Here are some interesting Joomla blog posts I found during week 34, 2013:
- Meet the Team - James Spencer
- Zen Grid Bridge themes now have better support for Bootstrap
- How to resize module positions in T3 templates
- Corporate template for Joomla 3
- Five things I learnt from moving to Joomla 3
- Zentools refreshed and set loose
- Join us - Joomla Maintenance and Monitoring Webinar
Written by Ryan Pierson
James Spencer has been a valued member of the RocketTheme team since 2007 and has been involved in Joomla product development, documentation, and support throughout that time. He holds two degrees in Law, and currently resides in the UK.
In this article, we’ll ask James a series of question in order to get to know him a bit more.
When and how did you begin with RocketTheme? What are some of the jobs you've had with us?
I joined RocketTheme in early 2007 as a member to use one of the templates for a project for College. I started helping out in the forums, and then was brought on board as part of the Moderator team and have become steadily more involved over the years. I've been involved in a lot of different areas over the past five years. These include: support (forum/email/premier support), demo construction, documentation, side development projects like Afterburner2, assisting with the main club releases, bug fixes, updates, and lots of different maintenance tasks over the years.
Zen Grid Bridge themes now have better support for Bootstrap
Written by Anthony Olsen
When I first announced the release of our first Zen Grid Bridge based theme, there was one part of the process that I had a tiny blindspot with - Bootstrap.
The truth is that one of the biggest issues with porting old themes to Joomla 3 is bootstrap. I know there are some Joomla 3 templates that are completely bootstrap-less but that seems like a mis-step given that Joomla is built on a bootstrap foundation.
So after a fair amount of discussion ... I am happy to say that the Joomla 3 version of Corporate and Ascent are now bootstrap compatible.
Take me to the bridge (again) ...
We made this happen via the use of a new plugin called Zenbridge which helps to combine your theme's hilite colours with Bootstrap variables. The end result is that bootstrap inherits your theme's colour settings which ensures that there are no irregular or missed colours in the template - i.e. no more big blue buttons.
How to resize module positions in T3 templates
Written by Anthony Olsen
T3 offers powerful control over module widths across a various number of screen sizes. The width of the module positions in our T3 based Joomla templates is controlled by a graphical user interface in the layout tab in the template administrator.
This article describes how to use this interface.
Template Admin – Layout Tab
Open up the template admin (in this example we are using the Portal Template – the Sept 2013 template) and navigate to the layout tab, which is marked here by the arrow.
Corporate template for Joomla 3
Written by Anthony Olsen
One of our most popular Joomla business templates is now available for Joomla 3. It uses the new bridge framework I announced a few weeks ago with a new an improved version that provides better support for Bootstrap using LESS.
The Corporate Joomla template theme was one of our first business focussed responsive templates. It features a full width background slideshow with a pixelated overlay, some sharp lines and a ton of white space.
Upgrading from an old version of Corporate?
While we work on the documentation for the Joomla 3 version take some time to look through the using a Zen Grid Bridge template documentation for an understanding of what's changed between Joomla 2.5 and Joomla 3 and how to move an existing site to Joomla 3.
Five things I learnt from moving to Joomla 3
Written by Anthony Olsen
Updating your own website when you are a developer is akin to a plumber fixing a leaking tap - it never gets done. Well that's a broad generalisation but you get what I mean.
I've wanted to update the Joomlabamboo network of sites to Joomla 2.5 and then Joomla 3 for a very long time and I am happy to say that this blog is now running on Joomla 3.
Moving to J3 was literally done over the weekend just gone (fun times!) and would have been much faster had I not entertained the idea of a redesign as well. There are a few design tweaks here and there but compared with the ideas I had floating around during the migration process this is much more a realignment than a redesign.
So what was the process?
The path I took moving to Joomla 3 was probably not that much unlike your own attempts at moving J1.5 sites across to Joomla 2.5 and beyond.
Zentools refreshed and set loose
Written by Anthony Olsen
Last week I spent some time giving the Zentools demo site a little refresh and along with this update to the extension, the demo site and the documentation I am excited to say that we have a new product line available.
Introducing Zentools stand alone
The Zentools module has long been a favourite amongst our members and for some time now I have wanted to de-couple it from our club system and make it available as a stand alone purchase. And so now it is ... Zentools can be yours for $30 AUD with 12 months worth of updates.
Users will of course also get access to our support and ticket system for help with Zentools related issues.
Join us - Joomla Maintenance and Monitoring Webinar
Written by Jessica Dunbar
Take your web administration skills to the next level by attending our free webinar provided by via our colleagues at cloudaccess.net - expert Joomla hosts!
Businesses today depend on their websites more than ever. It is crucial for website owners, developers, and maintainers to protect them. To protect organization's data, you need to implement a data backup, security and update plan. Backing up files can protect against accidental loss of data, database corruption, hardware failures, and most common-- hacked websites. It's your job as an administrator to make sure that backups are performed and that backups can be restored with minimal data loss.
Friday, we bring you a walk through of Watchful and show you a first hand learning experience, and some practical advice on maintaining your Joomla websites.
Who should attend?
Almost every website owner or web administrator can benefit from a strong monitoring, security workflow. Whether you are hosting, developing, or updating Joomla websites this webinar will brings practical advice regarding monitoring, security, and keeping joomla websites safe and up to date.
