Commented out this from the .htaccess file inside of public_html

## Disallow visual fingerprinting of Joomla! sites (module position dump)
## http://www.slideshare.net/brianteeman/hidden-joomla-secrets
## Improved to work more efficiently and handle template
## and tmpl query parameters
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} (^|&)tmpl=component [NC]
RewriteRule .* – [L]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} (^|&)tp= [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} (^|&)template= [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} (^|&)tmpl= [NC]
RewriteRule .* – [F]

Using the generic Gantry Template as an example, we’ll show you:

• How to locate the CSS code.
• How to find the location of the logo graphic using a process of elimination.
• Demonstrate inheritance in CSS.

There are some requirements if you want to follow the example exactly.

• Firefox as your browser .
• Firebug installed as an add on.
• The Gantry Framework installed on Joomla. (A test site is preferred.)
• The Gantry Template installed on Joomla.

You can get both the framework and the template at http://gantry-framework.org. They are open source and there is no charge.

Looking at the statistics on my web visitors, Firefox is used by such an overwhelming majority, I’m going to use it as the sample. There are similar tools that work with IE and Chrome if you are familiar with them.

If you need Firefox and Firebug you can get them from http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/fx/.
You can get add-ons like Firebug here https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/.

Right-click on the Gantry logo.
Choose Inspect Element from the context menu.

A split window will open and you will see
1. HTML Tab
2. The html code
3. The Style Tab
4. The CSS code
5. The name of the CSS file that has the code

In the Style pane you see the CSS for the logo. It’s #rt-logo and it’s on line 1 of template css.
The background image is located at – background-image: url("../images/logo/logo.png");

In a usual template, you could make a new logo.png and upload it to that directory, or you could go into the CSS file and change the location of the image by editing the url. This is where this gets a bit tricky with Gantry and other frameworks. I’ll show you what I mean.

As you run your mouse over the lines you see some gray circles. If you click one of those gray circles, Firebug will temporarily "turn off" that line so it is not active. You can bring it back by clicking again or refreshing the page.

Normally this would make the logo image disappear, but as you can see in the above image, it is still there. Obviously this isn’t the actual logo.

Look a little farther down the page and you see another section labeled #rt-logo, and there is a line through everything, except the background image. The strike through went away when you turned off the background image in the section above.

Now go down the line and click the circle next to the background image in the second section.

The logo has disappeared.

This happens because there are two style sheets that control things. In this case template.css and gantry.css. They can’t both be right so one will take precedence over the other. This demonstrates the idea of "inheritance" in css styling.

One way to replace this logo on your site would be to create another logo and name it header-assets.png and overwrite the one in the images file. Or you could open the gantry.css and change the url to the background image there.

Frameworks and more complicated templates use inheritance, which may introduce a little more complexity to your CSS work.

Next time you change the CSS coding, but don’t see any change on the site, you may need to look a little further to see which style sheet is really controlling the layout. You may need to change things in more than one location, so be sure you don’t give up too easily.

To quote Dries Buyteart, “Personally, based on listening to a lot of people, I believe that for Drupal 8, the release date should be 18 months after Drupal 7 reaches its Plateau of Productivity.” Dries Buyteart is is the original creator and project lead for Drupal.

Generally, he’s the one that decides when Drupal 7 reaches its Plateau of Productivity, and there hasn’t been any such announcement yet. You could say Drupal 8 is around the corner – after we go down the street, cross the bridge, go four more blocks and take a gentle left at the fork, to the stop sign, look to the west and see the corner – then we can go around it. You can read more about it on his blog.entry on release date planning.

So the actual release date at this time is a bit fluid, and estimates put it sometime in 2012. Hopefully, we’re not using the Mayan calendar for that prediction.

If you want to read all the details check out the Understanding Drupal article on the drupal.org site.

In the meantime there are initiatives. These are the project outlines of what’s to come. And there are a lot of them.

Borrowing the opening paragraph from the blog on garfieldtech.com:

“At DrupalCon Chicago, Dries announced that the development process for Drupal 8 would be a bit different.

Rather than a vast dog pile of efforts to improve Drupal in ways big and small, Drupal 8 will feature a number of major “core initiatives”.

