How-To Tutorials - Web Development

(For more resources on PrestaShop 1.3, see here.) The most basic level is using the back office panel to customize the layout. Using this knowledge, we can make some quick and easy changes without having any technical knowledge. If you need more advanced changes than what can be achieved here, you will need to edit the theme and the CSS files, which will be explained in the next article on Customizing PrestaShop Theme Part 2. It must be noted that all design changes that you can do in this back office can also be achieved through customization on the theme files (which involves editing of the file's markup) too. Although knowledge of this theme editing approach encased that of the back office setting, it is useful to know that there are reasons to choose the latter option with no "hacking" of scripts even if you are an advanced user as there could be some issues when you have to update to the next PrestaShop version. You will have to update some of these modified files as these changes may not be automatically included in the newer version. We have to decide what kind of layout we would want, just like the interior design space of a building that you are erecting, you need to visualize the spaces and how users will navigate your retail outlet. You will also need to know what kind of resources can help the successful function of your store, customers in real brick-and-mortar stores do not have to ask a lot of questions as they are prone to browsing the items while having the advantage of feeling, smelling, holding, or trying the items at the same time. While this is true for a real store/shop, the online store does not have this advantage. So, consider features/functions that can be a "replacement" to this disadvantage, such as a 30 day return policy. In a real shop, customers may ask questions at the customer service desks. The same thing can be done with your online store; you can add a lot of information that your customers may need while balancing it with a good design, navigation, and browsing experience. This will ensure that the customer finds the information and this reduces the need to repetitively answer the same queries. This is one of the main reasons why an online store exists, which means that information can be obtained easily 24x7. Therefore, in an online shop, you will have to decide on what kind of features you want to introduce, for example, one block for product information, another for customer service information where they can get information on return policy, how to make payment, and so on. This is just a background that is needed to decide the functions of your store. We will not be discussing about what makes a good navigation or whether one way can be more effective than another. We will learn about how you can use the knowledge about theming for PrestaShop-based stores to build your online store or if you are a web designer, your clients' online stores suitable with the stores' concepts. You will also learn how to go about in applying the necessary modules to complement your theme setup. Before we start this article, you should get acquainted with the back office panel. This will help you understand what we are exploring here. In this article, we will be sticking with the default PrestaShop theme and learn how to: Install, uninstall, enable, and disable module blocks in the center, left, and right columns. Transplant and position modules by moving them to columns and within the columns. The default layout Let's have a look again at your current storefront and how the theme is governed by the back office control panel. By looking at the screenshot, you can tell which back office items you need to modify, replace, or set according to your needs. The basic layout outline can be seen in the following screenshot: Besides the back office control over appearance, our theme is also affected by the modules that control the functionality of your store. At this stage, we will be working on the existing modules in PrestaShop. This is where you decide whether your site visitor will see the product categories, the top selling products, your product listing, the specials, your featured products, and so on. If you run an e-commerce store with a payment option that links automatically to a payment gateway, you may want to study a bit more about each of these modules as well. You will also notice that the default theme uses a three column layout with a header in the top block and a footer at the bottom. Through the back office panel, all the default blocks on the left and right columns can be moved or transplanted interchangeably. Some of the blocks in the header (top blocks) can be moved into the left column or right column. The featured product block and the editorial block, which are at the center column, are pretty much stuck in this position. Modules The Modules tab allows you to control the modules you want to use in the store. You will be able to transplant the modules and move them around according to the site navigation you want, considering some limitations at this stage. You can move them up or down in the columns. You may also position them in the left or the right column or you may disable them. You also have the option of adding a new module or choosing ones that are available from the PrestaStore. PrestaShop has some already installed modules, and the number of newly developed ones is growing every day. Now let's move on to Back Office | Modules, as shown in the following screenshot:     We will go into the listing and get some ideas on each one. However, we will focus in greater detail on the modules that affect theming directly. Among the existing modules in this version (PrestaShop 1.3.1), which are readily available for installation, some of them are: Advertisement – 1 module: Google Adsense. Products module – 6 modules: Cross selling, RSS products feed, Products Comments, Products Category, Product tooltips, Send to a Friend module. Stats Engines – 5 modules: Artichow, Google Chart, Visifire, XML/SWF Charts, ExtJS. Payment – 8 modules: Bank Wire, Cash on delivery (COD), Cheque, Google Checkout, Hipay, Moneybookers, Paypal, PaypalAPI. Tools – 14 modules (but only 12 modules listed): Birthday Present, Canonical URL, Home text editor, Customers follow-up, Google sitemap, Featured Products on the homepage, Customers loyalty and rewards, Mail alerts, Newsletter, Customer referral program, SMS Tm4b, and Watermark. Blocks – 23 modules: Block advertising, Top seller block, Cart block, Categories block, Currency block, Info block, Language block, Link block, Manufacturers block, My Account block, New products block, Newsletter block, Block payment logo, Permanent links block, RSS feed block, Quick Search block, Specials block, Suppliers block, Tags block, User info block, Footer links block, Viewed products block, Wish list block. Stats – 25 modules: Google Analytics, Pages not found, Search engine keywords, Best categories, Best customers, Best products, Best suppliers, Best vouchers, Carrier distribution, Catalog statistics v1.0, Catalog evaluation, Data mining for statistics, Geolocation, Condensed stats for the Back Office homepage, Visitors online, Newsletter, Visitors origin, Registered Customer Info, Product details, Customer accounts, Sales and orders, Shop search, Visits and Visitors, Tracking - Front office. You should also see an Icon legend on the right that reads the following: Apart from these three options of installing, enabling, and disabling, you may also add new modules using the button on the top-left corner of the module tab. There are also plenty of third party modules that can be used to make the store more interactive and attractive. Discussing about them is not within the scope of this article.

(For more resources on Ubuntu, see here.) What is jailbreaking? Jailbreaking an iPhone or iPad allows you to run unsigned code by unlocking the root account on the device. Simply, this allows you to install any software you like - without the restriction of having to be in the main Apple app store. Remember, jailbreaking is not SIM unlocking. Jailbreaking voids the Apple-supplied warranty. What does this mean for developers? The mass availability of jailbreaking for these devices allows developers to write apps without having to shell out Apple's developer fees. Previously a one-off payment of $300 US, an "official" developer must now pay $100 US each year to keep the right to develop applications. What jailbreaks are available? Arguably the most advanced jailbreak available now is called Spirit. Though unlike a few others, which can now hack iOS 4.0, Spirit differs in a few key features. Not only is Spirit the first to be able to jailbreak the iPad, but this jailbreak also allows an "untethered" jailbreak - you won't have to plug it into a computer every boot to "keep" it jailbroken. Support for jailbreaking iOS 4.0 is coming soon for Spirit. There are tutorials on jailbreaking using Spirit, like this one, but they generally skip over the fact that there's a Linux version, and only talk about Windows and/or OS X. Jailbreaking the iPad A very simple process, you can now jailbreak the iPad very quickly thanks to excellent device support and drivers in Ubuntu. Please note that from now on, you should only plug in the device to iTunes 9 before 9.2, or better still, just use Rhythmbox or gtkpod to manage your library. Install git if you haven't already got it: sudo apt-get install git Clone the Spirit repository: git clone http://github.com/posixninja/spirit-linux.git Install the dev package for libimobiledevice: sudo apt-get install libimobiledevice-dev Enter the Spirit directory and build the program: cd spirit-linux make I've noticed that though Ubuntu has excellent Apple device support, and you can mount these devices just fine, that the jailbreak program won't detect the device without iFuse. Install this first: sudo apt-get install ifuse Now for the fun! Plug in your iPad (you'll see it under the Places menu) and run the jailbreak: ./spirit You'll see output similar to this: INFO: Retriving device listINFO: Opening deviceINFO: Creating lockdownd clientINFO: Starting AFC serviceINFO: Sending files via AFC.INFO: Found version iPad1,1_3.2INFO: Read igor/map.plistINFO: Sending "install"INFO: Sending "one.dylib"INFO: Sending "freeze.tar.xz"INFO: Sending "bg.jpg"INFO: Sending files completeINFO: Creating lockdownd clientINFO: Starting MobileBackup serviceINFO: Beginning restore processINFO: Read resources/overrides.plistDEBUG: add_fileDEBUG: Data size 922:DEBUG: add_fileDEBUG: Data size 0:DEBUG: start_restoreDEBUG: Sending fileDEBUG: Sending fileINFO: Completed restoreINFO: Completed successfully The device will reboot, and if all went well, you'll see a new app called Cydia on the home screen. This is the app that allows you to install other apps. Open Cydia. Cydia will ask you to choose what kind of user you are. There's no harm in choosing Developer; you'll just see more information. Also, if you choose the bottom level (User) console packages like OpenSSH will be hidden from you. You'll also receive some updates; install them. Interestingly, Cydia uses the deb package format, just like Ubuntu: That's it! Wasn't that quick?

