found the answer!

The Solution

Apparently CK Forms calls mootools.js, even when it is already called in the page. The solution is commenting out the mootools.js call in the CK Forms PHP files. When you only use the Form Display plugin and the component, like most do, there are two files that need edition:

• components/com_ckforms/views/ckforms/view.html.php
  • comment out the following line:
    $document->addCustomTag('<script type="text/javascript" src="'.JURI::root(true).'/media/system/js/mootools.js"></script>');

    so it looks like:
    /** $document->addCustomTag('<script type="text/javascript" src="'.JURI::root(true).'/media/system/js/mootools.js"></script>'); */

    Don't forget to close the comment with */, or errors will occur

• plugins/content/ckforms.php
  • comment out the following line:
    $html = $html.'<script type="text/javascript" src="'.JURI::root(true).'/media/system/js/mootools.js"></script>'."\n";

    so it looks like:
    /** $html = $html.'<script type="text/javascript" src="'.JURI::root(true).'/media/system/js/mootools.js"></script>'."\n"; */

    Don't forget to close the comment with */, or errors will occur

Now mootools.js will not be called by CK Forms anymore, resulting in error-free pages!

Robin Roelofsen

"I think complexity is mostly sort of crummy stuff that is there because it's too expensive to change the interface."
Jaron Lanier

You have multiple content writers sending you their content, and you want to post their content using their name. The writers should not be able to add content themselves, but it is done by you.

The way Joomla! works, is that each user name has to have its own unique mail address, which is logical, but not very practical when they do not add their writings themselves. What you want is having multiple users sharing one mail address, so you do not have to set up mail addresses for all these users, which are not being used anyway.

There is a workaround to have Joomla! allow multiple users using the same mail address, but it requires a bit of changing code: 

• Fire up your favorite FTP application – I use CuteFTP – and go to your web server
• In your Joomla! install folder, go to folder libraries/joomla/database/table
• Download file user.php to your desktop (or a location you prefer) and create a safety copy of the original file (user-original.php or something similar)
• Open file user.php using Notepad and do a search for the phrase 'check for existing email'
• You will find the following code:

     // check for existing email
    $query = 'SELECT id'
     . ' FROM #__users '
     . ' WHERE email = '. $this->_db->Quote($this->email)
     . ' AND id != '. (int) $this->id
     ;
    $this->_db->setQuery( $query );
    $xid = intval( $this->_db->loadResult() );
    if ($xid && $xid != intval( $this->id )) {
     $this->setError( JText::_( 'WARNREG_EMAIL_INUSE' ) );
     return false;
    }
  

• Delete all of these lines (nothing more, nothing less) and save the file
• Upload file user.php to the server to the same location you retrieved it from – folder libraries/joomla/database/table – and overwrite the original file

Now Joomla! will allow multiple users using the same mail address!

Beware: when you update your Joomla! install, user.php will be overwritten and these changes will have to be done manually again!

Robin Roelofsen

"I think complexity is mostly sort of crummy stuff that is there because it's too expensive to change the interface."
Jaron Lanier

However, I set that site up in a temporary folder while my original site was still running on HTML. When I finished the Joomla! site, I backed up the site (using JoomlaPack, now changing names to Akeeba Backup), deleted the original site and extracted the backed-up site in the correct folder.

The problem with this way of setting up a site and copying it to another location is that Fantastico loses the connection with it, i.e. you won't see the copied site in Fantastico. This also means you will need to upgrade manually instead of using Fantastico's upgrade feature.

I hadn't upgraded Joomla! since version 1.5.15, and needed to upgrade it to the latest version, which is at the moment of this post version 1.5.17.

Luckily, when you are using cPanel, manually upgrading is peanuts!

• Backup your site and download the backup file
• Go to the Joomla! download page and download the desired upgrade package
• Open cPanel and go to File Manager
• In the root of your Joomla! installation, upload the package file using the Upload button
• When the file is uploaded, right click on the file and select Extract
• The extraction will overwrite the necessary files, and your Joomla! install will be upgraded!
• Remember to delete the uploaded file

It's as simple as that!

The only problem now is that, if you have made any changes in Joomla! proprietary files, these may have overwritten, and these changes will have to be made again. In the next post, I will describe one of these changes in more detail.

Happy upgrading!

Robin Roelofsen

"I think complexity is mostly sort of crummy stuff that is there because it's too expensive to change the interface."
Jaron Lanier

'Internet Explorer cannot open the Internet site http://www.\<your site>/<your page>.html. Operation aborted'

I had this same problem happening on my site. I could not see the error myself as I am using IE 8, but visitors using a lower IE version frequently had this issue.

Apparently the error is caused by some scripting error, Microsoft admits there is a problem and recommends updating Internet Explorer to version 8, which solves the issue.

But not all users can update their IE version, or company policy prohibits to use a new, untested version on their company hardware. To accomodate all visitors, you will need to adjust your site to prevent this problem from interfering with your visitor's browsing experience.