These initiatives highlight major areas of work that represent not just a patch or three but major changes to Drupal’s plumbing. Each initiative will have one or two initiative leads who have the ability to coordinate and make decisions relating to that initiative while working closely with Dries.

In a large sense, it is a way for Dries to scale; Rather than Dries having to keep track of 1000 ongoing conversations himself, initiative owners can coordinate related changes while Dries coordinates the initiative owners. It also gives a clear indication of what work is happening and what to expect out of Drupal 8.”

Drupal has several “initiatives” running at the same time. Each initiative addresses an aspect of Drupal that the developers see as crucial to the evolution of the platform.

For announcements specifically about Drupal 8, please see the Drupal 8 Initiatives group (RSS feed).

This group is an announcement list of major discussions and happenings in Drupal 8 initiatives, cross-posted from their dedicated groups and issue queues. If you only have time to read a single channel of info on Drupal 8, this is the one! The initiative dashboard will direct you to the most relevant news, roadmap, issues, docs, code and chat on Drupal 8 initiatives.

Content in the Drupal 8 initiatives Group, as described by the group…

” …is along the lines of:

• a) We think a decision has been reached, and here’s the decision. Feedback?
• b) We’re trying to reach a decision, and we need help. Here’s where to chime in to help us reach it.
• c) General status reports about “Hey, if you’ve been busy for the past while, here’s what’s going on and what things you should know.”

Unfortunately, this group needs to be kept invite-only in order to keep the content curated to only important announcements of general interest, but you are warmly encouraged to comment and participate on any discussions posted to this group!”

For announcements of major initiatives and opportunities to contribute, follow the Core announcements group (RSS feed, @drupalcore on twitter.). If you want to be able to throw in your two cents, you can also learn how to contribute even if it’s only to the discussion.

I couldn’t find a succinct description of this initiative. An list of the problems they are solving will give you an idea of the direction.

• Currently there is no good way to move Drupal configuration information between environments because this data is scattered throughout the database in a variety of formats, oftentimes intermingled with content.
• This also makes it impossible to version control this information, to store history, and to be able to rollback changes.
• Every module stores their configuration data in a different format, there is no standardization at all, even within core.
• There is also no standard API for saving this information (aside from the simple case of the variables table) so developer often roll their own solutions.
• The entire contents of the variables table is loaded on each page request, even for rarely-accessed data, leading to memory bloat.
• It is cumbersome to manage information that is different between server environments for the same project (database information, api keys, etc.)

CMI – Configuration Management Inititive – http://groups.drupal.org/build-systems-change-management/cmi

Web services are an area that is exploding in recent years, and will only continue to become more important. What does that mean? In a nutshell, a web service is a web site responding to a request not with an HTML page but with data intended for another program to consume. That could be as mundane as an RSS feed, as complex as a headless SOAP application server, or anything in between.

WSCCI – Web Services and Context Core Initiative – http://groups.drupal.org/wscci

Design for Drupal is about bringing the community of designers together to be a part of the Drupal community. It’s about enabling designers and themers to do great stuff, coordinate efforts, come up with crazy ideas, and build a movement to make Drupal beautiful.

Design 4 Drupal – Drupal’s Design Initiative – http://groups.drupal.org/design-drupal

This group works on internationalization issues, like making it possible to translate menus, nodes and taxonomies in Drupal. This includes everything from process and workflows, to actual code issues or optimizations required. The Translations group is where to go if you are working on translating Drupal core or contrib modules.

DUMI – Drupal 8 Multi-Lingual Initiative. (Internationalization) – http://groups.drupal.org/internationalization

This is a discussion and working group for anyone interested in implementing HTML5 markup and API’s in Drupal. We are working on several projects to provide HTML5 support for Drupal 7, and pushing to get HTML5 native markup and form elements into Drupal 8 core.

HTML5 – HMTL 5 Initiative – http://groups.drupal.org/html5

For anyone new to WP. the welcome screen will be very welcome, indeed. It has a link to the a beginners guide, plus an outline of the most common steps to take and help on completing them.

1. This link will take you to the codex and a beginner manual
2. These links go directly to the configuration pages where you can start filling in the configuration.

Once you’ve dismissed this page you can come back to it via the dashboard home screen options tab.