(For more resources on YUI, see here.) Long gone are the days when we struggled to highlight a word in an e-mail message for lack of underlining or boldfacing. The rich graphic environment that the web provides has extended to anything we do on it; plain text is no longer fashionable. YUI includes a Rich Text Editor (RTE) component in two varieties, the basic YA-HOO.widget.SimpleEditor and the full YAHOO.widget.Editor. Both editors are very simple to include in a web page and they enable our visitors to enter richly formatted documents which we can easily read and use in our applications. Beyond that, the RTE is highly customizable and allows us to tailor the editor we show the user in any way we want. In this article we’ll see: What each of the two editors offers How to create either of them Ways to retrieve the text entered How to add toolbar commands   The Two Editors Nothing comes for free, features take bandwidth so the RTE component has two versions, SimpleEditor which provides the basic editing functionality and Editor which is a subclass of SimpleEditor and adds several features at a cost of close to 40% more size plus several more dependencies which we might have already loaded and might not add to the total. A look at their toolbars can help us to see the differences: The above is the standard toolbar of SimpleEditor. The toolbar allows selection of fonts, sizes and styles, select the color both for the text and the background, create lists and insert links and pictures. The full editor adds to the top toolbar sub and superscript, remove formatting, show source, undo and redo and to the bottom toolbar, text alignment, &ltHn> paragraph styles and indenting commands. The full editor requires, beyond the common dependencies for both, Button and Menu so that the regular HTML &ltselect> boxes can be replaced by a fancier one: Finally, while in the SimpleEditor, when we insert an image or a link, RTE will simply call window.prompt() to show a standard input box asking for the URL for the image or the link destination, the full editor can show a more elaborate dialog box such as the following for the Insert Image command: A simple e-mail editor It is high time we did some coding, however I hope nobody gets frustrated at how little we’ll do because, even though the RTE is quite a complex component and does wonderful things, there is amazingly little we have to do to get one up and running. This is what our page will look like: This is the HTML for the example: <form method="get" action="#" id="form1"> <div class="fieldset"><label for="to">To:</label> <input type="text" name="to" id="to"/></div> <div class="fieldset"><label for="from">From:</label> <input type="text" name="from" id="from" value="me" /></div> <div class="fieldset"><label for="subject">Subject:</label> <input type="text" name="subject" id="subject"/></div> <textarea id="msgBody" name="msgBody" rows="20" cols="75"> Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, and so on </textarea> <input type="submit" value=" Send Message " /></form> This simple code, assisted by a little CSS would produce something pretty much like the image above, except for the editing toolbar. This is by design, RTE uses Progressive Enhancement to turn the &lttextarea> into a fully featured editing window so, if you don’t have JavaScript enabled, you’ll still be able to get your text edited, though it will be plain text. The form should have its method set to “post”, since the body of the message might be quite long and exceed the browser limit for a “get” request, but using “get” in this demo will allow us to see in the location bar of the browser what would actually get transmitted to the server. Our page will require the following dependencies: yahoo-dom-event.js, element-min.js and simpleeditor-min.js along its CSS file, simpleeditor.css. In a <script> tag right before the closing </body> we will have: YAHOO.util.Event.onDOMReady(function () { var myEditor = new YAHOO.widget.SimpleEditor('msgBody', { height: '300px', width: '740px', handleSubmit: true }); myEditor.get('toolbar').titlebar = false; myEditor.render();}); This is all the code we need turn that &lttextarea> into an RTE; we simply create an instance of SimpleEditor giving the id of the &lttextarea> and a series of options. In this case we set the size of the editor and tell it that it should take care of submitting the data on the RTE along the rest of the form. What the RTE does when this option is true is to set a listener for the form submission and dump the contents of the editor window back into the &lttextarea> so it gets submitted along the rest of the form. The RTE normally shows a title bar over the toolbar; we don't want this in our application and we eliminate it simply by setting the titlebar property in the toolbar configuration attribute to false. Alternatively, we could have set it to any HTML string we wanted shown on that area Finally, we simply render the editor. That is all we need to do; the RTE will take care of all editing chores and when the form is about to be submitted, it will take care of sending its data along with the rest. Filtering the data The RTE will not send the data unfiltered, it will process the HTML in its editing area to make sure it is clean, safe, and compliant. Why would we expect our data to contain anything invalid? If all text was written from within the RTE, there would be no problem at all as the RTE won't generate anything wrong, but that is not always the case. Plenty of text will be cut from somewhere else and pasted into the RTE, and that text brings with it plenty of existing markup. To clean up the text, the RTE will consider the idiosyncrasies of a few user agents and the settings of a couple of configuration attributes. The filterWord configuration attribute will make sure that the extra markup introduced by text pasted into the editor from MS Word does not get through. The markup configuration attribute has four possible settings: semantic: This is the default setting; it will favor semantic tags in contrast to styling tags, for example, it will change &ltb> into &ltstrong>, &ltti&g into &ltem> and &ltfont> into &ltspan style="font: …. css: It will favor CSS style attributes, for example, changing &ltb> into &ltspan style="font-weight:bold">. default: It does the minimum amount of changes required for safety and compliance. xhtml: Among other changes, it makes sure all tags are closed such as &ltbr />, &ltimg />, and &ltinput />.   The default setting, which is not the default, offers the least filtering that will be done in all cases; it will make sure tags have their matching closing tags, extra whitespace is stripped off, and the tags and attributes are in lower case. It will also drop several tags that don't fit in an HTML fragment, such as &lthtml> or &ltbody>, that are unsafe, such as &ltscript> or &ltiframe>, or would involve actions, such as &ltform> or form input elements. The list of invalid tags is stored in property .invalidHTML and can be freely changed. More validation We can further validate what the RTE sends in the form; instead of letting the RTE handle the data submission automatically, we can handle it ourselves by simply changing the previous code to this: YAHOO.util.Event.onDOMReady(function () { var Dom = YAHOO.util.Dom, Event = YAHOO.util.Event; var myEditor = new YAHOO.widget.SimpleEditor('msgBody', { height: '300px', width: '740px' }); myEditor.get('toolbar').titlebar = false; myEditor.render(); Event.on('form1', 'submit', function (ev) { var html = myEditor.getEditorHTML(); html = myEditor.cleanHTML(html); if (html.search(/<strong/gi) > -1) { alert("Don't shout at me!"); Event.stopEvent(ev); } this.msgBody.innerHTML = html; });}); We have dropped the handleSubmit configuration attribute when creating the SimpleEditor instance as we want to handle it ourselves. We listen to the submit event for the form and in the listener we read the actual rich text from the RTE via .getEditorHTML(). We may or may not want to clean it; in this example, we do so by calling .cleanHTML(). In fact, if we call .cleanHTML() with no arguments we will get the cleaned-up rich text; we don't need to call .getEditorHTML() first. Then we can do any validation that we want on that string and any of the other values. We use the Event utility .stopEvent() method to prevent the form from submitting if an error is found, but if everything checks fine, we save the HTML we recovered from the RTE into the &lttextarea>, just as if we had the handleSubmit configuration attribute set, except that now we actually control what goes there. In the case of text in boldface, it would seem easy to filter it out by simply adding this line: myEditor.invalidHTML.strong = true; However, this erases the tag and all the content in between, probably not what we wanted. Likewise, we could have set .invalidHTML.em to true to drop italics, but other elements are not so easy. RTE replaces a &ltu> (long deprecated) by &ltspan style="text-decoration:underline;"> which is impossible to drop in this way. Besides, these replacements depend on the setting of the markup configuration attribute. This example has also served us to see how data can be read from the RTE and cleaned if desired. Data can also be sent to the RTE by using .setEditorHTML(), but not before the editorContentLoaded event is fired, as the RTE would not be ready to receive it. In the example, we wanted to manipulate the editor contents, so we read it and saved it back into the &lttextarea> in separate steps; otherwise, we could have used the .saveHTML() method to send the data back to the &lttextarea> directly. In fact, this is what the RTE itself does when we set handleSubmit to true.

Putting words inside an image with structure Great! Another vacation day! Alice loved the beach. It was her favorite place to have fun, but she was scared of forgetting what she had learned in school after playing so much on the beach. Therefore, she had an idea. She asked her mother to help her write down everything that she found around her.She had so many things to write down, because the beach was full of people: some of them were sunbathing, others swimming in the sea; there were also children building sandcastles and others playing with balls. Can we help her as well? Time for action – creating a scene We are going to create a scene using a background picture and then add other clipart inside it to represent each word. Start Inkscape and minimize it. You will use it later. Start Word 2007. You will be working in a new blank document. In this case, we will use Word 2007 to search for clipart. However, you can also create a scene with other clipart libraries. We will also use other applications that provide high-quality clipart in other visually rich exercises. Click on Insert Clip Art|. The Clip Art panel will appear on the right-hand side of the main window. Click on the Search in combo box and activate the Everywhere checkbox.This way, Word will search for clipart in all the available collections, including the Web Collections. Click on the Search for textbox and enter Beach. Click on the Go button. Position the mouse pointer over the desired clipart's thumbnail. Since you want to change the picture size without losing quality using Inkscape, remember to make sure that it is a WMF or an EMF file. Right-click on the desired clipart's thumbnail and select Preview/Properties in the context menu that appears. Word will display a new dialog box showing a larger preview of the scalable clipart and a temporary file name. Triple-click on the long path and file name shown after File. This way, you will be sure that the temporary file's full path is selected. Then, right-click on it and select Copy in the context menu that appears. Now, activate Inkscape—remember it was running minimized. You can use Alt + Tab or Windows + Tab. Don't close the clipart's preview window. Select File Import| from the main menu. Click on the Type a file name button (the pencil with a paper sheet icon) and paste the previously copied temporary file's full path in the Location: textbox. The path is going to be similar to C:UsersvanesaAppDataLocalMicrosoftWindowsTemporary InternetFilesContent.IE5WL240QUNMCj04354940000[1].wmf. Click on the Open button. The previously previewed clipart, the background for our scene, will appear in Inkscape's drawing area, as shown in the next screenshot: Return to Word 2007, and close the Preview/Properties dialog box. Repeat the aforementioned steps (6 to 13) for each vector graphic to add to the previously shown background picture, the beach. The next image shows three possible pictures: A bucket and a shovel A beach ball A sandcastle Click on one of the recently added pictures to select it. Eight double-headed arrows will appear in a rectangle around the selection. Drag-and-drop one of the diagonal double-headed arrows and scale the drawing both in the horizontal (X) and vertical(Y) directions. You can do it holding down the Ctrl key in order to maintain the original aspect ratio. Then, drag-and-drop the picture to the appropriate position inside the beach background. Repeat the aforementioned step for the other two pictures to create a scene as shown in the next image: Select File Save| from Inkscape's main menu. Save the file as image030201.svg in the previously created folder, C:Beach. What just happened? We combined several scalable vector clipart images to create a representation of a scene on the beach. Inkscape allowed us to define a background and add different elements on top of it. Each element represents a different word. Time for action – adding floating labels to the image Click on the Create and edit text objects button (a big A with a cursor on the lefthand side) or press F8. This function allows you to add text with different fonts and colors in Inkscape's drawing area. Select the desired font and size using the two combo boxes that appear on the upper left-hand corner of the window, below the main toolbar. Repeat the aforementioned steps (1 to 2) to write the following words as labels, with a layout similar to the one shown in the next image: Sandcastle Umbrella Beach ball Sea Shovel Bucket Once you enter each word, you can click on the desired color in the color palette. It is a good idea to use diverse colors to make it clear that they are different words. Select File Save| from Inkscape's main menu in order to save the changes made to the original Inkscape SVG file. Select File Export Bitmap|. A dialog box showing many export options will appear.Enter 72 on the first dpi (Dots Per Inch) textbox. Click on the Drawing button, and then on Export. Inkscape will export the drawing in PNG format. The exported bitmap graphics with the beach scene and the words at the bottom will be saved at C:Beachimage030201.png. What just happened? We created a representation of a scene on the beach using Inkscape and scalable vector clipart. We first added a background picture and then used vector graphics to add different elements related to specific words. We could change their size without losing quality and we could put them on top of the existing background. We added text labels for each word that represents an element in the scene. Finally, we exported the resulting image to the PNG format. Time for action – uploading the scene to Moodle We now have to upload the original SVG file and its bitmap representation, in order to add our exercise to an existing Moodle course. Log in to your Moodle server. Click on the desired course name (Beach). You can create a new course or use an existing one. As previously learned, follow the necessary steps to edit the summary for a desired week. Enter Exercise 2 in the Summary textbox and save the changes. Click on the Add an activity combo box for the selected week and select Upload a single file. Enter Dragging and dropping words in Assignment name. Select Verdana in font and 5 (18) in size—the first two combo boxes below Description. Next, select your desired color for the text. Click on the big textbox below Description and enter Putting words inside an image with structure. This is the description of the student's goal for this exercise. Press Enter and click on the Insert Image button (a mountain or a tree, according to the Moodle version). A new web page will appear displaying the title Insert image. Click on the chapter03 folder link and then click on the Browse button. Browse to the folder that holds the exported drawing and select the file to upload, image030201.png. Then click on Open and on the Upload button. The label File uploaded successfully will appear inside the File browser box. Next, click on the recently uploaded file name, image030201.png. The image will appear in the Preview box. Enter image in Alternate text and click on OK. The image will appear below the previously entered title. Remember that you can click on the Enlarge editor button to view more information on the screen. Press Enter and click on the Ordered list button (a list of 1, 2, and 3). Write the detailed steps to complete the exercise. Open this picture using Inkscape Drag-and-drop each word to match the corresponding element in the picture Save and upload the new picture Next, select the picture word written in the sentence that describes the first step. Click on the Insert Web Link button (a chain). A new web page will appear displaying the title Insert Link. Click on the Browse button and then on the chapter03 folder link. Click on the new Browse button that appears. Browse to the folder that holds the previously created Inkscape drawing with the scene (C:Beach) and select the file to upload, image030201.svg. Next, click on Open, on Upload, and on the file name link, as shown in the next screenshot: Moodle will display the URL for this Inkscape file in the URL textbox. Enter picture in the title textbox and click on OK. This way, the student is going to be able to download the Inkscape drawing by clicking on the word picture with a hyperlink, as shown in the next screenshot: Select 100 in the Grade combo box. Select 10MB in Maximum size. This is the maximum size for the file that each student is going to be able to upload as a result for this activity. However, it is very important to check the possibilities offered by your Moodle server with its Moodle administrator. Finally, scroll down and select Save and return to course. What just happened? We added the putting words inside an image with structure exercise to a Moodle course.The students are now going to be able to follow the instructions explained in the upload a single file assignment and download the Inkscape drawing to drag-and-drop words. We defined a hyperlink to the Inkscape drawing because the students are going to use it to drag-and-drop each word to the corresponding zone of the scene. The upload a single file assignment allowed us to describe the necessary steps to complete the activity, and it's also going to enable the students to upload their results as an Inkscape drawing. In this case, the necessary steps to complete the activity are just a few sentences in order to simplify the example. However, sometimes, it is necessary to write more instructions when you have to work with other applications such as Inkscape.

