The End of an Era!

It is with a heavy heart that we bid farewell to JoomLadds.

Over the past 15+ years, we have had enjoyment developing extensions for the Joomla Community, but the time has come to make our final decision to close our doors.

We will honor support for our current subscribers until the last subscription expires, but will no longer offer any extensions for sale or download.

Thank you to all of our customers for their valued support of JoomLadds.

This is the process in which we upgraded our forum from Agora to Kunena, and the issues we encountered.

As always, the first thing we did was install everything on our development server. Next, we followed the directions given by Kunena to perform the conversion from Agora to Kunena which included installing an older version (1.5.14) because the latest (1.6.3) was not compatible with the converter. That's where our first issue showed up. We could not get Kunena 1.5.14 to install. We searched Google for some answers, but found none. Somedays you win and find exactly what you need, other days you give up only to try again later.

Later came and we found a post that said to download Kunena 1.5.13 instead. We had a little trouble finding it (mostly because our frustration level was high and we didn't read the directions thoroughly) but once we did and installed it, everything fell right into place. Next, we installed the Kunena Converter and ran the process to migrate Agora. Worked like a charm. The last step was to upgrade the Kunena installed version of 1.5.13 to the latest (1.6.3) That went well too!

One day out of the blue (so we thought) all of our downloads broke. No one could access any of our downloads via the DocMan 1.5 component. After two days of server migration (actually moving our site to a different host) and troubleshooting, this is what we found:

I had forgotten two of the most helpful tools in debugging any system:

1) Error Logs and messages

2) Asking myself the question: "What was the last thing I changed?"

I have found the practice of setting the Joomla "Error Reporting" Global Configuration to "System Default"  to be good. However, when I need it, I forget to change it to something more useful, like "Maximum".

We recently had a client who needed to convert their WordPress website to Joomla. Their forum was vBulletin and they used aMember to manager their users. During our initial research, we discovered there was not a direct migration path to Kunena, however, we found that migration was still possible if we converted vBulletin to phpBB3, then to FireBoard (a predecessor to Kunena). Once we had a Joomla 1.5 website set up with FireBoard and a successfully migrated forum, we upgraded to Kunena 1.6.x. (We hope to add basic instructions as to what we did at a later time)

We ended up having to modify the phpBB3 converter script so that the aMember user data was imported into JomSocial (the replacement of aMember) along with making changes to the converter for phpBB3 to FireBoard. All in all, we were very happy with the results.

One of our clients needed a way to automatically create user profiles on their Joomla website from records that are created in their FileMaker Pro database by the sales staff. Once their new members have signed up in the office, they can 'flip a switch' that now automatically creates their Community Builder Profile. Once the new members arrive home, their profile is waiting for them, all they have to do is confirm their email address and they are ready to log in.

Our client also wanted to be able to have these new accounts sign up with Constant Contact, and with our , the signup to their newsletter is automatic too!

A new client of ours has two Joomla! Websites that were created a few years ago. They contacted us to take part in our 'Tune-Up' program.

We found this article of interest discussing one of the newest features in Joomla 2.5

Give it a read...

http://www.ostraining.com/blog/joomla/smart-search/

We have found the Joomla Extension " ReDJ" highly useful, not only for our websites, but for our clients as well.

We had a site that required us to map every page that the client had created in XOOPS, and although we were able to accomodate most page names simply using the 'alias' of an article and menu, this component allowed us to remap the entire site without one broken link.

Pros:

1. Great for a site migration, mapping old links so search engines don't give broken links.
2. Content Updates, you are able to redesign your site, move articles, and no broken links.
3. Frequent software updates. This developer is actively working on this component.
4. Easliy create your own Error Page! No longer do you have to dig through Joomla Code to make changes to the default error page.
5. Free, however they do have a commercial version available if you need extra features.

Cons:

1. Configuration might be a little intimidating because of all the instructions about adding variables, etc.
   (However, you can easily ignore those and not use them.)