Certain dashboard screens have been updated to look better at various sizes, including improved iPad/tablet support.

If you mouse over the “W” icon at the top left, you’ll get a hidden menu with links to documentation and support. Click “About WordPress” and you will see a page that summarizes all these updates.

The new dashboard menu has flyouts plus an expanded menu. I clicked on pages and you can see the expanded menu, but at the same time if you mouse over another menu item, you get a flyout with direct access to the submenu.

They also combined the old header and the dashboard links to conserve space. The header background color is slightly darker to make it more prominent and easier to see. Mousing over any menu item opens a dropdown menu with links for additional options.

You can also see another new feature – New Feature Pointers – expanded tool tips to help you understand new functions and features when they are added.

Harder to illustrate, but just as friendly, is a Post-update Changelog. There is a new screen that you will see after you update WP, that announces, and gives some explanations of, new features.

Above you can also see how they have consolidated the media icons for uploading media. Now there is only one, and it will automatically determine the file type.

You can drag and drop multiple files from your desktop, or just one.
You can now upload more file types. WP added the rar and 7z file formats to the list of allowed file types in the uploader.

Instead of needing to click on a specific upload icon based on your file type, now there’s just one. Once your file is uploaded, the appropriate fields will be displayed for entering information based on the file type.

This will only upload files, you still can’t insert a video or audio file into a post or page without a player.

Have you ever gone to edit a post after someone else has finished with it, only to get an alert that tells you the other person is still editing the post? From now on, you’ll only get that alert if another person is still on the editing screen — no more time lag.

Want to import content from Tumblr to WordPress? No problem! Go to Tools > Import to get the new Tumblr Importer, which maps your Tumblog posts to the matching WordPress post formats. Tip: Choose a theme designed to display post formats to get the greatest benefit from the importer.

The operation of the widgets hasn’t changed, but there is a very convenient improvement in their configuration in each theme.

Changing themes often requires widget re-configuration based on the number and position of sidebars. Now if you change back to a previous theme, the widgets will automatically go back to how you had them arranged in that theme.

Note: if you’ve added new widgets since the switch, you’ll need to rescue them from the Inactive Widgets area.

Flexible Permalinks
You have more freedom when choosing a post permalink structure. Skip the date information or add a category slug without a performance penalty.

Post Slugs: Less Funky
Funky characters in post titles (e.g. curly quotes from a word processor) will no longer result in garbled post slugs.

jQuery and jQuery UI
WordPress now includes the entire jQuery UI stack and the latest version of jQuery: 1.7.1.

is_main_query()
This handy method will tell you if a WP_Query object is the main WordPress query or a secondary query.

WP_Screen API
WordPress has a nice new API for working with admin screens. Create rich screens, add help documentation, adapt to screen contexts, and more.

Editor API Overhaul – wp_editor() API
The new editor API automatically pulls in all the JS and CSS goodness for the editor. It even supports multiple editors on the same page. Plugins can now access the WordPress editor from anywhere, including rendering the Visual/HTML tabs. The links to upload files and displaying the media library can now be accessed by plugins.

If you want a more detailed list of changes check out this page http://codex.wordpress.org/Version_3.3

WordPress has made this very easy, and the visible differences between 3.2 and 3.3 are subtle and easy to follow. This will not be a confusing or difficult upgrade. There is plenty of help, and they have gone to great lengths to inform you of changes and smooth any transitional problems. But…always make a backup before you do anything.

In this lesson we’ll show you how to download and install the plugin, then how to get the videos into the article. Unlike components, this plugin doesn’t create a link in a drop down menu for you to click on or a link beneath the edit window to insert anything.

You need to be able to write a token. In WordPress they call it shortcode, in Drupal it’s token. i’m calling it a token here. It’s a piece of code in an html document that gets replaced by information from somewhere else when the page is created.

If you use AllVideos, you don’t have to write any embed code or strict html. You can write the token directly into the editing window. It starts with a tag. By tag I mean something very similar to an HTML tag, but this one is special because it uses "{ }" curly brackets. Here’s an example : {mp4}yourvideofilename1{/mp4} Every token has a start-tag {mp4} and and end-tag {/mp4} the / tells you were to end like a period on a sentence.anywhere you place the tag a video is going to show up.