(Read more interesting articles on Moodle 1.9 here.) Writing a sentence using two images It was such a beautiful day on the beach. The sun was shining in the sky, the sand was clean and glittering, the sea was clear, blue, and full of waves to play with. A perfect day to go for a swim. Alice and her little brother Kevin ran towards the sea together. They played, jumped, and slid with their body surfing boards and the waves. Suddenly, an animal appeared swimming between them. It was a dolphin. It jumped and threw water at them. Awesome! Alice was so happy because she had a new and very special friend on this vacation. Time for action – looking for two images to generate the exercise We are going to search for two royalty-free photos related to the beach in two specialized web pages. We are then going to use them to create a rich activity. Create a new folder in Windows Explorer (C:Beach). Open your default web browser and go to http://animalphotos.info. This web page allows us to search for royalty-free animal photos. Enter dolphin in the textbox and then click on the Search button. Browse through the results and select the desired photo of a single dolphin, as shown in the next image: Right-click on the desired image with the dolphin and select Save picture as in the context menu that appears. Save the file as image030101.jpg in the previously created folder, C:Beach. Open your default web browser and go to http://freedigitalphotos.net.This web page allows us to search for, and download, royalty-free photos. Enter sea in the textbox and then click on the Go button. The available photo thumbnails related to the entered keyword will appear. Browse through the results and select the desired photo of the sea, as shown in the next image: Right-click on the desired image thumbnail with the sea and select Save picture as in the context menu that appears. Save the file as image030102.jpg in the previously created folder, C:Beach. What just happened? We searched for two royalty-free photos related to the beach. In this case, we worked with two web pages, http://animalphotos.info and http://freedigitalphotos.net. We now have the following two digital photos ready to be used in our writing sentences using two images exercise: image030101.png: A dolphin image030102.png: The sea and the shore It is very important to use photos in this exercise because the idea is to train the description of real-life scenarios. Time for action – searching for related sounds We have two digital photos and we want to add related sounds to them. We are going to search for MP3 files to use as sound effects for the scenes in The Freesound Project website (http://www.freesound.org/): Open your default web browser and go to http://www.freesound.org. This web page allows us to search for, and download, sound files. It is necessary to register on this website in order to be able to download its files. The registration and access to its content are both free of cost. The Freesound Project website offers high-quality sounds with a Creative Commons License. The website offers thousands of samples.However, it does not offer songs. Click on Search under Search/Browse. Activate the Filenames checkbox. This way, the website will also search the file names of its sound files database. Enter sea mp3 in the textbox and then click on the Submit button. The results with the details of many sound files will appear. You can click on the Play button on the left-hand side of each sound file's name and preview the recorded sound, as shown in the next screenshot: Click on the selected file name (WavesOnBeach.mp3) or on its waveform. A new page with more detailed information will appear (http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=14777), as shown in the next screenshot: Check the license information about the chosen file. Right-click on the Download label, located on the upper right-hand corner, and select Save target as in the context menu that appears. Save the file as sound030102.mp3 in the previously created folder, C:Beach. As this sound is related to the sea represented by the photo named image030102.jpg, we use the same name and another extension (.mp3 instead of .jpg). Next, go back to the web browser and repeat the aforementioned steps (2 to 7) to find and download sound related to a dolphin in MP3 format. In this case,repeat those steps searching for dolphin mp3 and save the sound file as sound030101.mp3 in the same folder. A nice recording of dolphins found on this website is common_dolphins_isla_san_jose_16jan2002.mp3 (http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=52099). What just happened? We searched for two sound files in MP3 format because it is easy to integrate it into a Moodle exercise. We now have the following two digitalized sounds ready to be used in our writing sentences using two images and their related sounds exercise: sound030101.mp3: Dolphins on San Jose island sound030102.mp3: Waves on the beach Time for action – activating the MP3 player in Moodle As we are going to add the aforementioned sound files to our exercise in Moodle, we have to make sure that its multimedia plugins are enabled. Log in to your Moodle server. Click on Modules Filters | Manage| filters on the Site Administration panel. If the Multimedia Plugins filter appears in grey and displays a closed eye icon in the Disable/Enable column, you must click on this icon to change it to an opened eye icon. This way, Moodle will enable the multimedia plugins, as shown in the next screenshot: If you made changes, click on the Save changes button. Next, click on Modules Filters | Multimedia Plugins| in the Site Administration panel. Make sure that the Enable .mp3 filter checkbox is activated. If it is not, activate it and then click on the Save changes button. What just happened? We made the necessary changes in Moodle's configuration in order to make it possible to use its MP3 player. This way, we are going to be able to embed the sound files associated with the photographs, offering both visual and auditory perception resources in the exercise.

Creating a sentence using certain words Last Saturday, Alice went to the circus with her mother. Today is Priscilla's birthday and Alice cannot wait to tell her friends about the funny and dangerous things she saw in the circus. She was really scared when she saw the lions jumping through the flaming hoops. She enjoyed the little dogs jumping and twirling, and the big seals spinning balls. However, she has to remember some of the shows. Shall we help her? Time for action – choosing and preparing the words to be used in a sentence We are first going to choose the words to be used in a sentence and then add a new advanced uploading of files activity to an existing Moodle course. Log in to your Moodle server. Click on the desired course name (Circus). As previously learned, follow the necessary steps to edit the summary for a desired week. Enter Exercise 1 in the Summary textbox and save the changes. Click on the Add an activity combo box for the selected week and choose Advanced uploading of files. Enter Creating a sentence using certain words in Assignment name. Select Verdana in font and 5 (18) in size—the first two combo boxes below Description. Click on the Font Color button (a T with six color boxes) and select your desired color for the text. Click on the big text box below Description and enter the following description of the student's goal for this exercise. You can use the enlarged editor window as shown in the next screenshot. Use a different font color for each of the three words: Lion, Hoops, and Flaming. Close the enlarged editor's window. Select 10MB in Maximum size. This is the maximum size for the file that each student is going to be able to upload as a result for this activity. However, it is very important to check the possibilities offered by your Moodle server with its Moodle administrator. Select 1 in Maximum number of uploaded files. Select Yes in Allow notes. This way, the student will be able to add notes with the sentence. Scroll down and click on the Save and display button. The web browser will show the description for the advanced uploading of files activity. What just happened? We added an advanced uploading of files activity to a Moodle course that will allow a student to write a sentence that has to include the three words specified in the notes section. The students are now going to be able to read the goals for this activity by clicking on its hyperlink on the corresponding week. They are then going to write the sentence and upload their voices with the description of the situation. We added the description of the goal and the three words to use in the sentence with customized fonts and colors using the online text activity editor features. Time for action – writing and recording the sentence We must first download and install Audacity 1.2. We will then help Alice to write a sentence, read it, and record her voice by using Audacity's features. If you do not have it yet, download and install Audacity 1.2 (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/). This software will allow the student to record his/her voice and save the recording as an MP3 file compatible with the previously explained Moodle multimedia plugins. In this case, we are covering a basic installation and usage for Audacity 1.2. The integration of sound and music elements for Moodle, including advanced usages for Audacity, is described in depth in Moodle 1.9 Multimedia by João Pedro Soares Fernandes, Packt Publishing. Start Audacity. Next, it is necessary to download the LAME MP3 encoder to make it possible for Audacity to export the recorded audio in the MP3 file format. Open your default web browser and go to the Audacity web page that displays the instructions to install the correct version of the LAME MP3 encoder, http://audacity.sourceforge.net/help/faq?s=install&item=lame-mp3. Click on the LAME download page hyperlink and click on the hyperlink under For Audacity on Windows, in this case, Lame_v3.98.2_for_Audacity_on_Windows.exe. Run the application, read the license carefully, and follow the necessary steps to finish the installation. The default folder for the LAME MP3 encoder is C:Program FilesLame for Audacity, as shown in the following screenshot: Minimize Audacity. Log in to your Moodle server using the student role. Click on the course name (Circus). Click on the Creating a sentence using certain words link on the corresponding week. The web browser will show the description for the activity and the three words to be used in the sentence. Click on the Edit button below Notes. Moodle will display a big text area with an HTML editor. Select Verdana in font and 5 (18) in size. Write a sentence, The lion jumps through the flaming hoops., as shown in the next screenshot: Go back to Audacity. Resize and move its window in order to be able to see the sentence you have recently written. Click on the Record button (the red circle) and start reading the sentence. Audacity will display the waveform of the audio track being recorded, as shown in the next screenshot: You need a microphone connected to the computer in order to record your voice with Audacity. Once you finish reading the sentence, click on the Stop button (the yellow square). Audacity will stop recording your voice. Select File | Export As MP3 from Audacity's main menu. Save the MP3 audio file as mysentence.mp3 in your documents folder. Audacity will display a message indicating that it uses the freely available LAME library to handle MP3 file encoding, as shown in the next screenshot: Click on Yes and browse to the folder where you installed the LAME MP3 encoder, by default, C:Program FilesLame for Audacity. Click on Open and Audacity will display a dialog box to edit some properties for the MP3 file. Click on OK and it will save the MP3 file, mysentence.mp3, in your documents folder. Next, go back to your web browser with the Moodle activity, scroll down, and click on the Save changes button. Click on the Browse button below Submission draft. Browse to the folder that holds your MP3 audio file with the recorded sentence, your documents folder, select the file to upload, mysentence.mp3, and click on Open. Then, click on Upload this file to upload the MP3 audio file to the Moodle server. The file name, mysentence.mp3, will appear below Submission draft if the MP3 file could finish the upload process without problems, as shown in the next screenshot. Next, click on Continue. Click on Send for marking and then on Yes. A new message, Assignment was already submitted for marking and cannot be updated, will appear below the Notes section with the sentence. Log out and log in with your normal user and role. You can check the submitted assignments by clicking on the Creating a sentence using certain words link on the corresponding week and then on View x submitted assignments. Moodle will display the links for the notes and the uploaded file for each student that submitted this assignment, as shown in the next screenshot. You will be able to read the notes and listen to the recorded sentence by clicking on the corresponding links. Once you have checked the results, click on Grade in the corresponding row in the grid. A feedback window will appear with a text editor and a drop-down list with the possible grades. Select the grade in the Grade drop-down list and write any feedback in the text editor, as shown in the next screenshot. Then click on Save changes. The final grade will appear in a corresponding cell in the grid. What just happened? In this activity, we defined a simple list of words and we asked the student to write a simple sentence. In this case, there is no image or multimedia resource, and therefore, they have to use their imagination. The child has to read and understand the three words. He/she has to associate them, imagine a situation and say and/or write a sentence. Sometimes, it is going to be too difficult for the child to write the sentence. In this case, he/she can work with the help of a therapist or a family member to run the previously explained software and record the sentence. This way, it is going to be possible to evaluate the results of this exercise even if the student cannot write a complete sentence with the words. Have a go hero – discussing the results in Moodle forums The usage of additional software to record the voice in order to solve the exercises can be challenging for the students and their parents. Prepare answers of frequently asked questions in the forums offered by Moodle. This way, you can interact with the students and their parents through other channels in Moodle, with different feedback possibilities. You can access the forums for each Moodle course by clicking on Forums in the Activities panel.

