joomla

Earlier this year I've redesigned the templates of the Flevoziekenhuis. The old templates really needed an update. This assignment was granted very late in the process of introducing the new corporate identity. The Flevoziekenhuis hospital building was already decorated with the new logo. And print communications and other media outings were already branded according to the new style designed by Different View. So when I got the assignment as 2Value associate, we had less then a month from initial talks to launch.

And next to visuals we had to make some navigational and accessibility improvements which lacked in the previous templates. I completely overhauled the navigation structure. I cut the amount of menus and modules by about 80%. I also took care of the Joomla 1.5 legacy mode. The website now runs fully native. Most of all, the new templates validate in xhtml 1.0 strict doctype (except for some third party remote included code). All in all the new templates and site structure are a major improvement in accessibility and maintainability. Plus, it looks a lot better and loads faster.

The Independent Brokers Group is a large collective of real estate agents. Three of those agents asked 2Value to build their new website:

• Ten Hag makelaarsgroep (Enschede area)
• Brecheisen (Utrecht area)
• Verbeek makelaars (Nijmegen area)

In a joined effort with fellow 2Value associates Kor Dwarshuis and Nathan Waelkens, we created a set of nearly identical, but individually brandable websites. Ten Hag was the first to adopt the new structure and styling of their site. The sites all feature an open source CMS coupled with open source Realty software. All in a clear and simple new layout. We also built a connection to Funda, the largest Dutch real estate website.

I'll be attending the Dutch Joomla Days. This year the event takes place on 23rd and 24th of April in Utrecht.

Harm Henstra is a coach and interim manager based in Haarlem. He needed a small, straightforward website to present himself and his services. So rapidly I put up a new Joomla installation. After a short planning meeting Harm wrote most of the content in his new website. I structured it and filled the site. We jointly choose a stock template and I adapted the colours and feel to his corporate identity. Next, we put up the "pawn" images and portraits to finish the global layout. Finally I gave a small instruction on how to use Joomla to manage the content in the website. In under two days the website was finished. The resulting website is clean, easy to navigate and reflects the "game" theme of Harm Henstra's method.

Correct SEF routing in Joomla is pretty easy thanks to the class JRoute. If you want to redirect to a clean url just use the basic method _(); like so:

JRoute::_('index.php?option=com_example&task=view');

Unfortunately, this method isn't aware of url aliases created in menu items. JRoute just alters a dirty url like /index.php?option=com_example&task=view in a clean url like /components/example/view. Let's say you've created menu item to this components task with the alias: /view-example. JRoute doesn't redirect to the alias, just to the cleaned up system url. This is a problem because menu items are essential if you want to define page parameters or module visibility. These parameters are only visible if the url matches exactly. If you want to create redirects to url aliases in your Joomla modules or components you can try the following snippet.

$menu =& JSite::getMenu();
$menu_items = $menu->_items;
foreach($menu_items as $item) {
    $match = 0;
    if($item->query['option'] == 'com_example')    $match = $match+1;
    if($item->query['task'] == 'view') $match = $match+1;
 
    $matches[$match] = $item->route;
}
if(key_exists(1, $matches)) {
    array_shift($matches);
    array_reverse($matches, false);
 
    $action_url = JRoute::_(JUri::base(true).'/'.$matches[0]);
}

This will create a path to a single alias created in a menu item if a matching menu item exists. You can also do this for other components by specifying the match criteria. For example:

I've created a Joomla Readspeaker plugin for the Flevo Hospital in Almere. Readspeaker is a technology that allows webdevelopers to embed a screenreader on a website. Off course many people with a visual handicap already use screenreaders but these usually read everything on the webpage. With readspeaker, the webdeveloper can decide which content should be read, and which shouldn't. Also it's a platform independent solution. If you have a recent webbrowser with javascript enabled it works. Of course I think that creating semantically correct html should be the first and foremost priority for accessible websites. But readspeaker is a nice addition to the web developer's toolbox.

The Dutch Joomla Days will take place at 12 & 13 June 2009 in the Mercure hotel in Nieuwegein. The event is aimed as much at the Joomla community as it is at professionals. The two day event will have a business - and a community oriented day.
This year I will be giving a training on professional Joomla implementation. The training will be a joint effort of three 2value associates. I will be talking about the use of Subversion in developing and deploying large Joomla sites.

Recently however, the SugarCRM company changed the portal functionality of the community and professional editions of their software. The portal functions are now only available to the enterprise edition of SugarCRM. This also means that the default portal fields are removed from the contacts module. As a consequence, most users of SugarCRM and my authentication plugin will prefer to authenticate on custom fields only. The video below demonstrates how to create those fields.

GenerationWhy is een platform en kenniscentrum voor jonge mediators. Diensten:

• Coaching
• Peer-mediation
• Training
• Onderzoek & Ontwikkeling

Samen met ervaren mediators en trainers ontwikkelen we praktische en duurzame oplossingen voor eigentijdse uitdagingen. De laatste inzichten uit de wetenschap worden hierbij toegepast. We spelen voortdurend in op de actualiteit. We bieden mediation aan in situaties waarbij jongeren betrokken zijn - denk hierbij aan relaties, familie, opleiding, werk en maatschappij.