AllVideos lets you put the many different file types between the brackets for an incredible variety of choices.

To get several videos to line up in a square, your going to have to make a table. This will be a lot easier if you have the JCE editor. I show you how to do it with the tinyMCE editor and give you the table code so you can see that part of the process.

You can get AllVideos here http://www.joomlaworks.gr/content/view/16/42/

1. After install go to Extensions > Plug-in Manager
2. Search for allvideos
3. Click the name AllVideos

1. In your images folder create two folders one called videos the other called audio.
2. Upload your videos to the videos folder. Or if you already have them uploaded, change the path in the Local Video and Audio fields.
3. Set the size of the default display window. with four on a page you probably want 300px or less depending on your layout.
4. Decide whether you want the videos to autoplay or not (you probably want "NO").

Be sure to save.

Go to your article manager. Either add a new article or go to the article you want to manage.

Access the HTML code view to enter the table code.

This step depends on which editor you are using and whether or not you know how to put a table into the article. I am going to assume you have the default tinyMCE editor and you don’t know much code. So if that’s you, click on "Toggle Editor" or the HTML in the menu.

In this example I clicked Toggle Editor

Copy and paste, or type this code into your window.
Then be sure to update and save the page.

<table width="80%" border="0" align="center">
<tr>
<td>{mp4}yourvideofilename1{/mp4}</td>
<td>{mp4}yourvideofilename2{/mp4}</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>{mp4}yourvideofilename3{/mp4}</td>
<td>{mp4}yourvideofilename4{/mp4}</td>
</tr>
</table>

Here’s what the table will look like in the editing view. You can do this without the table and all the videos will be stacked up.

1. You created a table to contain your videos. If you have ace, you can insert one from the toolbar. If not use the method above.
2. Into each cell you see the token. In this case the files we want to load end in .mp4.

So we’re going to put {mp4 } in curly brackets on the front, and {/mp4} in curly brackets at the end. Between those start and end tags we want to put the file name without the extension, like this – yourvideofilename – leave off the . and the extension letters.

Example
yourvideofilename1.mp4 – you write {mp4}yourvideofilename(/mp4} if the file ends in .swf you would put swf in the brackets. If it’s from YouTube you would put youtube in the brackets.

If you want to see examples of all the possible tags and tokens you can use, visit their documentation page:

http://www.joomlaworks.gr/content/view/35/41/

There is a great chart that’s easy to follow.

Here’s what it looks like with YouTube videos. I changed mp4 to youtube in the tags. I put the YouTube video number between the tags. No need for embed code, and I can fit it in with normal html and css styling.

Here’s what the youtube videos look like. They are contained by the table, and the default size we set in the configuration step determines their width. You can do some customization in each individual article for some extra control.

You can use syntax inside the start tag to change the appearance on the fly. The added syntax will override the defaults.

You can also use syntax like: {format/provider}filename|width|height|autoplay{/format/provider}. You use the pipe "|" character between each parameter.

For example, an "autoplaying" YouTube video of 100×150 dimensions would be displayed adding this to a content item:

{youtube}inTas4CAls_egj200|150|1{/youtube} – First in line is the file name, then the width, then heighth, and the final "1" indicates autoplay. If you don’t want autoplay, make this a "0".

In the example of the mp4 above we used local media, which means it’s on the same server as the website. But you are not restricted to your own server. We already showed you how to use a streaming service – YouTube. There are many other services and all you need to do to use their media is to put the name of the service in the brackets. Here are a few examples

    {brightcove}1656387563{/brightcove}
    {yahoo}3169238/8981933{/yahoo}
    {collegehumor}1824771{/collegehumor}

You can get remote videos from any website if you know the media type and the full URL to the video. Here are some samples of how you write the tokens to get video from another site that is not a streaming service. You need to indicate it’s a remote source in the start tag.

{mp3remote}http://www.filehosting.com/pixies_bonemachine.mp3{/mp3remote}
{swfremote}http://www.filehosting.com/presentation.swf{/swfremote}
    {mp4remote}http://www.filehosting.com/nadasurf.mp4{/mp4remote}

That’s pretty much all there is to it. You just need to know the type of media, the location of the media and how to write the token. With this knowledge you can put any video or audio source on your website. Combine it with text and a little formatting with tables or divs, add some syntax to the tags, and you can create any arrangement you want to fit your design.