(Read more interesting articles on Joomla! 1.5 here.) Introduction Joomla! is a feature-rich content management system, but there are some things it can't do out of the box. This is where JavaScript can become useful in improving the experience of your website to its visitors. Including a JavaScript file in your Joomla! template One of the most basic aspects of using JavaScript with your Joomla! template is including it within the page. There are two ways to do this—within the <head> element of your template, or within the <body> element of your template (best placed just above the </body> element). We'll make use of the method that uses the <head> template. (The reasons to do so are covered in another recipe of this article.) Getting ready Open your template's index.php template, located in your template's subdirectory within your Joomla! installation's templates directory. How to do it... Locate the <head> element of your Joomla! template in the index.php file and insert a <script> element that references the JavaScript file(s) that you wish to use: <!-- some HTML omitted for brevity --><script type="text/javascript" src="<?php echo $this->baseurl ?>/templates/rhuk_milkyway/js/javascript-file.js"></script></head> Note that the base directory of your Joomla! installation is inserted automatically to help prevent any problems with changing directory paths to the JavaScript file, should you change your website's location.You will need to change the template's path if you choose to rename your template. For valid XHTML, you need to specify the type attribute, as shown: <script type="text/javascript" src="<?php echo $this->baseurl ?>/templates/rhuk_milkyway/js/javascript-file.js"></script> How it works... When a browser encounters a <script> element in your page, it loads the required behavior included in the JavaScript file, assuming that your browser has it enabled. See also Including a JavaScript file in your Joomla! template Maximizing backward compatibility with JavaScript Installing Google Analytics Integrating AddThis social bookmarking tool with your Joomla! template Tips and tricks for minimizing page load time when using JavaScript While JavaScript can be used to enhance your visitors' experience of your Joomla! website, it can have a negative impact in terms of both real and envisaged loading times of pages.JavaScript slows down the loading of a page because it's a single-threaded language. This means that nothing else can occur while JavaScript is being loaded or something in JavaScript is being evaluated. As such, a single, slow-loading JavaScript file can prevent a whole website from loading quickly! How to do it... The most obvious thing that you can do to make your Joomla! template load more efficiently is to compress any JavaScript you do use. As such, there are a number of online compression tools that you can use, including the JavaScript Compressor (http://javascriptcompressor.com): Once you've inserted your JavaScript into the Paste your code input area, click on Compress. In this example, we've used a function that creates a slideshow with the use of the jQuery library: // Requires jQuery to run$(document).ready(function() { $('#slideshow-wrapper').cycle({ fx: 'fade', speed: 'normal', timeout: 0, next: '#next', prev: '#prev' }); $('#slidie').cycle({ fx: 'fade' }); }); As you can see, quite a compression is noticeable even with a relatively compact piece of JavaScript, around half the size of the original in terms of memory required to store it (and thus, resources required to load it for a visitor visiting your website). $(document).ready(function(){$('#slideshow-wrapper').cycle({fx:'fade',speed:'normal',timeout:0,next:'#next',prev:'#prev'});$('#slidie').cycle({fx:'fade'})}); Many JavaScript libraries (such as jQuery and MooTools) and features are available in a compressed format already. There is also a Joomla! extension called JCH Optimize that you can use. You can download it from http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/site-management/site-performance/12088. How it works... As you've seen, JavaScript is a single-threaded language, so one technique to minimize its impact on your Joomla! website's loading times for visitors is to make the JavaScript the last possible item in the page to load. Additionally, compressing JavaScript can greatly reduce page-loading times with larger JavaScript files. It's also worth keeping a backup of the uncompressed JavaScript file, as this makes it easier to change and recompress in the future. There's more... Another way to minimize your Joomla! template's page load time is to reference JavaScript and other template files from different hostnames. Browsers including Internet Explorer and Firefox have been known to limit the number of simultaneous connections to a hostname, slowing down the loading of the page. Moving <script>tags to the bottom of the page The other major factor that can slow down the page load times for visitors to your Joomla! website is the necessity for their browser to have to stop while it deals with any JavaScript included in your page. You can overcome this by reordering the HTML elements in your Joomla! template's index.php file to move the <script> elements to the bottom of the page where they appear inline. See also Maximizing backward compatibility with JavaScript Installing Google Analytics

(Read more interesting articles on Joomla! 1.5 here.) Customizing the breadcrumb The larger your website gets, the more important it is to make use of Joomla!'s breadcrumb feature. Getting ready To start redefining your breadcrumb's style, open the template.css file for your template; use the rhuk_milkyway template for this demonstration. This means that your CSS file will be located in the templatesrhuk_milkywaycss directory of your Joomla! installation. If you visit a page other than the home page in your Joomla! website, you'll be able to see the breadcrumb: As you can see, the rhuk_milkyway template defines the style for the breadcrumb in the template.css file: span.pathway { display: block; margin: 0 20px; height: 16px; line-height: 16px; overflow: hidden;} The HTML that defines the breadcrumb (for the Features page) is as shown: <div id="pathway"> <span class="breadcrumbs pathway"> <a href="http://example.com/" class="pathway">Home</a> <img src=" /templates/rhuk_milkyway/images/arrow.png" alt="" /> Features </span></div> How to do it... You can customize the breadcrumb by changing the CSS, and altering the color and size of the breadcrumb's content: span.pathway {color: #666;font-size: 90%;display: block;margin: 0 20px;height: 16px;line-height: 16px;overflow: hidden;} Once the altered CSS file has been uploaded, you can see your changes: The next step to customizing your breadcrumb is to alter the image used for the separator arrows, located at templatesrhuk_milkywayimagesarrow.png. You'll replace this image with your own new one (which has been enlarged in this image to make it easier to view). Once uploaded, your new breadcrumb looks a little more fitting for your website: How it works... By targeting specific ids and classes with CSS and changing an image in the images directory of our template, we can subtly change our template to distinguish it from others without a great deal of work. See also Styling the search module Styling pagination Styling pagination Some content in your Joomla! website may run over multiple pages (for example, some search results). By styling pagination you can again help to distinguish your Joomla! template from others. Getting ready Open your template's primary stylesheet; generally, this will be called template.css, and is located in the templatesrhuk_milkywaycss directory if we are using the rhuk_milkyway template (as we are for this demonstration). It is also worth bearing in mind the typical structure of the pagination feature within the HTML. We can find this by searching for a common word such as "the" or "Joomla!" on our website. <span class="pagination"> <span>&laquo;</span> <span>Start</span> <span>Prev</span><strong> <span>1</span></strong> <strong> <a href=" index.php?searchword=Joomla!&amp;searchphrase=all&amp;Itemid=1&amp; option=com_search&amp;limitstart=20" title="2">2</a> </strong> <strong> <a href=" index.php?searchword=Joomla!&amp;searchphrase=all&amp;Itemid=1&amp; option=com_search&amp;limitstart=40" title="3">3</a></strong> <a href=" index.php?searchword=Joomla!&amp;searchphrase=all&amp;Itemid=1&amp; option=com_search&amp;limitstart=20" title="Next">Next</a> <a href=" index.php?searchword=Joomla!&amp;searchphrase=all&amp;Itemid=1&amp; option=com_search&amp;limitstart=40" title="End">End</a> <span>&raquo;</span> </span> Our primary interest in the previous part is the .pagination class assigned to the <span> element that contains the pagination feature's content. By default, the pagination (as seen on the search results page) looks like this: How to do it... Now that you are aware of the relevant class to style, you can add it to your template's stylesheet, with the aim of making the pagination less obtrusive with the surrounding content of your pages: .pagination {color: #666;font-size: 90%}.pagination a {color: #F07 !important /* pink */} Once you've uploaded the newer stylesheet, you'll be able to see the new pagination style, which will appear smaller than before, and with pink-colored links. Producing more semantic markup for pagination As you can see above, the HTML that Joomla! currently generates for the pagination feature is quite verbose—unnecessarily long and untidy. We'll change our template's pagination.php file to use more semantic (meaningful) HTML for this feature by adding each item to a list item within an unordered list element ( Open the pagination.php file and you will see four PHP functions (assuming that you are looking within the rhuk_milkyway template), but the function which is of interest to us is the pagination_list_render PHP function. Currently, the code for this function looks like this: function pagination_list_render($list){ // Initialize variables $html = "<span class="pagination">"; $html .= '<span>&laquo;</span>'.$list['start']['data']; $html .= $list['previous']['data']; foreach( $list['pages'] as $page ) { if($page['data']['active']) { $html .= '<strong>'; } $html .= $page['data']; if($page['data']['active']) { $html .= '</strong>'; } } $html .= $list['next']['data']; $html .= $list['end']['data']; $html .= '<span>&raquo;</span>'; $html .= "</span>"; return $html;} You can see that Joomla! builds up the HTML to insert into the page by using the $html PHP variable. All you need to change is the HTML you can see: function pagination_list_render($list){ // Initialize variables $html = "<ul class="pagination">"; $html .= '<li class="page-previous">&laquo;</li>' . '<li>' . $list['start']['data'] . '</li>'; $html .= '<li>' . $list['previous']['data'] . '</li>'; foreach( $list['pages'] as $page ) { if($page['data']['active']) { $html .= '<li>'; } $html .= '<strong class="active">' . $page['data'] . '</strong>'; if($page['data']['active']) { $html .= '</li>'; } } $html .= '<li>' . $list['next']['data'] . '</li>'; $html .= '<li>' . $list['end']['data'] . '</li>'; $html .= '<li class="page-next">&raquo;</li>'; $html .= "</ul>"; return $html;} If you now upload the pagination.php file and refresh the page, you'll see that the previous style that you had defined only partially styles the newer HTML: If you add the following CSS to your template's template.css file, everything will be styled as you intended before: ul.pagination {list-style-type: none}ul.pagination li {display: inline} Once uploaded, your new pagination is complete:

(Read more interesting articles on Joomla! 1.5 here.) Adding a random background image to your Joomla! template In distinguishing your Joomla! template from others, there are a number of extensions for Joomla! to help you, including one that allows you to display a random image as your template's background image for the <body> element. Getting ready You need to install the extension called Random Background. You can find the file's download link on the Joomla! website at http://extensions.Joomla.org/extensions/style-a-design/templating/6054. Once you have saved the extension files somewhere on your computer, log in to your website's Joomla! administration panel (if Joomla! is installed at example.com, the administration panel is typically accessible at example.com/administrator), and select the Install/Uninstall option from the Extensions option in the primary navigation: You will then be presented with a form, from where you can upload the extension's .zip file. Select the file from your computer, and then click on the Upload file & install button: Once complete, you should receive a confirmation message: Setting relevant permissions for installing the module If you have problems installing the module, you may receive an error message like the following one: The error is most likely because two directories on your server do not have sufficient permissions: /tmp /modules Use Joomla!'s FTP layer to manage the necessary file permissions for you. You can edit Joomla!'s configuration file, which is called configuration.php, in the root of your Joomla! website. Simply add these variables into the file if they don't exist already: var $ftp_host = ''; // your FTP host, e.g. ftp.example.com or just example.com, depending on your hostvar $ftp_port = ''; // usually 21var $ftp_user = ''; // your FTP usernamevar $ftp_pass = ''; // your FTP passwordvar $ftp_root = ''; // usually / or the directory of your Joomla! installvar $ftp_enable = '1'; // 1 = enabled

Re-creating the About Us page Okay, your Home page is now all set. Let's move on to the About Us page. Yes, I know:Office Live Small Business has already created an About Us page for your starter website. The trouble is, it doesn't use the same template as your Home page. Now that's a big no-no. Remember, we agreed that all web pages on your site will use your template. So, we'll have to find a way to apply your template to the About Us page. Unfortunately, none exists. Once you create a web page, it's married to its template; in the present version of Office Live Small Business, at least. Your only option is to create it again using a new template. Go to Page Manager. Click the New Page link or icon on the toolbar. The Create web page dialog pops up as shown. The first step in creating a web page is to choose a template for it. The Create web page dialog lists Standard Templates, which come bundled with Office Live Small Business, and Custom Templates, which you build yourself. Notice that the template that you built on earlier, Base Template, appears as a custom template in the selection box on the left. Select Base Template and click Next. The dialog asks you to Choose page properties. Enter About Us as the Page title. This title appears in the title bar of the browser when you view it. The title About Us is appropriate when referring to companies, groups, organizations, or businesses that involve several people. If you're a magician, for example, and your website touts your services for children's birthday parties, then you may want to change the title to About Me, or About Steve, the Magician (assuming you're Steve, of course). It sounds a little less pretentious. For my website, I'm going to change the title to About the Author, which is more appropriate for a website that's dedicated to a book. Type aboutus in the web address text box. The web address of the page will now be aboutus.aspx. It's a good idea to match a page's title and its web address. Because my page title is About the Author, I'll enter abouttheauthor in this text box. If your page title is About Steve the Magician, you should enter aboutstevethemagician here. Select the Overwrite existing page checkbox. You're creating a new About Us page. But a page by that name already exists. By selecting this checkbox, you're telling Office Live Small Business to go ahead and overwrite it. Select the Show this page in the navigation bar checkbox. Notice that Office Live Small Business automatically enters About Us (or About Steve the Magician, or whatever you entered as the page's title) in the Navigation title text box. Click Finish. The Create web page dialog goes away and the About Us page you just created appears in the Page Editor as shown: Hey! How come this picture shows both About Us and About the Author? Elementary, my dear Watson! Because I didn't call my page aboutus.aspx. Had I done so, Office Live Small Business would have replaced the original aboutus.aspx with my new aboutus.aspx.Because I called it abouttheauthor.aspx, the original aboutus.aspx is still intact. If you're in the same boat as I am in, you'll have to delete the About Us page. I'll show you how to do that later in this article. Select the text Page Header in Zone 2, and overwrite it with About Us (or About Steve the Magician, or whatever). Save your work and preview the page. Close the preview window and return to Page Editor. What just happened? You replaced the About Us page that Office live Small Business automatically created for you with a new page that uses your custom page template. As we discussed earlier, it's a good idea to use a common template for all of the pages on your website. Hence this exercise. Have a go hero – write copy for your about us page The About Us page is for introducing your business to visitors. Do it concisely; nobody really has the time to read a five page profile. Here's the copy that I'm using for my website: About the Author: Rahul Pitre has been writing software of one sort or another for twenty-five years, the last dozen or so of which he has spent developing mostly websites and web applications. He runs Acxede, a software consulting and training firm in New York, where he oversees web application and content development for a variety of clients. He holds a Masters degree in Business Administration and Computer Information Systems. Okay, it's your turn. Here's a rule of thumb that'll serve you well as you write some copy for this page: Write about what people will want to know about you; not what you want to tell people about yourself. Don't know where to start? Here are some points you might want to consider: What you do. How long you've been in business. The area that you serve. I highly recommend including your area and ZIP code in the copy. People often Google for phrases like Magicians in NY 10701. If you mention your general area and ZIP code in your text, there's a better chance of people finding you through search engines. Are you an authorized dealer for some big company? Again, people often search for phrases such as authorized Sony service center NY 10701. Have you received awards or citations for excellence? Are you a member of the Better Business Bureau or the local merchants' association? If your services are professional in nature, do you have the necessary qualifications? Licenses? Registrations? Insurance requirements? If you prefer writing conversational text, write it in short paragraphs. Alternatively, you can use a combination of text and bullet points. But, keep it short. And for heaven's sake, don't write a mission statement. Remember to write the text in a plain text editor such as Notepad; not in a word processor. Re-creating the Contact Us page Now let us now create the Contact Us page again using your site's template. Time for action – re-creating the Contact Us page Go to Page Manager. Click the New Page link or icon on the toolbar. The Create web page dialog pops up. Select Base Template and click Next. The dialog asks you to Choose page properties. Enter Contact Us as the Page title. This title appears in the title bar of the browser when you view it. Type contactus in the web address textbox. Select the Overwrite existing page checkbox. Select the Show this page in the navigation bar checkbox. Click Finish. The Create web page dialog goes away and the Contact Us page you just created appears in the Page Editor. Select the text Page Header in Zone 2, and overwrite it with Contact Us. Save your work and preview the page. What just happened? You replaced the Contact Us page that Office live Small Business automatically created for you with a new page that uses your custom page template. The Contact Us page is kind of unique. You might have noticed that the page you just replaced had a form for visitors to contact you. Normally, you'd have to write a little program to process the information they provide. The program would extract the information from the form and e-mail it to you. Thankfully, Office Live Small Business has a built-in component that does the job admirably. All that you need to do is to set the e-mail address at which you wish to receive the e-mails. Because you re-created the page, that form is now gone. The reason why I'm deferring it for now is that you haven't worked your way through a few prerequisites yet. Creating the Privacy Policy page you have to create your website's footer , you created a link to your website's "as yet non existent" privacy policy as shown: Let's now create a page that states your privacy policy and activate the link to it in the footer.

(For more resources on JasperReports, see here.) Getting ready Refer to the installPostgreSQL.txt file included in the source code download (chap5) to install and run PostgreSQL, which should be up and running before you proceed. The source code also includes a file named copySampleDataIntoPGS.txt, which helps you create a database named jasperdb6 and copy sample data for this recipe into the database. How to do it... Open the SimpleTOCReport.jrxml file from the Task2 folder of the source code. The Designer tab of iReport shows a report containing data in Title, Column Header, Customer Group Header 1, Product Group Header 1, Detail 1, and Product Group Footer 1 sections, as shown in the following screenshot: Switch to the Preview tab and you will see invoices for each customer grouped by product names. Switch back to the Designer tab. Right-click on the Variables node in the Report Inspector window on the left side of your report. From the pop-up menu that appears, select the Add Variable option. A new variable named variable1 will be added at the end of the variables list. While variable1 is selected, find the Name property in the Properties window below the Palette of components and change its value to FirstRecordOfANewGroup. Now the name of the variable1 variable will change to FirstRecordOfANewGroup. Select the Variable Class property and change its value to java.lang.Integer. Select the Calculation property and change its value to Count. Select the Reset type property and change its value to Group. Select the Reset group property and change its value to Customer. Select the Variable Expression property and click the button beside it. A Variable Expression window with no default expression will open, as shown in the next screenshot: Select Variables in the first column of the lower-half of the Variable Expression window. Then double-click the FirstRecordOfANewGroup variable in the second column. A new expression $V{FirstRecordOfANewGroup} will appear in the Variable Expression window, as shown in the next screenshot. Press the OK button. Right-click on the Variables node in the Report Inspector window. A pop-up menu will appear. Select the Add Variable option. A new variable named variable1 will be added at the end of the variables list. While variable1 is selected, find the Name property in the Properties window below the Palette of components and change its value to TOC. Now the name of the variable1 variable will change to TOC. Select the Variable Class property and change its value to java.lang.String.