I checked out this issue today after a visitor complaint, and came up with the following easy fix:

• Download component ReReplacer from the Joomla! Extensions site
• Install ReReplacer via Extensions | Install/Uninstall
• Go to the component via Components | ReReplacer
• Click the New icon to create a new item
• In the Name field in Details, type DomReady Replace (or something else to identify the item)
• In Search & Replace:
  • type domready in the Search box
  • type load in the Replace box

• In Search Areas, select Everywhere in the Enable in area dropdown box

• Click the Save icon, and check if the item is published
• Clean the cache by going to Tools | Clean Cache, select everything and click the Delete icon
• Clean the expired cache by going to Tools | Purge Expired Cache and click the Purge expired icon

The problem is now solved!

Robin Roelofsen

"I think complexity is mostly sort of crummy stuff that is there because it's too expensive to change the interface."
Jaron Lanier

My problem was a bit different: I want to clear all hits at the start of the month, so I can see which articles are most popular that month and so I can show the most popular ones on my site. Well… since I have sites with quite a lot of articles on them, I do not want to reset the hit counter for each article individually by hand, of course!

Browsing around a bit gave me the solution to this hits counter reset issue!

Most Joomla! sites will be hosted by a host providing cPanel. If not, you should have it!

The hits counter resides in your MySQL database in table jos_content. Of course, you need to know which database name you are using. You can find that in your Joomla! admin interface:

• Go to Site | Global Configuration
• Go to tab Server
• Under Database Settings, you can see the database name

Now to reset all counters for your Joomla! site:

• Log on to cPanel, scroll down to Databases and click on the phpMyAdmin icon
• In phpMyAdmin, go to tab SQL
• Type in the following command in the box:

use <full database-name>;
update jos_content set hits=0;

• … where the database name is the name you found in the Global Configuration
• Click the Start button

Example:

use johnny_jo100;
update jos_content set hits=0;

This will set all article hits counters to zero for that particular Joomla! site!

When you have multiple Joomla! sites residing on your host, you can set the hits counters for all sites to zero in one SQL query like this:

use <1st database name>;
update jos_content set hits=0;
use <2nd database name>;
update jos_content set hits=0;
use <3rd database name>;
update jos_content set hits=0;
use <4th database name>;
update jos_content set hits=0;
use <5th database name>;
update jos_content set hits=0;
use <6th database name>;
update jos_content set hits=0;

etcetera…

Save the commands in a text file, so you can use it next time as well.

The method is a bit tedious – Joomla! should have something like this built in, in my opinion, preferably with a time and date selection when the reset needs to happen – but at least it does the job!

Robin Roelofsen

"I think complexity is mostly sort of crummy stuff that is there because it's too expensive to change the interface."
Jaron Lanier

• subject line 'New entry added' to the administrator (me)
• subject line 'Your entry has been received' for the confirmation mail to the sender of the mail

There is no variable – yet – in the JForms interface to change that, and it looks quite unprofessional to the sender and is quite annoying for the admin when he or she runs multiple sites. The subject line should, in my humble opinion, at least give away the site name the mail is sent from, so the admin knows what action to take.

It took me some time, but I finally found the solution. It's requires going into a php file and changing stuff, but for most admins, that should not be a problem.

The solution

• Fire up your favorite FTP application (I use CuteFTP) and go to your Joomla! installation folder
• Go to folder /administrator/components/com_jforms/plugins/storage/Mail
• Download file mail.php to your desktop
• Make a security copy of the mail.php file, so you have a proper copy when things don't work out!
• Use a text editor (Notepad), make sure you turn Word Wrap off, and open the mail.php file
• Go to the following lines:

//$mail->setSender( array( $email, $name ) );
$mail->SetSubject(JText::_('New entry added'));
$mail->SetBody( $adminMessage );
$mail->Send();

• Change the text 'New entry added' in line $mail->SetSubject(JText::_('New entry added')); to the subject you want to use for the administrator mail. Make sure you do not delete the start or end quotes!
• Go to the following lines:

//$mail->setSender( array( $email, $name ) );
$mail->SetSubject(JText::_('Your entry has been received'));
$mail->SetBody($userMessage);
$mail->Send();

• Change the text 'Your entry has been received' in line $mail->SetSubject(JText::_('Your entry has been received')); to the subject you want to use for the confirmation mail the sender receives. Again, make sure you do not delete the start or end quotes!
• Save the mail.php file (WordWrap should be off, otherwise the file contents mash up!), open it again to ensure the file still looks good, and upload it to the folder you downloaded it from

This takes care of this tiny issue with JForms!

Robin Roelofsen

"I think complexity is mostly sort of crummy stuff that is there because it's too expensive to change the interface."
Jaron Lanier

When I went to my site and into one of the categories, everything looked as it should. However, when I refreshed the page using IE's Refresh button, all images on that page disappeared and did not return until I cleared my site's cache!

I was afraid it was a problem with the SEF (search engine friendly URLs) settings, and that was the case apparently. When I turned off sh404SEF, it did work correctly, but I wanted that plugin enabled, of course.

I went into the forums, and found the simple solution that solved the problem:

• In your Administrator interface, go to Extensions | Plugin Manager
• In the Select Type dropdown box on the right, select 'system'
• Make sure 'System – SEF' is the first plugin in the list of system plugins, so before the 'System – sh404sef' plugin

  

• Clear your cache and it all works correctly now!

I hope that, when you encounter the same issue with disappearing images in Joomla!, you can solve the problem using this fix as well!

Robin Roelofsen

"I think complexity is mostly sort of crummy stuff that is there because it's too expensive to change the interface."
Jaron Lanier