Before you start be sure you have an account with USPS and you have your USPS Web Tools ID available.

You can get the plugin from this URL http://www.hikashop.com/support/forum/2-general-talk-about-hikashop/18681-united-states-postal-service-usps-module.html and documentation – http://www.hikashop.com/en/support/documentation/95-hikashop-shipping-ups-form.html – you can only download it if you are a member of the forum.

After downloading install it using the Extension Manager as you would for any other installation.

Navigate to Extensions > Extension Manager > Browse > Upload & Install

Navigate to Extensions > Plugin Manager and activate the plugin.
Click on the Plug-in Name

Click on Hika shop Options
Choose Enable from the dropdown
Cick Save

Fill in your USPS Web Tools ID and other information and you’re set.

You can also access this configuration information from the HIka shop dashboard if you need to make any changes.

To get to the configuration, just click shipping methods from the System tab on the dashboard. If you’ve filled in the weights and dimensions on your products as you entered them, you should get automatic shipping calculations.

If you have problems, click the help button in Hika Shop or visit their forum.

In this tutorial you will:

1. Create a product
2. Add the price
3. Add Variants
4. Create a category
5. Add price options

This isn’t the best work flow for production. But it is the right sequence for getting an understanding of the process and how all the parts fit. After you understand this, you will be able to more efficiently plan out your cart and approach.

Notes on Hika Cart: There are three versions available. Starter, Essential and Business. Starter (the free version), will cover the majority of online stores and products. If you want to try it out, use this version. It may be the only version you need.

The things that are missing are clearly marked in red letters in the administration section, but there is enough of the program there to produce a production site. You’ll discover whether or not you need to upgrade to a more complete version.

In this tutorial we used the Business Edition, which has all the features and plugins installed. The free version does not let you create product options, and we wanted to be able to demonstrate them. You won’t be able to do the options section with the Starter. Since adding options is just like adding products, if you follow this tutorial, you will have the skills to do so if you upgrade.

You can download the various versions from here http://www.hikashop.com/en/hikashop.html

After downloading go to the Extension Manager, browse for your file, and click Upload & Install.

You can access it from your Components menu.

Go to Products > Categories on the Hika Shop dashboard.

If you don’t need categories, you don’t need to create them. There is a default, top level called Product Categories and you can add all your products there. If you are going to have a more complex cart, you should probably create the categories first.

Highlight the category you want to put the product in.

You can add the product to other categories or change it to another one later. If Root is highlighted, it will go into root without being in a particular category. Your choice here becomes more critical in light of how you connect the menu item to the display. We aren’t going to cover that here, we’re sticking to product entry, so for our purposes the defaults are ok.

You can change the name “Product category”. As you will see in subsequent screen shots, I have changed it to Joomla Products, and added Drupal and WordPress categories as well.

Click Add a product from the Products tab drop down menu.

Alternatively, you can click the New icon in the administration menu bar.

Enter the Name. This field is required.

You will see the Main Information panel on the left, and you have all the same editing capability you would have for a normal Joomla article. You also have meta input for SEO on your products. Fill it out and create dazzling display for your product.. Scroll down the page for more important information you need to add.

Enter the Code. This field is required. The rest of the fields depend on the product type and specifications, and are optional

The Access Level and User group panels won’t be available in the free version. By default the product is viewable by all. After purchase, you can change this to none or have special products available to custom defined groups.

Now move to the right side of the screen.

Click the Add button on the Categories panel.

Categories – When you save the product it will be assigned to category you had highlighted when you clicked “Add Product.” or you can add it or assign it to different categories with the “Add” control. You will also be able to delete unwanted categories on existing products after they are added.

Add this product to the category called “Product categories” or whatever you might have named it to. In this exampe Joomla Products is the default “Product categories” renamed.

Navigate to the proper level using the Explorer and double clicking
Check one or more categories
Click OK

The Explorer is a little confusing. Notice that the Root category is highlighted. You need to highlight the category one step higher than the category you want to use in order to get the proper list of check boxes. If I highlighted Joomla Products, the list would be blank. Clicking on OK would give me a message asking me to select a category.