Come to think of it, the starter website that Office Live Small Business built for you already has the first three pages in this list. And for good reason, even the professional designers at Microsoft, who built the starter website, think that pages along these lines are pretty much essential for most small-business websites. So, here's the plan: You'll begin by customizing the layout of the homepage. Once you're happy with the layout, you'll save it as a template that you can use to build new web pages. You'll then use this template to re-create the About Us and Contact Us pages. Why? Because you want all the pages on your website to look similar. The only way to do that reliably is to use the same template for all of them. Web pages need content. As I don't know much about your business, I can't provide you with readymade content for your web pages. But I'll give you tips on where to find good copy and pictures. I'll also give a few pointers on how to write good copy, if necessary. Using your new credentials as a copy writer, you'll write a copy for the two web pages that you've already built. You'll then add a new page, the Privacy Policy page, to your website. It goes without saying that you'll write a copy for that as well. Finally, you'll learn how to delete a web page by getting rid of the Site Map page. By the time you're done with this article, you'll have a fully functional four-page mini-website—content and all. You'll build on this foundation by improving the content of these pages and adding supplementary pages that describe your products, services, or whatever it is that you sell or hype. Editing the home page The Page Editor is the tool for editing web pages in Office Live Small Business.let's recap its features by opening the Home page. Time for action – opening the Home page in Page Editor Sign in to your Office Live Small Business account, if you haven't done so already, and go to Page Manager. Click the Edit link under the Options column for the Home page. The page opens in Office Live Small Business Page Editor, as shown in the next screenshot: From now on, I won't repeat these instructions; when I want you to open a page for editing, I'll simply say, Open such-and-such page in the Page Editor. What just happened? You opened the Home page in the Page Editor. Just like the Site Designer, the Page Editor too, has a Microsoft Office 2007-style ribbon at the top. The first two groups on the ribbon, Font and Paragraph, display familiar text editing commands. You can use these commands to format the text on the page just as you would on a word processor. If you want to underline a chunk of text, for example, select the text with your mouse and click the U button in the Font group on the ribbon, as shown: To undo something you've just changed, press CTRL+Z. If you want to right-justify a paragraph of text, place the cursor anywhere in the paragraph and click the Align Right button in the Paragraph group, as shown: See? Just like a word processor, as I said. The next group on the ribbon; Insert, displays commands that allow you to insert objects such as images, tables, and hyperlinks on the web page. Place the cursor anywhere in a zone—one of the regions on the page that's enclosed by red dotted lines, and click the Horizontal line button in the Insert group. it is a zone is an editable area on the page. All content on a page must reside within a zone. The Horizontal line button is shown in the next screenshot: A horizontal line appears just below the cursor. CTRL+Z works not only with text, but also with any other object that you insert on a page. The last group on the ribbon, Advanced, displays commands for manipulating some of the page's properties. Click on the Page Properties button, for example, and the Page properties dialog pops up. It's quite convenient to be able to access the Page properties dialog from the Page Editor, as you just did, and also from the Page Manager. You'll see that Office Live Small Business duplicates many such links to make your life easier. Some buttons, such as the Layout button in the Advanced group, have a little downward-pointing arrow at the bottom. Clicking them will open a drop-down selection menu. Go ahead, try it! Some other buttons, such as the Navigation button in the Advanced group, pop up dialog boxes where you can set properties. The rest, such as the Horizontal line button, work on the web page's text as you just saw. Don't worry if you don't understand what every command does at this stage; you'll go over them as you work along. Have a go hero – experiment with Page Editor commands Have a go at Page Editor's commands. It wouldn't harm to click a few of them and get an idea of Page Editor's features and capabilities. Add a table. Change the color of the text. Make the font bigger. Do whatever you please. And don't hesitate to experiment for fear of destroying the page. You can undo any change by pressing CTRL+Z. How many changes can you undo? I haven't really counted, so I can't give you an exact figure such as 23 or 127. But just as on a word processor, you can undo a series of changes with successive CTRL+Zs. I've noticed, however, that on some pages, CTRL+Z works only once for no apparent reason. In any case, you can effectively cancel all unsaved changes to a web page by not saving the page.How? Read on. Just as in Site Designer, you can preview your website after modifying a page in Page Editor. Click the View button at the top of the ribbon. A dialog pops up enquiring whether you wish to save the changes. If you do, you'd click OK. But because you were just playing around with the page, you can click Cancel this time. As you'd expect, you'd click the Save button, right next to the View button, if you wanted to save your changes. Close the preview window if it's still open, and return to Page Editor. Choosing a page layout Presently, the Home page is laid out with three content zones: Zone 1 at the top, spanning the entire width of the page, and Zone 2 and Zone 3 below it, side-by-side. This is not the only layout available; Page Editor has several more. Some have three zones, others have two, and the rest only have a single zone. You can change the layout of a page at any time; even after you've built the page. Let's change the layout of the Home page. Time for action – changing the Layout Open the Home page in Page Editor. Click the Layout button in the Advanced group of the ribbon. A menu drops down to reveal the available layouts as shown: Notice that each option has a little thumbnail schematic of the layout that it represents. The option that corresponds to the present layout of your Home page, Three, span top, is highlighted. Choose the Three, side by side option. The drop-down goes away and your Home page rearranges itself to conform to the new layout as shown: Notice that although the Page Editor has rearranged the zones, it has preserved the content inside each. But what if the layout I choose has fewer than three or more than three zones? Aha! That gets the Page Editor into a fix. While transferring the content of three zones to three new zones is quite straightforward, there's no logical way of transferring the content of three zones to two or four zones. So the Page Editor takes its best guess in rearranging the content. If you don't like it, you can always cut some content from one zone and paste it into another. Save the page and preview the website. Close the preview window and return to the Page Editor. What just happened? You learnt how to change the layout of a page in Page Editor. So what's the big deal? Well, it's a good idea to use the same layout on most of the pages on your website, if not all. A common layout makes life easier for you as well as the people who visit your site—you can build your site faster, and visitors can find things on your pages in predictable places. Therefore, choosing a single good layout for your website often plays a prominent role in its success. But then, you might ask, how come the good folks at Microsoft applied a different layout to every page on the starter site? The answer is that a single layout makes sense for small websites, such as yours, but sites with thousands of pages are often arranged into several logical sections and it's not unreasonable for pages in different sections to have different layouts. The starter site simply shows you an assortment of layouts, to give you an idea of how they look. You'll use the Three, side by side layout you just chose. But you won't be adding content to each of the zones; you'll use the middle zone for content and the zones on either side for padding. Customizing the page layout That's better. Your page now has precisely the number of zones that you wanted it to have. But what if you don't like how wide a specific zone is? Fear not! You can change the width of any zone on your page quite easily. Time for action – customizing a layout Select the content in Zone 1 and delete it. Unless you've played with the page layout and somehow managed to change the original order of the zones, the zones should be numbered 1, 2, and 3 from left to right. That's what I assume in the instructions.If your arrangement is different, read the instructions accordingly. Select the content in Zone 3 and delete it. Just above the top corners of each zone, you'll see a pair of drag handles as shown: You can use them to adjust the width of the zone, just as you can use the drag handles on a word processor to adjust the width of the editable area of a document. Click on the right drag handle of Zone 1 and drag it towards the left. That should make Zone 1 narrower. Click the left drag handle of Zone 3 and drag it towards the right. That should make Zone 3 narrower. Then use the drag handles of Zone 2, the middle zone, to stretch it on both sides. The end result should look something like this: Select the content in Zone 2 and delete it. At this stage, the cursor should be positioned in Zone 2. If it isn't, click in Zone 2 to place the cursor in it. Type Page Header. Notice that the text appears in the font that you set to be the site font . The font also appears as selected in the font selector on the ribbon. Anything you type in any of the zones will inherit this font by default, unless you change it explicitly. In the following images , you'll see the text in Georgia because that's the font I set for my site. You'll see it in the font that you selected. Select the text and increase its font size to 5 (18 pt) using the font size selector on the ribbon. Place the cursor just after the text that you just typed and click on the Horizontal line button on the ribbon. A horizontal line appears below the header text. Your page should now look something like this: Save your work and preview the site. Close the preview window and return to the Page Editor. What just happened? You learnt how to customize the layout that you've chosen for your web pages. From now on, you'll use this customized layout for all of your web pages.

