Joomla: Create Automatic Contacts with Contact Creator Plugin

Joomla allows you to automatically save new contacts in your Contact component when a user create an account.

In this tutorial we will show you how to use Contact Creator plugin to build a simple user's directory.

Enable the Contact Creator plugin

• Go to Extensions > Plugins
• Search for "User - Contact Creator" plugin

• Automatic webpage is optional
• Select the category for new contacts
• Set automatically publish the contact as yes
• Set status as enable
• Save when you’re done

Test: register a new user

• Go to the register area in your frontpage
• Fill all the information such as username, email, password, etc
• When you're done, click register button

In your backend, go to Components > Contacts to confirm the new contact item was created automatically.

Create a menu item

Let’s create a public page to display all the contacts

• Go to Menus > Your menu > Add new menu item
• In menu item type choose Contact > List contacts in a category
• Select the category
• Save when you're done

Visit your public site to see the end result:

 

How to Create Tabs without Third Party Extensions for a Joomla Article

Joomla comes with native tabs support for single articles. The plugin that render this feature is the same that split an article into several pages.
In this tutorial we will show you how to add tabs in your articles with the Page break plugin.

The article

• Go to Content > Articles > New
• Add some content, in my example I’m using dummy text.

• Put the mouse cursor at the beginning of the first paragraph, which later will be displayed as a tab.
• Click Page break

• Set a Page title
• Add an Alias, such as some-text-with-no-spaces (optional)
• Insert page break

Repeat the process to create a new tab. Put the mouse cursor in the end of the first set of content. For example: the second paragraph.

• Set a title for the article
• Save and close

The Page Break plugin

• Go to Extensions > Plugins
• Search “Content - Page Break”

• Set Presentation Style as “tabs”
• Be sure the plugin’s status is enabled
• Save and close

The menu item

We need a link to display the article in frontend.

• Create a menu item through Menus > Your menu > Add new menu item
• Menu item type: Articles > Single article
• Choose the article
• Set a Title
• Save and close

End result

Preview the article with tabs from the new menu item in your public site:

 

Joomla database escape() and quote() functions

The escape() function is used to escape bad characters in order to protect against SQL injection.

The quote() function is used to quote strings, because different database dialects have different quoting characters.
So depending on the database system you use, Joomla will choose the appropriate quoting characters.

To add a filter to Joomla component side bar using options

To add a filter to Joomla component side bar  using options

$db   = JFactory::getDbo();
$query = 'SELECT mycolumn FROM MyTable';
$db->setQuery($query);
$rows = $db->loadObjectList();
$options = array();
foreach ($rows as $row) {
   $options[] = JHtml::_('select.option', "$row->mycolumn", JText::_($row->mycolumn));
}
JHtmlSidebar::addFilter('- Select mycolumn -','mycolumn', JHtml::_('select.options',$options,'value', 'text', $this->state->get('filter.mycolumn'), true));

Free Joomla componenet to export contacts data to CSV file

Free Joomla componenet to export contacts data to CSV file.
click here for info and download

Reuse / Load a Model Anywhere in Joomla 2.5/3.x

Sometimes you may wish to reuse a certain function that resides in a model outside of your current scope. This helps you save time and reduce duplication. This can be achieved easily by adding the following codes.

Assuming you are trying to call a model "Categories" (/components/com_mycomponent/models/categories.php) belonging to com_mycomponent (this can be called from either within or outside of the com_mycomponent):

jimport('joomla.application.component.model');
JModelLegacy::addIncludePath(JPATH_SITE.'/components/com_mycomponent/models');
$categoriesModel = JModelLegacy::getInstance( 'Categories', 'MyComponentModel' );

Now you can call its methods, example:

$categoriesModel->getCategories();

Multiple controllers in Joomla MVC component

Joomla basic tutorial and understand that the main controller is located under components/com_component/controller.php & other file is components/com_helloworld/helloworld.php which is pointing to controller.php file to execute the request. You create new controller folder and put all controllers in that folder


The main controller is typically used to do what you mention in your comment (render a view based on the view parameter, usually specified in the URL). In controller.php, the function that does this is called display(). So the following URL:

http://example.com/index.php?option=com_mycomponent&view=test

Will result in calling the display() function in controller.php and loads the view test in /views/test.

Subcontrollers, in the controllers folder, are generally used for CRUD tasks, but can be called easily by using a task URL parameter. For example:

http://example.com/index.php?option=com_mycomponent&task=test.process

Will result in calling the process() function in /controllers/test.php - notice the task parameter is <controllerName>.<functionName>

Joomla Useful reference

Joomla Constant
https://docs.joomla.org/Constants


Component
Developing Joomla 3.x component

To remove the font size, search box & space above the header in joomla 2.5

To remove the font size, search box & space above the header in which they preside in the Beez 20 template there are 2 steps. All you must do is remove the following from the index.php tempate file:

<div id="line">
<div id="fontsize"></div>
<h3 class="unseen"><?php echo JText::_('TPL_BEEZ2_SEARCH'); ?></h3>
<jdoc:include type="modules" name="position-0" />
</div>

And then in the CSS folder you must edit the "layout.css" file.
add
#header
{margin-top: -60px;}

Remove the font resizer from joomla 2.5 site page header

Go to  Extensions > Template Manager .  Then click on the templates link (see image)

Now click on the "Beez_20 Details and Files" link

Next click on the "edit main page template" link

Now you are editing the index.php file of "beez_20"  template. search for the following code
<div id="fontsize"></div>
Remove or comment it out like this
<!-- <div id="fontsize"></div> -->
When done, Save the file. This is how you can remove the font resizer very easily from the top of joomla 2.5 beez 2 template.