So highlight the parent category in the left pane, so you can choose the category in the right.

The categories selected now show below the Categories panel. (You can select more than one.)

The next panel in line on the product entry page is for Related Products. The operation of the Related Products panel is identical. Since this is our first product, you won’t be able to create any related products.

You use the Options panel until you have more than one product saved. We’ll skip ahead to Prices for now.

Click the Add button. You can add a price row by clicking on this button. If you want to remove a price row, just set its price to 0. Those modifications will be applied only after you saved the product.

In HikaShop, a product or a variant can have several prices.

• First, you can set prices for each of the currencies published on your store.
• Second, you can set prices based on minimum quantity so that people buying several times the same product in the same order will get a lower price per unit.
• Finally, if you don’t set any prices for a product, it will be considered as a free product. For a variant, that will result in the system using automatically the main product prices and thus, it can only be free if the main product is free.

You cannot use the system to limit the user to order at least x items.
When the product is not free, you need to have a minimum quantity of 0.

Business Edition Only – Access level : With the Business edition of HikaShop, you will have an additional column named “Access level” where you will be able to limit a price to a group of users.

Before you proceed, be sure you save your work. If you haven’t entered anything yet, when you click on the next step you will get a message telling you to enter at least the name and the code number.

Before configuring the variant of your product, you need first to create one or several characteristics with the menu Products->Characteristics, and then add one or several characteristics to your product

Click Add to add a Characteristic after you’ve navigated to the correct section.

Shopping cart software developers often use the term “variant” to describe things like colors and sizes. Most people refer to these as options, but in shopping cart talk, options and variants aren’t exactly the same thing. This is most easily explained with an example.

Suppose you sell a T-shirt which has 3 sizes and 3 colors. You have different amounts of stock for each for each, for the . Each one will have different weights, images, etc. But you want one shirt to be listed when your customers browse your shop. They get to choose several variants of the shirt when they get to the product page. Small and Red, for example might be some choices.

You need to create that list of variations here, then you can apply them to products as needed.

Start by entering the name of the variation

Click the Add button

Add a possible value for this variant. In this case Red then click OK.

Repeat the process until you have Red, Green and Blue defined.

Save and close.

Then repeat this step for Size and create three values for size – small, medium and large.

Do the same for any variants you might have. You’ll have a list. You’ll be able to apply the same color and size variants to any t-shirt in your store. You’ll see them all listed in the Characteristics section.

If you are doing a large number of products, it would probably be wise to add all possible variants at the same time, so they will be available as you start entering products. Otherwise you’ll have to stop and do this for every product you enter.

We’ve just created several characteristics with the menu Products > Characteristics, and now want to add one or several characteristics to your product.

Return to the product page for this product. Click Add in Characteristics.

Check all the ones you want to add and then click OK. In this case we are adding both color and size.

You can now see them added to the Characteristics panel. When the customer purchases, they will need to make a choice of both color and size before they can place the order.

If you want different prices for different quantities, you can set that in the price panel. But what if you want some options. For example No Logo, Printed Logo or Embossed Logo, and each option is a different price?

You’ve just learned the basics how to go about this. To create an option you go back to the beginning and create a new product with the name of the option. It will have it’s own prices, variants, pictures and be a complete product on it’s own. You can hide it from the users by putting it in an unpublished category.

On the Hika Shop dashboard go to Products > Categories to start adding.

1. Click the New icon.
2. Create a category called “T-shirt logos”

1. Return to the product page and go to the Options panel.
2. Click Add.
3. Add the two options to the product.

Here’s what you’ll get on the front end.

Before you save it choose No for Published. Save it.

Now return to your Products section and create two new products called Printed Logo and Embroidered Logo and put them in the T-shirt Logo category. You are now ready to add them as options to your basic t-shirt.

1. Price – I added a discount for buying 20 or more shirts
2. Variants – three colors three sizes
3. Options – two options with an up charge for each.

You now have all the skills you need to start populating your store with products. All shopping carts are complicated and everybody seems to have some requirement that the developers haven’t anticipated. You may find that with Hika Cart as well as any product. But for now, you know enough to get products on line. Hika cart has context sensitive help available. check there first if you get stuck.