In this virtual classroom, we are going to enrich the use of vocabulary, because in the creation of these techniques we have to use keywords, which have to be used in a piece of writing. Mind maps are going to be designed according to the facilities that the different software provides us to exploit them. Pictures in mind maps—using Buzan's iMindMap V4 In this task, we are going to use the software of the inventor of mind maps: Buzan's iMindMap V4. We are going to work on the topic of robots and afterwards students are going to write an article about them. We are going to provide students with images of different robots, taking into account that a robot is not a silver rectangular human look-alike. They may have several shapes and can be used for different purposes. Read the next screenshot, which is taken from Buzan's iMindMap V4 software, about inserting images in a mind map: Getting ready Let's create a mind map related to robots with pictures. After creating the mind map, students are going to look at it and they are going to write an article about the topic. In this case, the mind map will be designed with images only so as to "trigger associations within the brain" of our students. You can download a free trial of this software from the following webpage: http://www.thinkbuzan.com/uk/. How to do it... After downloading the free trial (you may also buy the software), create a new file. Then follow these steps to create a mind map with images using the previously mentioned software: Choose a central image in order to write the name of the topic in the middle, as shown in the next screenshot: In Enter some text for your central idea,, enter Robots as shown in the previous screenshot and click on Create. Click on Draw and select Organic, and draw the lines of the mind map, as shown in the following screenshot: To add images to the mind map, click on Insert and select Floating image, as shown in the next screenshot: Click on View and select Image Library and search for images, as shown in the next screenshot: Another option is to look for an image in Microsoft Word and copy and paste the images in the mind map. Save the file. How it works... We are going to select the Weekly outline section where we want to insert the activity. Then we are going to create a link to a file. Later, we will ask students to upload a single file in order to carry out the writing activity. Follow these steps: Click on Add a resource and select Link to a file or website. Complete the Name block. Complete the Summary block. Click on Choose or upload a file. Click on Upload a file. Click on Browse and search for the file, then click on Open. Click on Upload this file and then select Choose. In the Target block, select New window. Click on Save and return to course. The mind map appears as shown in the following screenshot: There's more... We saw how to create a mind map related to robots previously; now we will see how to upload this mind map as an image in your course. Uploading the mind map as .png file If your students do not have this software and they cannot open this file, you may upload this mind map in the Moodle course as an image. These are the steps that you have to follow: Open the file and fit the mind map in the screen. Press the Prt Scr key. Paste (Ctrl + V) the image in Paint or Inkscape (or any similar software). Select the section of the mind map only, as shown in the next screenshot: Save the image as .png so that you can upload the image of the mind map in the Moodle course. Drawing pictures using pen sketch It is also possible to use a digital pen, also known as pen sketch, to draw elements for the mind map. For example, as we are dealing with robots in this mind map, you can draw a robot's face and add it to the mind map, as shown in the next screenshot: Creating a writing activity You may add the mind map as a recourse in the Moodle course or you may insert an image in it. In both cases, students can write an article about robots. If you upload the mind map in the Moodle course, you can do it in the Description block of Upload a single file and you do not have to split the activity in two. Adding data to pictures—creating a mind map using MindMeister In this recipe, we are going to work with MindMeister software, which is free and open source.We are going to create a mind map, inserting links to websites, which contain information as well as pictures. Why? Because if we include more information in the mind map, we are going to lead our students on how to write. Apart from that, they are going to read more before writing and we are also exercising reading comprehension in a way. However, they may also summarize information if we create a link to a website. So let's get ready! Getting ready We are going to enter http://www.mindmeister.com/ and then Sign up for free. There is one version which is free to use, or you may choose the other two that are commercial. After signing up, we are going to develop a mind map for our students to work with. There is a video which is a tutorial explaining in a very simple and easy way on how to design a mind map using this software. So it is worth watching. How to do it... We are going to enter the previously mentioned website and we are going to start working on this new mind map. In this case, I have chosen the topic "Special days around the world". Follow these steps: Click on My New Mind Map and write the name of the topic in the block in the middle. Click on Connect and draw arrows, adding as many New node blocks as you wish. Add a website giving information for each special occasion. Click on the Node, then click on Extras–Links | Links and complete the URL block, as shown in the next screenshot: Then click on the checkmark icon. Repeat the same process for each occasion. You can add icons or images to the nodes of the mind map. Click on Share Map at the bottom of the page, as shown in the next screenshot: Click on Publish and change the button to ON, as shown in the next screenshot: Select Allow edit for everybody (WikiMap), as shown in the previous screenshot. You can also embed the mind map. When you click on Embed map, the next screenshot will appear: Copy the Embed code and click on Close. Click on OK. How it works... After creating the mind map about special occasions around the world, we will either embed it or create a link to a website for our students to work on a writing activity. Here the proposal is to work through a Wiki because in Map Properties we have clicked on Allow edit for everybody (WikiMap) so that students can modify the mind map with their ideas. Select the Weekly outline section where you want to insert the activity and these are the steps you have to follow: Click on Add an activity and select Wiki. Complete the Name block. Complete the Summary block. You may either embed the mind map or create a link to a website, as shown in the next screenshot: Click on Save and return to course.

Introduction Although we've seen how to alter much of our Joomla! website, there's still much we can do to improve and polish our Joomla! template to perfection. Styling the search module Joomla! is a powerful content management system which is capable of supporting websites with hundreds and even thousands of pages. When websites become this large, it's often important to provide your website's visitors with a search feature as a means of locating the information on your website that they are looking for. One option that Joomla! provides for your visitors to search your website is the search module, which is a block displayed within your template. Getting ready Identify the class or id assigned to your Joomla! template's search form, which is assigned by a jdoc include statement within your template's index.php file. In the rhuk_milkyway template—the one that we've been working with—the search feature is assigned to the user4 block by default with this jdoc statement: <jdoc:include type="modules" name="user4" /> It appears to the top-right of the template: If we now look at the page's HTML source, the HTML generated by Joomla! for the search feature looks like this: <div id="search"> <form action="index.php" method="post"> <div class="search"> <input name="searchword" id="mod_search_searchword" maxlength="20" alt="Search" class="inputbox" type="text" size="20" value="search." onblur="if(this.value=='')this.value='search...';" onfocus="if(this.value=='search...') this.value='';" /> </div> <input type="hidden" name="task" value="search" /> <input type="hidden" name="option" value="com_search" /> <input type="hidden" name="Itemid" value=1 /> </form> This means that we can apply CSS to #search to style our template's search box. How to do it... Open your template's primary stylesheet file, which is usually called template.css, and is located in the templatesrhuk_milkywaycss directory of your Joomla! installation. The rhuk_milkyway template already defines the style for the form as follows: #search { float: right; width:320px; margin-top: -20px; margin-right: 30px; height: 40px; overflow: hidden; text-align:right; } By adding CSS to change the search field's state when a visitor focuses within it, you can help improve your Joomla! template by orientating visitors to their whereabouts on the page: #search input[type='text']:focus { border-color: #09C /* blue */ } Once you've uploaded the altered template.css file, you will now see a blue border surrounding the search field: How it works... By using the CSS pseudo-class :focus, the browser changes the attributes we define to make it clearer to our website's visitors that their input device (for example, keyboard) is focused on the search input field. Internet Explorer versions 7 and below do not support the :focus pseudo-class. You can provide support in Internet Explorer for this feature of CSS with the use of JavaScript; see http://james.padolsey.com/javascript/fixing-focus-in-internet-explorer/. See also Understanding Joomla! template positions Styling the search component Styling the search component Along with providing the search module, which is embedded within your Joomla! template depending on the module position it is assigned to, there is the Joomla! search component. Getting ready Firstly, you need to access the search component on your Joomla! website. You can do this by visiting http://example.com/index.php?option=com_search, assuming that your Joomla! installation is installed in the root directory of the example.com domain. With the rhuk_milkyway template as your currently enabled template, you should see that the search component looks like this: Open your template's primary CSS file; for our example, this is templatesrhuk_milkywaycsstemplate.css. It is also worth studying the source of the search component page; you'll find that the search form is contained within a &gt;form< element identified with an id of searchForm. How to do it... In your template's CSS file (template.css), begin by styling the overall form first: form#searchForm { background: #E5F1FD; border: 1px #0C3A6D solid; border-radius: 10px; padding: 10px } Some browsers do not yet support the border-radius property in CSS, so you may just see the search form with squared corners. This changes the look of the search form as follows: Next, you'll style the search query field, which is identifiable by the #search_searchword id: #searchForm #search_searchword { border: 2px #0C3A6D solid; color: #0C3A6D } This helps to distinguish the search field from the other fields in the form: Lastly, you'll add some padding to the table cells used to lay the search component form out to provide a little more space between inputs to prevent visitors accidentally clicking: #searchForm table td { padding: 5px } That's the search form styled!

