J2.5:Developing a MVC Component/Introduction

This is a multiple article series on how to develop of Model-View-Contoller Component for Joomla! Version . You can navigate the articles in this series by using the navigation box.

Read the Introduction or Start here. On any page you can use the links in the navigation box above.

Requirements

You need Joomla! 2.5 (with PHP, MySQL, Apache and Microsoft II) or greater for this tutorial.

Introduction

Joomla! 2.5 is constructed using three different applications:

• installation (used for installing Joomla)
• administrator (used for managing content)
• public (used for displaying content)

The installation application is used once. The administrator and public are used through the concept of components. Each component has two entry points:

• one is located in the components directory (it is used for displaying content)
• one is located in the administrator/components directory (it is used for managing content)

Both are called com_componentname/componentname.php (the com_ prefix is a historical trace)

Get locally hosted Joomla! website e-mail functions to work

Most ISPs block port 25 so you cannot send email from your own computer's SMTP server. This is to block spammers. If you don't intend to spam, you can use your ISP's mail server.

To get the email function from your ISP SMTP server even if you are hosting your own Joomla site on your own computer to work sign in as administrator to your Joomla site. In the menu bar: Site - Global Configuration - mail tab. Your data should look like the following:

Mailer: SMTP Server
MailFrom: someone@example.com
From Name:      SomeName
Sendmail Path  /usr/sbin/sendmail
SMTP Auth:      Yes
SMTP User: johndoe  (username at one of your email accounts at your ISP)
SMTP Pass:      trr33459  (password at one of your email accounts at your ISP)
SMTP Host:      smtp.charter.net  (Whatever your ISP tells you to use for their SMTP servers)

The SMTP User, Pass, and Host are the same fields you enter when adding an Outlook Express Account, or Eudora, or any client email you may use on your computer.

You may run into problems with extensions that change the "from" address in the emails being sent out. For example, the ProjectFork extension sometimes sends emails as if they are coming from person in control of the project. This can cause a problem because some ISP SMTP servers will not allow a "from" address that does not match the user name (e.g. Rogers in Canada). You will get a message like this: "PHPMAILER_FROM_FAILEDname@whatever.com." A work around is to make sure that you always use a valid email address from you ISP for your users.

To access the Template Manager

• Log in to the Administrator (Back-end). If you are not sure how to do this see: To log in to the Administrator (Back-end)

• Click on: Extensions -> Template Manager

You will now see the Template Manager screen.

Note: If you do not see Template Manager listed as an option on the Extensions menu, then it is most likely because you are not logged in as a Super Administrator. Only Super Administrators will see this menu item.

Free joomla template ZT Xenia

Think of valued customers with the affection born of our long friendship, we’re honored to present a free joomla template -  ZT Xenia as a thank for our long lasting relationship and a wish that this association will continue in 2012 with more strength and vigor.

ZT Xenia is made by our dedicated team of designers who know what the quality means. Being designed as one of the world's largest premium joomla template with fully support of K2 CCK, Mega Menus, RTL languages, Piecemaker 3D slideshow, Color Tools, ZT Xenia is the best combination of visual efficiency and simplicity of editing. If you're looking for premium, high quality website templates, look no further!

Joomla templates features

• Can be used for kind corporate, portfolio, business website...
• Build in color tools
• Mega Menu supported
• 100% Tableless design. 100% CSS/DIV compliance.
• Joomla 1.5 and Joomla 2.5 native
• Smartphone template ready
• RTL language support
• Well-comment CSS and PHP code files
• Tutorial + Detailed userguide
• Delivered with source Adobe .PSD files
• Delivered with QuickStart Package
• K2 CCK supported
• Piecemaker 3D slideshow supported
• 2 columns layout based template
• 16 module positions ready
• Compatible IE 7+, Safari, Mozilla Firefox, Opera 9+, Chrome
• Javascript, Css compression and Cache supported

Free joomla template ZT Zizia

ZT Zizia from ZooTemplate is a free business joomla template with modern touch, which makes it compatible to most kind of business website.

Thanks to ZT Headlines, ZT PieceMaker, ZT Zizia becomes a modern business template with completely slick and creative design where the minimalistic needs meet the clean and freshness. Besides, ZT Zizia also provides you a completely professional corporate environment to showcase your company and products. It is totally agreeable to say that the quality of ZT Zizia exceeds most templates found in premium market.

Joomla templates features

• Can be used for kind corporate, portfolio, business website...
• Mega Menu supported
• 100% Tableless design. 100% CSS/DIV compliance.
• Joomla 2.5 native
• Smartphone template ready
• RTL language support
• Well-comment CSS and PHP code files
• Tutorial + Detailed userguide
• Delivered with source Adobe .PSD files
• Delivered with QuickStart Package
• K2 CCK supported
• Piecemaker 3D slideshow supported
• 2 columns layout based template
• 16 module positions ready
• Compatible IE 7+, Safari, Mozilla Firefox, Opera 9+, Chrome
• Javascript, Css compression and Cache supported

What's 9MagentoThemes QuickStart Package

9MagentoThemes provides QuickStart package for each theme which aims to easy to use and comfortable for users. It will help you save much time of installing and configuring if you plan to start your site from the beginning. Installing QuickStart package is quite easy as you install normal magento. The QuickStart package included all the files needed to install magento 1.5.x latest stable version, our theme, extensions, also the sql dump content included to set the template exactly like we show on the demo showcase.
QuickStart= Magento version 1.5.x + MT themes + extensions + sql demo contents

How to install 9MagentoThemes QuickStart package?

1. Download the QuickStart package .zip file from the 9MagentoThemes website and uncompress it (you can use winrar or winzip to uncompress files on windows machine or use unzip zipfilename.zip to uncompress files on Linux server)
2. Upload the Magento web files to your web server via FTP
3. Create a MySQL database and user/password for Magento This step varies by hosting provider and is out of the scope of this document. Consult your provider's support/documentation for instructions on how to do this.
4. Ensure that the file magento/var/.htaccess, the directories magento/app/etc, magento/var, and all the directories under magento/media are writable by the web server. To do so, navigate to the directory with your FTP client. Then locate the function "Change Permissions" or "Change Mode" in your FTP client and select it. Once you find the function, you must set the permissions so the web server can write to this file. There are two typical ways of representing file permissions in Linux:
   1. As a number (eg, 755)
   2. As a series of permissions categorized into user, group, and other
   If your FTP client uses the first representation, set the permissions on each directory to be 777, or 0777. If your FTP client uses the second representation, set the permissions as shown in the image below.

5. Use your web browser to surf to the Magento installation wizard. If you've uploaded the Magento files to http://www.example.com/magento/, then the wizard will be located here: http://www.example.com/magento/install/.
6. Once in the wizard, you can configure various system-level settings that are required for Magento to function. Most options will be intelligently guessed for you, but you're free to override any settings that don't look right. At the very least, change the database parameters in the first box “Database connection” to match those of the database you set up in Step 2.
7. Success! You've installed 9MagentoThemes QuickStart package. You can now visit the administration backend and begin configuring your new online store

Magento Themes Design Book Review

Magento 1.4 Themes Design was written by Richard Carter and published by Packt Publishing. It was published in January of this year (2011). I read the eBook copy, so I have not yet been able to look at the paper copy, but if it is like every other book published by Packt, there’s not much to complain about.

This book is geared towards beginners looking to get their hands dirty with theming Magento, and understanding how it works. If you are only used to theming applications like WordPress or ZenCart, you will find Magento very difficult. Magento doesn’t just use template files. Magento is much more like a framework, and should be considered as such. They have implemented a powerful system of blocks, layout xml, and template files. The concept can be difficult to wrap your head around, and that’s where this book can really help you get started.
You’ll find the book very well organized, and the author does an amazing job explaining concepts without rambling on forever. There are many occasions where a link to a article (mostly wiki articles on Magento’s site) that better explains the concept in detail, which is nice as it doesn’t clog up the book, and allows you to choose to explore the concept further or not.
Some of the things about things about this book that I appreciate:

• Suggests when upgrading from 1.3 to 1.4 to start the theme over from scratch. While this seems crazy, from my experience, it has been the best option.
• In chapter 1, the author goes through 6 differently themed Magento sites (3 themes that come with a fresh Magento installation, and 3 established websites using Magento) and explains the design elements in Magento terminology. It was great to see so many examples to see how magento themes can be used differently.
• Defined the challenges of theming with Magento.
• Did a nice job of explaining theme hierarchy.
• Suggests only using a single xml layout file for your custom themes. I had already learned that this is a great practice to have, and the fact that the author suggested this and gave good reason for it was appreciated.
• Walk you through how to create a theme from scratch (though still basically based off of the base/default theme).

As you walk through the chapters in this book, it does a nice job easing you into the concepts, and keeps the flow going, building further upon what you are learning. Overall, for a beginner, I would highly recommend this book.
The only cons of this book: If you are hoping for a detailed and in-depth explanation of how layout xml works (like I was), this book won’t quite do it, though does a great job explaining the basics, which is the purpose of the book. The only other complaint I have is that the author suggests that you FTP all of the unpacked files to the server. I wouldn’t ever suggest that, but, if you are a beginner and are unfamiliar with using the command line, I guess it gets the job done (though very slowly!).