(For more resources on Wordpress, see here.) Creating a basic WordPress theme is great. You learn about The Loop, find the appropriate template tags to display the information that you want, and then you write some HTML and CSS to tie it all together. However, there comes a time when you're ready to take your themes to the next level. That is what this article is all about. In this article, you'll learn how to provide your theme's users with options about what is displayed and how it is displayed. You'll also learn about localizing your theme for an international audience and showing users information based on their current role. Finally, this article covers the essentials for packaging and distributing your theme via the WordPress.org theme repository. You'll need to follow a few simple steps to make sure that your theme is accepted and that it provides users with the best possible experience. Adding a theme options page As a theme developer, you have to make a lot of choices when you create a theme. What text should be displayed in certain locations? Will that text always be appropriate? How many posts should you display in a featured item carousel? How many levels should the nested navigation menu have? Part of being a good developer is knowing when to make these decisions for your theme's users, and when to give the users a choice. Many WordPress users are not comfortable with editing PHP files, so you need to provide some other way for users to make these choices. The best way, in the context of a WordPress theme, is to provide the users with a theme options panel. Getting started You need to have created a WordPress theme containing at least a style.css file and an index.php file. How to do it... First, you need to decide what choice you want to give your users. In this recipe, we're going to assume that you want users to be able to change the color of the name of their site, which is located in the site header. Next, you have to create the options page that lets users make their choice and save it. Open your theme's directory and create a new directory inside it called admin. Inside the admin directory, create a file called options.php. Open the options.php file, and insert the following code: <?php$settings = $this->get_settings();?><div class="wrap"> <h2><?php _e('My Theme Options' ); ?></h2> <?php if('1'==$_GET['updated']) { ?> <div id="my-theme-options-updated" class="updated fade"><p><?php _e('Settings saved!' ); ?></p></div> <?php } ?> <form method="post"> <table class="form-table"> <tbody> <tr> <th scope="row"><label for="custom-theme-header-color"> <?php _e('Header Color'); ?></label></th> <td> #<input type="text" class="regular-text" name="custom-theme-header-color" id="custom-theme-header-color" value="<?php echo esc_attr( $settings[ 'header-color' ] ); ?>" /> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <p class="submit"> <?php wp_nonce_field( 'custom-theme-save-options' ); ?> <input type="submit" class="button-primary" name="custom-theme-save-options" id="custom-theme-save-options" value="<?php _e( 'Save' ); ?>" /> </p> </form></div> This file contains all of the code necessary for the theme options page. The next thing that you need to do is to hook the admin page into the WordPress administrative menu. Open or create your theme's functions.php file and insert the following code: if (!class_exists('My_Theme')) { class My_Theme { var $settings = null; function My_Theme() { add_action('admin_init', array(&$this, 'save_settings')); add_action('admin_menu', array(&$this, 'add_admin_stuff')); } function add_admin_stuff() { add_theme_page(__('My Theme'), __('My Theme'), 'switch_themes', 'my-theme', array(&$this, 'display_theme_admin_page')); } function display_theme_admin_page() { include (TEMPLATEPATH.'/admin/options.php'); } function save_settings() { if (isset($_POST['custom-theme-save-options']) &&check_admin_referer('custom-theme-save-options') && current_user_can('switch_themes')) { $settings = $this->get_settings(); $settings['header-color'] = stripslashes($_POST['custom-theme-header-color']); $this->set_settings($settings); wp_redirect(admin_url('themes.php?page=my-theme&updated=1')); } } function get_settings() { if (null === $this->settings) { $this->settings = get_option('My Theme CustomSettings', array()); } return $this->settings; } function set_settings($settings) { if (is_array($settings)) { $this->settings = $settings; update_option('My Theme Custom Settings', $this->settings); } } } $my_theme = new My_Theme(); function get_custom_theme_header_color() { global $my_theme; $settings = $my_theme->get_settings(); $color = $settings['header-color']; if(empty($color)) { $color = '000000'; } return $color; } function the_custom_theme_header_color() { echo get_custom_theme_header_color(); }} This file hooks into two different WordPress administrative hooks. First, you add the administrative menu page by hooking into admin_menu. Then, you hook to admin_init to process and save the custom options present on the custom admin page. After you save these files, go to your administrative menu and look at the sidebar on the left-hand side under the Appearance heading. You should see a My Theme link, as shown in the following screenshot: Now, click on the My Theme link under the Appearance menu heading. If you've done everything correctly, you should see a page that looks like the following screenshot: Enter a value such as 99000 and click on the Save button, and you'll see a Settings saved! success message, as seen in the following screenshot: Now, you need to use your custom value somewhere in your theme. Open up your theme header (usually header.php or index.php) and insert the following code between the opening and closing <head> tags: <h1 style="color:#<?php the_custom_theme_header_color(); ?>;"><?php bloginfo(); ?></h1> View your site in a browser to see the change in color of the site title (this is usually the only text that uses the <h1> tag) with the custom option set to hexadecimal color value 990000: Now, whatever value you set for the custom option that we created will be used as the color for the site title. How it works... There are quite a few moving parts here, so let's go through them one by one. First, you created the administrative page. This was saved to /yourthemefolder/admin/options.php. This file contains all of the items contained on a typical WordPress admin page: A containing <div> with the wrap class A <h2> tag with the custom theme options title A form that posts back to itself Form elements arranged inside a <table> with the form-table class With all of these elements in place, you get a slick looking administrative page that blends in with the rest of the WordPress admin control panel. Next, you created a small script within the functions.php file that hooks the administrative menu into place and saves the options when the page is posted. You hooked to admin_menu to add the administrative page and admin_init to save the options using the WordPress add_action() function that accepts a key value pair of the named action as a descriptive string and the actual action to take place. Your custom options are saved when three conditions are met: The form posts back to itself. The system verifies the security nonce from the form. The currently logged-in user has the ability to switch themes (usually just the blog administrator). The options are saved as an array to the WordPress options table by using the update_ option function. When you need to retrieve the options, you call get_option and pass the appropriate key. In addition to the hooks that provide the core functionality of this script, you created two template tags. The tag the_custom_theme_header_color() allowed you to access, and get_custom_theme_header_color() allowed you to print the values you stored on the custom options page. Finally, you used the template tags that you created to take advantage of your custom option on the front-end by adding <?php _the_custom_theme_header_color(); ?>; to the style of the <h1> tag that controls the color and size of the blog title. In this particular instance, you're allowing your theme's users to modify the color of the theme's header. However, endless possibilities exist as you become more familiar with WordPress, and by expanding the options, you allow your users to modify your themes. There's more… You can add additional theme option settings to customize how users can edit your theme. Diving into administrative settings for themes Visit the WordPress codex at http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference to learn more about the functions available to you for creating custom theme edit forms in the administrative area of WordPress. Allowing for multiple theme color schemes In the previous recipe, we covered the general way in which you provide your theme's users with an options page. In this recipe, you'll implement one of the most straightforward features that many premium themes possess: a theme color scheme chooser. Getting started You need to have created a WordPress theme containing at least a style.css file and an index.php file. Inside the template file containing your theme's <head> tag, you need to call the wp_head function. How to do it... You're going to be controlling the color schemes that users can select, by putting each one in a different CSS file. As such, the first thing that you have to do is to create these files. Open your theme's directory and create a new directory named schemes. Inside the schemes directory, create the files blue.css, red.css, and green.css. They should contain the following styles: @charset "utf-8";/* Blue.CSS Color Schemes Document Chapter 11 Example 2 */body{ color:#00f; /* very bright medium blue*/ background-color:#99ccff; /* light blue*/}/* theme links*/a., a:link, a:hover, a:visited {}a., a:link{color:#000099;} /* medium dark blue*/a:hover{color: #0066FF;} /* bright medium blue*/a:visited{color:#000099;}/* blog title styles*/h1.blog-title, h1.blog-title a{ color:#000033; /* dark blue*/ text-decoration:none;}#header a { color: #000033; text-decoration: none;}#header a:hover { color: #0066FF; text-decoration: underline;}#header a:visited{color:#000099;}h2{ color:#003399; /* medium blue*/ text-decoration:none;} #header{ background:none; font-family:arial, verdana, sans-serif; }h2 a { color:#003399;/* medium blue */ text-decoration:none;}h3.storytitle, h3.storytitle a{ color:#003399; /* medium blue*/ text-decoration:none;} @charset "utf-8";/* Red.CSS Color Schemes Document Chapter 11 Example 2 */body{ color:#660000; /* dark red */ background-color:#ffffcc; /* light orange-pink*/}/* theme links*/a., a:link, a:hover, a:visited {}a., a:link{color:#ff0000;} /* bright red */a:hover{color: #ff0033} /* bright pink */a:visited{color:#ff0000;}/* blog title styles*/h1.blog-title, h1.blog-title a{ color:#ff3333; /* medium pink-red*/ text-decoration:none;}#header a { color: #ff3333; text-decoration: none;}#header a:hover { color: #ff0033; text-decoration: underline;}#header a:visited{color:#ff3333;}h2{ color:#660000; /* medium medium dull red*/ text-decoration:none;}h2 a { color:#660000; /* medium medium dull red*/ text-decoration:none;}h3.storytitle, h3.storytitle a{ color:#ff3333; /* medium pink-red*/ text-decoration:none;}@charset "utf-8";/* Green.CSS Color Schemes Document Chapter 11 Example 2 */body{ color:#009933; /* dull medium green*/ background-color:#005826; /* dull dark green */}/* theme links*/a., a:link, a:hover, a:visited {}a., a:link{color:#00ff00;} /* bright light neon green*/a:hover{color: #33ff00;} /* bright green*/a:visited{color:#00ff00;}/* blog title styles*/h1.blog-title, h1.blog-title a{ color:#99cc99; /* light pale green */ text-decoration:none;}h2{ color:#33cc66; /* medium green */ text-decoration:none;}h2 a { color:#33cc66; /* medium green*/ text-decoration:none;}h3.storytitle, h3.storytitle a{ color:#33cc66; /* medium green*/ text-decoration:none;} Next, you have to create the options page that lets users make their choice and save it. Open your theme's directory and create a new directory inside it called admin. Inside the admin directory, create a file called options.php. Open the options.php file, and insert the following code: <?php$settings = $this->get_settings();$custom_schemes = $this->get_custom_themes();?><div class="wrap"> <h2><?php _e('My Theme Options' ); ?></h2> <?php if('1'==$_GET['updated']) { ?> <div id="my-theme-options-updated" class="updated fade"> <p><?php _e( 'Settings saved!' ); ?></p></div> <?php } ?> <form method="post"> <table class="form-table"> <tbody> <tr> <th scope="row"><label for="custom-theme-header-color"> <?php _e('Custom Color Scheme'); ?></label></th> <td> <select name="custom-theme-color"> <option <?php selected( $settings[ 'color' ], '' ); ?> value=""><?php _e('None'); ?></option> <?php foreach( (array)$custom_schemes as $key => $name ) { ?> <option <?php selected( $settings[ 'color' ], $key ); ?> value="<?php echo esc_attr($key); ?>"><?php echo esc_html($name); ?></option> <?php } ?> </select> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <p class="submit"> <?php wp_nonce_field( 'custom-theme-save-options' ); ?> <input type="submit" class="button-primary" name="custom-theme-save-options" id="custom-theme-save-options" value="<?php _e( 'Save'); ?>" /> </p> </form></div> This file contains all of the code necessary for the theme options page. This particular options page contains a <select> drop-down menu that displays the available color schemes to the theme's user. The next thing that you need to do is to hook the admin page into the WordPress administrative menu. Open or create your themes functions.php file, and insert the following code: <?php if (!class_exists('My_Theme')) { class My_Theme { var $settings = null; function My_Theme() { add_action('admin_init', array(&$this, 'save_settings')); add_action('admin_menu', array(&$this, 'add_admin_stuff')); add_action('init', array(&$this, 'enqueue_color_css')); } function add_admin_stuff() { add_theme_page(__('My Theme'), __('My Theme'), 'switch_themes', 'my-theme', array(&$this, 'display_theme_admin_page')); } function display_theme_admin_page() { include (TEMPLATEPATH.'/admin/options.php'); } function enqueue_color_css() { $settings = $this->get_settings(); if( !empty( $settings['color'] ) && !is_admin() ) { wp_enqueue_style( 'custom-theme-color', get_bloginfo( 'stylesheet_directory' ) . '/schemes/' . $settings[ 'color' ] ); } } function get_custom_themes() { $schemes_dir = TEMPLATEPATH . '/schemes/'; $schemes = array(); if( is_dir($schemes_dir) && is_readable( $schemes_dir ) ) { $dir = opendir($schemes_dir); while(false !== ($file = readdir($dir))) { if('.' != $file && '..' != $file) { $scheme_name = ucwords(str_replace( array('-','_','.css'), array(' ',' ',''), $file)); $schemes[$file] = $scheme_name; } } } return $schemes; } function save_settings() { if (isset($_POST['custom-theme-save-options']) && check_admin_referer('custom-theme-save-options') && current_user_can('switch_themes')) { $settings = $this->get_settings(); $settings['color'] = stripslashes( $_POST['custom-theme-color']); $this->set_settings($settings); wp_redirect(admin_url('themes.php?page=my-theme&updated=1')); } } function get_settings() { if (null === $this->settings) { $this->settings = get_option( 'My Theme Custom Settings', array()); } return $this->settings; } function set_settings($settings) { if (is_array($settings)) { $this->settings = $settings; update_option('My Theme Custom Settings', $this->settings); } } } $my_theme = new My_Theme();} This file hooks into two different WordPress administrative hooks. First, you add the administrative menu page by hooking to admin_menu. Then, you hook to admin_init to process and save the custom options present on the custom admin page. Finally, you hook to the init hook to enqueue the custom CSS stylesheet the user has selected. After you save these files, go to your administrative menu and look at the sidebar on the left-hand side, under the Appearance heading. You should see a My Theme link, as shown in the following screenshot: Now, click on the My Theme link under the Appearance menu heading. If you've done everything correctly, you should see an administrative page that looks like the one shown in the following screenshot: Select a value, such as Red, from the drop-down selection menu, and then click on the Save button. You'll see the Settings saved! message, as well as the chosen color scheme selected in the Custom Color Scheme drop-down menu. Finally, you can view the results of the color scheme change by opening up your site in a browser window. In the following screenshot, you can see what the page header of each of the three color schemes will look like: