How-To Tutorials - CMS & E-Commerce

What will you need? Before you can install Mahara, you will need to have access to a Linux server. It may be that you run Linux on a laptop or desktop at home or that your company or institution has its own Linux servers, in which case, great! If not, there are many hosting services available on the Internet, which will enable you to access a Linux server and therefore run Mahara. It is important that you get a server to which you have root access. It is also important that you set your server up with the following features: Database: Mahara must have a database to work. The databases supported are PostgreSQL Version 8.1 or later and MySQL Version 5.0.25 or later. The Mahara developers recommend that you use PostgreSQL, if possible, but for most installations, MySQL will work just as well. PHP: Mahara requires PHP Version 5.1.3 or later. Web Server: The preferred web server is Apache. PHP extensions: Compulsory Extensions: GD, JSON, cURL, libxml, SimpleXML, Session, pgSQL or Mysqli, EXIF, OpenSSL or XML-RCP (for networking support) Optional Extension: Imagick Ask your resident IT expert about the features listed above if you don't understand what they mean. A quick way to install some of the software listed above is to use the apt-get install command if you are using the Ubuntu/Debian Linux systems. See http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/apt-howto/ to find out more. Downloading Mahara It's time for action. Let's start by seeing how easy it is for us to get a copy of Mahara for ourselves, and the best part is... it's free! Time for action – downloading Mahara Go to http://mahara.org. Click on the download button on the Mahara home page. The button will be labeled with the name of the current version of Mahara: You will now see a web page that lists all the various versions of Mahara, both previous and forthcoming versions, in Alpha and Beta. Choose the most recent version from the list in the format you prefer. We recommend that you use the .tar.gz type because it is faster to download than .zip. You will be asked if you would like to open or save the file. Select Save File, and click OK. That's all there is to it. Go to your Internet downloads folder. In there, you should see your newly downloaded Mahara package. What Just Happened? You have just taken your first step on the road to installing Mahara. We have seen the website we have to go to for downloading the most recent version and learned how to download the package in the format we prefer. Using the command line The best way of installing and administering your Mahara is to use the command line. This is a way of writing text commands to perform specific tasks, rather than having to use a graphical user interface. There are many things you can do from the command line, from common tasks such as copying and deleting files to more advanced ones such as downloading and installing software from the Internet. A lot of the things we will be doing in this section assume that you will have Secure Shell Access to your server through the terminal command line. If you have a Linux or a Mac computer, you can use the terminal on your machine to SSH into your web server. Windows users can achieve the same functionality by downloading a free terminal client called PuTTY from http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html. Speak to your resident IT expert for more information on how to use the terminal, or see http://www.physics.ubc.ca/mbelab/computer/linuxintro/html/for an introduction to the Linux command line. For now, let's just learn how to get the contents of our downloaded package into the correct place on our server. Time for action – creating your Mahara file structure Copy the mahara- 1.2.0.tar.gz package you downloaded into your home directory on your web server. If you are copying the file to the server from your own computer, you can do this using the scp command (on Linux or Mac): scp mahara-1.2.0.tar.gz servername:pathtohomedirectory On Windows, you may prefer to use a free FTP utility such as FileZilla (http://filezilla-project.org/). Unpack the contents of the Mahara package on the Linux server. On the terminal, you can do this using the tar command: tar xvzf mahara-1.2.0.tar.gz You will now see a new folder called mahara-1.2.0; you will need to rename this to public. To do this on the terminal, you can use the mv command: mv mahara-1.2.0 public That's it! The Mahara code is now in place. What Just Happened? You just learned where to copy the Mahara package on your server and how to extract its contents. Creating the database A lot of the information created in your Mahara will be stored in a database. Mahara offers support for both PostgreSQL and MySQL databases. However we prefer to use PostgreSQL. If you are interested, see http://mahara.org/interaction/forum/topic.php?id=302 for a discussion on why PostgreSQL is preferred to MySQL. The way you create your database will depend on who you have chosen to host your Mahara. Sometimes, your web host will provide a graphical user interface to access your server database. Get in touch with your local IT expert to find out how to do this. However, for smaller Mahara installations, we often prefer to use something like phpPgAdmin, which is a software application that allows you to manage PostgreSQL databases over the Internet. See http://phppgadmin.sourceforge.ne for more information on setting up phpPgAdmin on your server. Also see,http://www.phpmyadmin.net/ for phpMyAdmin which works in a very similar way to phpPgAdmin but operates on a MySQL database. For now, let's get on with creating a Postgres database using our phpPgAdmin panel. Time for action – creating the Mahara database Open up your phpPgAdmin panel from your Internet browser and log in. The username is hopefully postgres. Contact your admin if you are unsure of the database password or how to locate the phyPgAdmin panel. On the front page there is a section that invites you to create database, click there. Give your database a relevant name such as mysite_Mahara. Make sure you select the UTF8 collation from the drop-down box. Finally, click Create. If you want to, it is a good idea to have a new user for each database you create. Use phpPgAdmin to create a new user. That's it, you're done! What Just Happened? We just created the database for our Mahara installation using the open source phpPgAdmin tool available for Linux. Another way to create the database on your server is to use the database command line tool. Have a go hero – using the command line to create your database Using the command line is a much more elegant way to create the database and quicker once you get the hang of it. Why not have a go at creating the database using the command line? For instructions on how to do this see the database section of the Mahara installation guide:http://wiki.mahara.org/System_Administrator%27s_Guide/Installing_Mahara Setting up the data directory Most of the data that is created in your Mahara is stored in the database. However, all the files that are uploaded by your users, such as their personal photos or documents, need to be stored in a separate place. This is where the data directory comes in. The data directory is simply a folder that holds all of the "stuff" belonging to your users. Everything is kept safe by the data directory being outside of the home directory. This set up also makes it easy for you to migrate your Mahara to another server at some point in the future. The data directory is often referred to as the dataroot.

DOM replacement These methods are used to remove content from the DOM and replace it with new content. .html() (getter) Get the HTML contents of the first element in the set of matched elements. .html() Parameters None Return value A string containing the HTML representation of the element. Description This method is not available on XML documents. In an HTML document, we can use .html() to get the contents of any element. If our selector expression matches more than one element, only the first one's HTML content is returned. Consider the following code: $('div.demo-container').html(); In order for the content of the following <div> to be retrieved, it would have to be the first one in the document. <div class="demo-container"> <div class="demo-box">Demonstration Box</div></div> The result would look like this: <div class="demo-box">Demonstration Box</div> .html() (setter) Set the HTML contents of each element in the set of matched elements. .html(htmlString).html(function) Parameters (first version) htmlString: A string of HTML to set as the content of each matched element Parameters (second version) function: A function returning the HTML content to set Return value The jQuery object, for chaining purposes. Description The .html() method is not available in XML documents. When we use .html() to set the content of elements, any content that was in those elements is completely replaced by the new content. Consider the following HTML code: <div class="demo-container"> <div class="demo-box">Demonstration Box</div></div> We can set the HTML contents of <div class="demo-conta iner"> as follows: $('div.demo-container').html('<p>All new content. <em>You bet!</em></p>'); That line of code will replace everything inside <div class="demo-container">. <div class="demo-container"> <p>All new content. <em>You bet!</em></p></div> As of jQuery 1.4, the .html() method allows us to set the HTML content by passing in a function. $('div.demo-container').html(function() { var emph = '<em>' + $('p').length + ' paragraphs!</em>'; return '<p>All new content for ' + emph + '</p>';}); Given a document with six paragraphs, this example will set the HTML of <div class="demo-container"> to <p>All new content for <em>6 paragraphs!</em></p>. .text() (getter) Get the combined text contents of each element in the set of matched elements, including their descendants. .text() Parameters None Return value A string containing the combined text contents of the matched elements. Description Unlike the .html() method, .text() can be used in both XML and HTML documents. The result of the .text() method is a string containing the combined text of all matched elements. Consider the following HTML code: <div class="demo-container"> <div class="demo-box">Demonstration Box</div> <ul> <li>list item 1</li> <li>list <strong>item</strong> 2</li> </ul></div> The code $('div.demo-container').text() would produce the following result: Demonstration Box list item 1 list item 2 .text() (setter) Set the content of each element in the set of matched elements to the specified text. .text(textString).text(function) Parameters (first version) textString: A string of text to set as the content of each matched element Parameters (second version) function: A function returning the text to set as the content Return value The jQuery object, for chaining purposes. Description Unlike the .html() method, .text() can be used in both XML and HTML documents. We need to be aware that this method escapes the string provided as necessary so that it will render correctly in HTML. To do so, it calls the DOM method .createTextNode(), which replaces special characters with their HTML entity equivalents (such as &lt; for <). Consider the following HTML code: <div class="demo-container"> <div class="demo-box">Demonstration Box</div> <ul> <li>list item 1</li> <li>list <strong>item</strong> 2</li> </ul></div> The code $('div.demo-container').text('<p>This is a test.</p>'); will produce the following DOM output: <div class="demo-container"> &lt;p&gt;This is a test.&lt;/p&gt;</div> It will appear on a rendered page as though the tags were exposed as follows: <p>This is a test</p> As of jQuery 1.4, the .text() method allows us to set the text content by passing in a function. $('ul li').text(function() {return 'item number ' + ($(this).index() + 1);}); Given an unordered list with three <li> elements, this example will produce the following DOM output: <ul><li>item number 1</li><li>item number 2</li><li>item number 3</li></ul>

(For more resources on Microsoft, see here.) A Data Application Component is an entity that integrates all data tier related objects used in authoring, deploying and managing into a single unit instead of working with them separately. Programmatically DACs belong to classes that are found in The Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Dac namespace. DACs are stored in a DacStore and managed centrally. Dacs can be authored and built using SQL Server Data-Tier Application templates in VS2010 (now in Beta 2) or using SQL Server Management Studio. This article describes creating DAC using SQL Server 2008 R2 Nov-CTP(R2 server in this article), a new feature in this version. Overview of the article In order to proceed working with this example you need to download SQL Server 2008 R2 Nov-CTP. The ease with which this installs depend on the Windows OS on your machine. I had encountered problems installing it on my Windows XP SP3 where only partial files were installed. On Windows 7 Ultimate it installed very easily. This article uses the R2 Server installed on Windows 7 Ultimate. You can download the R2 Server from this link after registering at the site. Download the x 32 version, a 1.2 GB file. In order to work with Data Tier Applications in Visual Studio you need to install Visual Studio 2010 now in Beta 2. If you have installed Beta 1, take it out (use Add/Remove programs) before you install Beta 2. You would create a Database Project as shown in the next figure. In the following sections we will look at how to extract a DAC from a existing Database using tools in SSMS and R2 Server. This will be followed by deploying the DAC to a SQL Server 2008 (before R2 Version). In a future article we will see how to create and work with the DACs in Visual Studio. Extracting a DAC We will use the Extract a Data-Tier Application wizard to create a DAC file. Connect to the SQL Server 2008 Server in the Management Studio as shown. We will create a DAC package that will create a DAC file for us on completing this task. Right click the Pubs database and click on Tasks | Extract Data-Tier Appplication... You may also use any other database for working with this exercise. This brings up the Wizard as shown in the next figure. Read the notes on this window and review the database icons on this window. Click Next. The Set Properties page of the wizard gets displayed. The Application name will be the database name with which you started. You can change it if you like. The package file name will reflect the application name. The version is set at 1.0.0.0., but you may specify any version you like. You can create different DACs with different version numbers. Click Next. The program cranks up and after validation the Validation & Summary page gets displayed as shown. The file path of the package, the name of the package and the DAC objects that got into the package are all shown here. All database objects (Tables, Views, Stored Procedures etc) are included in the package. Click Save Report button to save the packaging info to a file. This saves the HTML file ExtractDACSummary_HODENTEK3_ pubs_20100125 to the SQL Server Management Studio folder. This report shows what objects were validated during this process as shown. Click Next. The Build the Package opens up and after the build process is completed you will be able to save the package as shown in the next picture. At the package location shown earlier you will see a package object as shown. This file can be Unpacked to a destination as well as opened with Microsoft SQL Server DAC Package File Unpack wizard. These actions can be accessed by making a right click on this package file.

DOM insertion, inside These methods allow us to insert new content inside an existing element. .prepend() Insert content specified by the parameter at the beginning of each element in the set of matched elements. .prepend(content).prepend(function) Parameters (first version) content: An element, an HTML string, or a jQuery object to insert at the beginning of each element in the set of matched elements Parameters (second version) function: A function that returns an HTML string to insert at the beginning of each element in the set of matched elements Return value The jQuery object, for chaining purposes. Description The .prepend() and .prependTo() methods perform the same task. The major difference is in the syntax, specifically in the placement of the content and target. With .prepend(), the selector expression preceding the method is the container into which the content is inserted. With .prependTo(), on the other hand, the content precedes the method either as a selector expression or as markup created on the fly. It is then inserted into the target container. Consider the following HTML code: <h2>Greetings</h2> <div class="container"> <div class="inner">Hello</div> <div class="inner">Goodbye</div></div> We can create content and insert it into several elements at once. $('.inner').prepend('<p>Test</p>'); Each <div class="inner"> element gets the following new content: <h2>Greetings</h2> <div class="container"> <div class="inner"> <p>Test</p> Hello </div> <div class="inner"> <p>Test</p> Goodbye </div></div> We can also select an element on the page and insert it into another: $('.container').prepend($('h2')); If an element selected this way is inserted elsewhere, it will be moved into the target (not cloned). <div class="container"> <h2>Greetings</h2> <div class="inner">Hello</div> <div class="inner">Goodbye</div></div> However, if there are more than one target elements, cloned copies of the inserted elements will be created for each target after the first. .prependTo() Insert every element in the set of matched elements at the beginning of the target. .prependTo(target) Parameters target: A selector, element, HTML string, or jQuery object; the matched set of elements will be inserted at the beginning of the element(s) specified by this parameter Return value The jQuery object, for chaining purposes. Description The .prepend() and .prependTo() methods perform the same task. The major difference is in the syntax, specifically in the placement of the content and target. With .prepend(), the selector expression preceding the method is the container into which the content is inserted. With .prependTo(), on the other hand, the content precedes the method either as a selector expression or as markup created on the fly, and is inserted into the target container. Consider the following HTML code: <h2>Greetings</h2> <div class="container"> <div class="inner">Hello</div> <div class="inner">Goodbye</div></div> We can create content and insert it into several elements at once. $('<p>Test</p>').prependTo('.inner'); Each inner <div> element gets the following new content: <h2>Greetings</h2><div class="container"> <div class="inner"> <p>Test</p> Hello </div> <div class="inner"> <p>Test</p> Goodbye </div></div> We can also select an element on the page and insert it into another. $('h2').prependTo($('.container')); If an element selected this way is inserted elsewhere, it will be moved into the target (not cloned). <div class="container"> <h2>Greetings</h2> <div class="inner">Hello</div> <div class="inner">Goodbye</div></div> However, if there are more than one target elements, cloned copies of the inserted elements will be created for each target after the first. .append() Insert content specified by the parameter at the end of each element in the set of matched elements. .append(content).append(function) Parameters (first version) content: An element, an HTML string, or a jQuery object to insert at the end of each element in the set of matched elements Parameters (second version) function: A function that returns an HTML string to insert at the end of each element in the set of matched elements Return value The jQuery object, for chaining purposes. Description The .append() and .appendTo() methods perform the same task. The major difference is in the syntax, specifically in the placement of the content and target. With .append(), the selector expression preceding the method is the container into which the content is inserted. With .appendTo(), on the other hand, the content precedes the method either as a selector expression or as markup created on the fly, and is inserted into the target container. Consider the following HTML code: <h2>Greetings</h2><div class="container"> <div class="inner">Hello</div> <div class="inner">Goodbye</div></div> We can create content and insert it into several elements at once. $('.inner').append('<p>Test</p>'); Each inner <div> element gets the following new content: <h2>Greetings</h2><div class="container"> <div class="inner"> Hello <p>Test</p> </div> <div class="inner"> Goodbye <p>Test</p> </div></div> We can also select an element on the page and insert it into another. $('.container').append($('h2')); If an element selected this way is inserted elsewhere, it will be moved into the target (not cloned). <div class="container"> <div class="inner">Hello</div> <div class="inner">Goodbye</div> <h2>Greetings</h2></div> However, if there is more than one target element, cloned copies of the inserted elements will be created for each target after the first. .appendTo() Insert every element in the set of matched elements at the end of the target. .appendTo(target) Parameters target: A selector, element, HTML string, or jQuery object; the matched set of elements will be inserted at the end of the element(s) specified by this parameter Return value The jQuery object, for chaining purposes. Description The .append() and .appendTo() methods perform the same task. The major difference is in the syntax, specifically in the placement of the content and target. With .append(), the selector expression preceding the method is the container into which the content is inserted. With .appendTo(), on the other hand, the content precedes the method either as a selector expression or as markup created on the fly, and is inserted into the target container. Consider the following HTML code: <h2>Greetings</h2><div class="container"> <div class="inner">Hello</div> <div class="inner">Goodbye</div></div> We can create content and insert it into several elements at once. $('<p>Test</p>').appendTo('.inner'); Each inner <div> element gets the following new content: <h2>Greetings</h2> <div class="container"> <div class="inner"> Hello <p>Test</p> </div> <div class="inner"> Goodbye <p>Test</p> </div></div> We can also select an element on the page and insert it into another. $('h2').append($('.container')); If an element selected this way is inserted elsewhere, it will be moved into the target (not cloned). <div class="container"> <div class="inner">Hello</div> <div class="inner">Goodbye</div> <h2>Greetings</h2></div> However, if there are more than one target elements, cloned copies of the inserted elements will be created for each target after the first.

If there’s one golden rule of open source, it’s this: Major projects can and will be forked. Multiple versions of just about every open source app of repute have been spun off from the original. These splits happen for reasons that are more often political than technical. Look at the clamor building around MySQL, where people concerned about the future of the project under Oracle’s stewardship want its code copied out into another, separately managed project that won’t (as they see it) end up as a corporate lapdog. The blogging system Movable Type, now in its fifth major revision, is also undergoing a code schism of sorts. A number of Movable Type developers and contributors became frustrated with what they felt was an emphasis by MT’s corporate owners on the wrong features, as well as a lack of transparency in the development process for the product. Rather than attack Six Apart (Movable Type’s parent company) directly, they chose instead to do an end run—to take the now open-source code base for Movable Type and create a new product from it: Melody. The theme behind Melody Melody extends on Movable Type’s legacy in four basic ways. Take what already exists in Movable Type, keep what’s best about it, remove from the core product features which make things substantially more complex but which are only used by a minority of users anyway, and move Melody forward in ways that show the developers are directly attuned to the needs of the new user (and developer) base. How these things manifest in Melody can be summed up in a few key points as shown below. Backwards compatibility Since most of the initial user base for Melody will consist of Movable Type users and developers, it only makes sense for Melody to be heavily backwards-compatible with MT. This doesn’t just mean that a MT database can be imported into a Melody installation as-is. This also means things like plugins and transformation filters will still work correctly. Both are crucial, since so much of MT’s appeal is in how it can be bent and shaped to fit user’s needs—and those same needs will carry directly over into Melody. (If anything, they’ll have to be satisfied all the better in Melody, since Melody’s being written specifically from the perspective of allowing such customization to be all the easier and more powerful to implement.) The exact degree and scope of Melody’s backwards compatibility with Movable Type is still being wrangled out, but it’s likely to be as friendly as possible to existing MT developers as a way to gain their immediate support. One thing that has become clearer is that people looking to make a straight upgrade from MT to Melody will at this point be best served by an upgrade from the 4.x branch of MT than the current 5.x branch. This is probably due to Melody being more derived from the former than the latter, but there’s nothing that says in time a clean 5.x migration path can’t be created. A more developer-friendly culture "Developer" doesn’t just mean people who write Melody or Movable Type’s own code. It means people who create the above-mentioned add-ons, and—in some ways the most visible type of third-party development—people who create themes and templates for the system. A better culture for those people to thrive in means more. Another concrete way for developer-friendliness to manifest is with better use of existing CPAN (for Perl) and jQuery (for JavaScript) libraries and community-developed code. A lot of what was written for earlier versions of Movable Type duplicated functions that were available in those repositories. Not only did this mean MT’s code had to be maintained separately, but it also meant Movable Type didn’t leverage what was available in CPAN and jQuery as effectively as it could. Indirect contribution to Movable Type itself What Melody’s developers hope to create is a project that doesn’t so much steal marketshare from Movable Type as it does give Movable Type itself a chance to become a better project, too. Melody could become a model for how MT itself might evolve, and since Melody’s licensed under the same terms as MT itself (GPLv2), there’s nothing preventing significant chunks of Melody—or even the whole project—from being back-adopted into MT. Even the Melody developers themselves don’t see everyone ditching Movable Type. For one, the enterprise-level editions of Movable Type have a bevy of features (not least among which is paid support) that won’t show up in Melody any time soon. That and Melody’s developers don’t see it as being part of their project’s focus to try and eclipse MT’s high-end, paying-customers features. (Melody’s own FAQ discourages using the paid-support add-ons for MT with Melody, because of the licensing and support-contract restrictions involved.) Melody’s current interface is based on the 4.x branch of Movable Type, and so most closely resembles that program with only minimal changes.

Enabling and configuring the Throttle module Drupal allows you to control when your modules and blocks get enabled and shown to your site visitors. This helps you to prevent bottlenecks in your server's web traffic and to optimize your server load to prevent any congestion that it might experience with its bandwidth and traffic. Throttling blocks and modules becomes increasingly important on larger scale websites where you have many blocks and modules active. You may have a site that contains a large number of blocks, for example, that have been built with the Views module. You can throttle these blocks, so they only get enabled when the site visitor calls a page that is supposed to show that block. The throttle module allows you to configure it, so it automatically gets enabled when the usage of your site goes above a certain threshold. For example, this can be the number of anonymous users visiting your site. When a certain amount of visitors are on your site, you can have Drupal enable throttling. Using the Throttle module is essential on shared servers where you may not have all of the resources on the server made available to you at any given time or on a server that gives you limited CPU resources and bandwidth. You may not need to use Throttle on higher performance-dedicated servers because they will most likely be providing you with good performance. But on shared servers it does become important to use Throttle. If you did not enable the Throttle module after we upgraded our site to Drupal 6.13, we need to enable it first. Once enabled, we can then configure the module. Follow these steps: Under your Core-optional module list, check the box next to Throttle and then save your module configuration. There are two methods of accessing the Throttle module configuration. You can visit the main Throttle configuration page to set auto throttling settings for your site. Also, you can enable throttling for each module and block on your site. We'll look at both methods now. Note that your modules admin page explains how to access and enable both types of throttling (module and auto) at the top of the page in its introductory help text. You will only see your module throttle checkboxes available if you have enabled the Throttle module first. Configuring the Throttle module for auto throttling features Go to Site configuration | Throttle to load your Throttle module settings form or click on the throttle configuration page link through your main modules admin page. The Throttle configuration page explains what the Throttle module does and gives you a link to more information through the more help link. If you click on that link and have the Advanced Help module active, you will launch a detailed Throttle module help and explanation page. On this page you can configure three throttle elements that fall under the default Throttle module congestion control feature: Auto-throttle on anonymous users Auto-throttle on authenticated users Auto-throttle probability limiter Auto-throttle on anonymous users allows you to set a threshold for enabling your congestion control throttle dependent on anonymous user activity. So, for example, you will want to choose a threshold number of anonymous users to enter into this field. When this number of anonymous users is reached, the auto-throttle feature will be enabled. If you want the auto-throttle to be enabled after 250 anonymous users are on your site at the same time, you can type 250 into this field. Set this field to 0 if you do not want to use the auto-throttle feature. Drupal also tells you here that you can determine how many users are on your site at any given time by enabling the Who's Online block—this will show you all of the anonymous users who are browsing your site and authenticated users who are logged into your site. The Auto-throttle on authenticated users works using the same method. Add the threshold number of authenticated users that you want logged into your site before the point your throttle gets enabled. We'll set this to 50 authenticated users. The Auto-throttle probability limiter helps to reduce the overhead of the auto-throttle module. It's a built-in performance check just for this Throttle module. You can set a pe rcentage of page views for your site. For example, if you set the page view percentage to 10%, then the module will only perform extra database queries to update the Throttle module status once for every 10 page views. Drupal tells you that the busier your website, the lower you want to set this value. Leave it set to the default of 10%. Save your auto-throttle configuration. Throttling your modules You can also throttle each of your core and contributed modules as long as they have a Throttle checkbox next to their line item on the modules admin page. Load your modules admin page and look for the Throttle checkboxes. This allows you to tell Drupal to throttle a specific module during high traffic periods on your site. This means that when your site reaches a high traffic threshold (based on the auto throttling settings you determined above) your site will temporarily disable the module in question. This will throttle the module until your site returns to a stable status. You do need to be careful here. You should throttle those modules that are of lesser importance when your site reaches its threshold of user activity. When you throttle, you are temporarily disabling the module, so it will also temporarily disable that module's functionality during high server loads. So, you may want to disable some modules, such as Views, but leave your CCK module enabled so that your users can still see the content that is being filtered into the View. We'll go ahead and throttle the following modules: Administration menu (because this module is only being used by our logged in admins) Chaos tool suite (all submodules here) Comment Contact Database logging Help PHP filter Search Statistics Advanced Help FCKEditor IMCE Lightbox2 Poormanscron You can select more modules to throttle based on your preferences and the usage of your site. Use the above as an example and model to follow. Check the throttle boxes and save your configuration. During the next high server load period, these modules will be disabled temporarily to increase the performance of your site during its high server load period. Throttling blocks You can also throttle your blocks. To do this, go to the Blocks admin page here: Administer | Site building | Blocks. You'll notice that there is a new checkbox selection for Throttle. You can choose which blocks to throttle by checking the Throttle checkbox next to each of your enabled blocks. We'll go ahead and throttle all of our blocks except for the User login, as we still want to allow users to login to the site during high traffic periods. The throttle functionality works the same here as it does with modules. These blocks will be temporarily disabled during high site traffic. Once you check your throttle boxes, save your blocks configuration. The next time you have high site traffic, these blocks will be temporarily disabled.

General attributes These methods get and set DOM attributes of elements. .attr() (getter) Get the value of an attribute for the first element in the set of matched elements. .attr(attributeName) Parameters attributeName: The name of the attribute to get Return value A string containing the attribute value. Description It's important to note that the .attr() method gets the attribute value for only the first element in the matched set. To get the value for each element individually, we need to rely on a looping construct such as jQuery's .each() method. Using jQuery's .attr() method to get the value of an element's attribute has two main benefits: Convenience: It can be called directly on a jQuery object and chained to other jQuery methods. Cross-browser consistency: Some attributes have inconsistent naming from browser to browser. Furthermore, the values of some attributes are reported inconsistently across browsers, and even across versions of a single browser. The .attr() method reduces such inconsistencies. .attr() (setter) Set one or more attributes for the set of matched elements. .attr(attributeName, value).attr(map).attr(attributeName, function) Parameters (first version) attributeName: The name of the attribute to set value: A value to set for the attribute Parameters (second version) map: A map of attribute-value pairs to set Parameters (third version) attributeName: The name of the attribute to set function: A function returning the value to set Return value The jQuery object, for chaining purposes. Description The .attr() method is a convenient and powerful way to set the value of attributes, especially when setting multiple attributes or using values returned by a function. Let's consider the following image: <img id="greatphoto" src="brush-seller.jpg" alt="brush seller" /> Setting a simple attribute We can change the alt attribute by simply passing the name of the attribute and its new value to the .attr() method. $('#greatphoto').attr('alt', 'Beijing Brush Seller'); We can add an attribute the same way. $('#greatphoto').attr('title', 'Photo by Kelly Clark'); Setting several attributes at once To change the alt attribute and add the title attribute at the same time, we can pass both sets of names and values into the method at once using a map (JavaScript object literal). Each key-value pair in the map adds or modifies an attribute: $('#greatphoto').attr({alt: 'Beijing Brush Seller',title: 'photo by Kelly Clark'}); When setting multiple attributes, the quotation marks around attribute names are optional. Computed attribute values By using a function to set attributes, we can compute the value based on other properties of the element. For example, we could concatenate a new value with an existing value as follows: $('#greatphoto').attr('title', function() { return this.alt + ' – photo by Kelly Clark'}); This use of a function to compute attribute values can be particularly useful when we modify the attributes of multiple elements at once. .removeAttr() Remove an attribute from each element in the set of matched elements. .removeAttr(attributeName).removeAttr(function) Parameters (first version) attributeName: An attribute to remove Parameters (second version) function: A function returning the attribute to remove Return value The jQuery object, for chaining purposes. Description The .removeAttr() method uses the JavaScript removeAttribute() function, but it has the advantage of being able to be called directly on a jQuery object and it accounts for different attribute naming across browsers. As of jQuery 1.4, the .removeAttr() function allows us to indicate the attribute to be removed by passing in a function.

Views caching The Views 2 module allows you to cache your Views data and content. You can cache Views data per View. We're going to enable caching on one of our existing Views, and also create a brand new View and set caching for that as well using the test content we just generated. This will show you a nice integration of the Devel functionality with the Views module and then how caching works with Views. Go to your Site building | Views configuration page and you'll see many of your default and custom views listed. We have a view on this site for our main photo gallery. The view is named photo_gallery in our View listing. Go ahead and click on one of your Views edit links to get into edit mode for a View. In our Views 2 interface mode, we'll see our tabs for default, Page, and/or Block View display. I'm going to click on my Page tab to see my View's page settings. Under my Basic settings configuration, I'll see a link for Caching. Currently, our Caching link states None, meaning that no caching has been configured for this view. Click on the None link. Select the Time-based radio button. This will enable Time-based caching for our View page. Click the Update default display button. The next caching options configuration screen will ask you to set the amount of time for both, your View Query results and for your View Rendered output. Query results refer to the amount of time raw queries should be cached. Rendered output is the amount of time the View HTML output should be cached. So basically, you can cache both your data and your frontend HTML output. Set them both to the default of 1 hour. You can also set one to a specific time and the other to None. Go ahead and tweak these settings to your own requirements. I'm leaving both set to the default of 1 hour. Click on the Update button to save your caching options settings. You are now caching your View. Save your View by clicking on the Save button. The next time you look at your View interface you should see the caching time notation listed under your Basic settings. It will say 1 hour/1 hour for this setting. Once you enable Views caching, if you make a change to your View settings and configuration, the results and output of the View may not update while you have caching enabled. So, while in Views development you may want to disable caching and set it to None. Otherwise, this next section will show you how to disable your Views cache while you are in development. To see the performance results of this, you can use the Devel module's functionality again. When you load your View after you enable caching, you should see a decrease in the amount of ms (milliseconds) needed to build your Views plugin, data, and handlers. So, if your Views plugin build loaded in 27.1 ms before you enabled caching, you may notice that it changes to something less—for example, in my case it now shows that it loads in 2.8 ms. You can immediately see a slight performance increase with your View build. Let's go ahead and build a brand new View using the test content that we generated with the Devel module and then enable caching for this View as well. Go to your Views admin and follow these steps: Add a new View. Name the View, add a description and a tag if applicable. Click on Next. I'm going to create a View that filters my blog entries and lists the new blog entries in post date order using the Devel content I generated. Add a Page display to your new View. Name the page View. Give the page View a title. Give your View an HTML list style. Set the View to display 5 posts and to use a full pager. Set your caching to Time-based (following instructions above in the first view we edited). Give the view a path. Add a Node: Title field and set the field to be linked to its node. Add a filter in order to filter by Node:Type and then select Blog entry. Set your Sort criteria to sort by Node:Post date in ascending order by hour. Your settings should look similar to this: Save your View by clicking on the Save button. Your new View will be visible at the Page path you gave it and it will also be caching the content and data it presents. Again, if you refresh your View page each time you should notice that the plugins, data, and handlers build times decrease or stay very similar and consistent in load times. You should also notice that the Devel database queries status is telling you that it's using the cached results and cached output for the View build times and the MySQL statements. You should see the following code sitting below your page content on the View page you are looking at. It will resemble this: Views plugins build time: 23.509979248 msViews data build time: 55.7069778442 msViews handlers build time: 1.95503234863 msSELECT node.nid AS nid,node_data_field_photo_gallery_photo.field_photo_gallery_photo_fidAS node_data_field_photo_gallery_photo_field_photo_gallery_photo_fid,node_data_field_photo_gallery_photo.field_photo_gallery_photo_listAS node_data_field_photo_gallery_photo_field_photo_gallery_photo_list,node_data_field_photo_gallery_photo.field_photo_gallery_photo_dataAS node_data_field_photo_gallery_photo_field_photo_gallery_photo_data,node.type AS node_type,node.vid AS node_vid,node.title AS node_title,node.created AS node_createdFROM {node} nodeLEFT JOIN {content_type_photo} node_data_field_photo_gallery_photo ONnode.vid = node_data_field_photo_gallery_photo.vidWHERE (node.status <> 0) AND (node.type in ('%s'))ORDER BY node_created ASCUsed cached resultsUsed cached output

Getting ready You need a working installation of Joomla! 1.5.x. For exercise purpose, you can install that on your local computer. The web server should have PHP5 installed. Then you need to install Fabrik component. This component is available for free from http://fabrikar.com/download. Download the latest version of the component and install it from Extensions | Install/Uninstall screen in Joomla! administration panel. Also plan for the application you want to develop. For example, we are developing an event calender. This event calender will contain the following information: Event Category Event Name Venue Start Date & Time End Date & Time Event Description Attached Document Created by This is a very simple list of information we need. Based on the we will create two database tables: categories and events. The table structure is shown in the following diagram. The above table diagrams show that categories table is linked to events table by foreign key category_id. Similarly, we have added user_id field in events table, so that we can link it to jos_users table. Whenever a user creates an event, his or her user ID will be added to this field. For creating the tables in Joomla! database, connect to that database using phpMyadmin or some other interface, and run the following SQL command: CREATE TABLE `categories` (`id` INTEGER AUTO_INCREMENT DEFAULT NULL ,`name` VARCHAR(200) DEFAULT NULL ,PRIMARY KEY (`id`)) COMMENT 'contains categories of events';CREATE TABLE `events` (`id` INTEGER AUTO_INCREMENT DEFAULT NULL ,`category_id` INTEGER DEFAULT NULL ,`event_name` MEDIUMTEXT DEFAULT NULL ,`venue` VARCHAR(100) DEFAULT NULL ,`start` DATETIME DEFAULT NULL ,`end` DATETIME DEFAULT NULL ,`description` MEDIUMTEXT DEFAULT NULL ,`attachment` VARCHAR(250) DEFAULT NULL ,`user_id` INTEGER DEFAULT NULL ,PRIMARY KEY (`id`)) COMMENT 'list of events';ALTER TABLE `events` ADD FOREIGN KEY (category_id) REFERENCES `categories` (`id`); Successful execution of the above code block will create two tables and add a foreign key to events table linking it to categories table. With creation of these two table we are set to create our event calendar application. How to do it... Follow the steps below: From Joomla! Administration panel, click Components | Fabrik |  Connections. That shows existing database connections. By default, connection to Joomla! database is created. You can create  new database connection by clicking New button and filling in the form. Click on Tables link in this screen. That shows existing tables created in Fabrik. In Table screen, click on New button to add a new table. That shows Table: [New] screen. In Label field type Categories, and in Introduction field, type Event Categories. Then select Yes in Published radio box to the right side. Accept default values for other fields. Then click Access tab. That shows Access Rights. Accept the default values in Access tab. Now click Data tab. From here you have to configure which data table you want to use. From Connection drop down list, select site database. Then click on Link to Table drop down list and select categories table. In Order By drop down list, select name. There are some other options in this tab, but those cannot be configured until you save the table. Now click Save button to save the table.

The next wizard screen is for Outbound Call Rules. Let's go over it enough so that you can setup a simple rule. We start off with a name. This can be anything you like but I prefer something meaningful. For our example I want to dial 9 to use the analog line, and only allow extensions 100-102 to use this line. I also only want to be able to dial certain phone numbers. Then I have to delete the 9 before it goes out to the phone carrier. Let's have a look at each section of this screen: Calls to numbers starting with (Prefix) This is where you specify what you want someone to dial before the line is used. You could enter a string of numbers here to use as a "password" to dial out. You don't just let anyone call an international phone number, so set this to a string of numbers to use as your international password. Give the password only to those who need it. Just make sure you change it occasionally in case it slips out. Calls from extension(s) Now, you can specify who (by extension number) can use this gateway. Just enter the extension number(s) you want to allow either in a range (100-110), individually (100, 101, 104), or as a mix (100-103, 110). Usually, you will leave this open for everyone to use; otherwise, you will restrict extensions that were allowed to use the gateway, which will have repercussions of forwarding rules to external numbers. Calls to numbers with a length of This setting can be left blank if you want all calls to be able to go out on this gateway. In the next screenshot, I specified 3, 7, 10, and 11. This covers calls to 911, 411, 555-1234, 800-555-1234, and 1-800-555-1234, respectively. You can control what phone numbers go out based on the number of digits that are dialed. Route and strip options Since this is our only gateway right now, we will have it route the calls to the Patton gateway. The Strip Digits option needs to be set to 1. This will strip out the "9" that we specified above to dial out with. We can leave the Prepend section blank for now. Now, go ahead and click Finish: Once you click Finish, you will see a gateway wizard summary, as shown in the next screenshot. This shows you that the gateway is created, and it also gives an overview of the settings. Your next step is to get those settings configured on your gateway. There is a list of links for various supported gateways on the bottom of the summary page with up-to-date instructions. Feel free to visit those links. These links will take you to the 3CX website and explain how to configure that particular gateway. With Patton this is easy; click the Generate config file button. The only other information you need for the configuration file is the Subnet mask for the Patton gateway. Enter your network subnet mask in the box. Here, I entered a standard Class C subnet mask. This matches my 192.168.X.X network. Click OK when you are done: Once you click OK, your browser will prompt you to save the file, as shown in the following screenshot. Click Save: The following screenshot shows a familiar Save As Windows screen. I like to put this file in an easy-to-remember location on my hard drive. As I already have a 3CX folder created, I'm going to save the file there. You can change the name of the file if you wish. Click Save: Now that your file is saved, let's take a look at modifying those settings. Open the administration web interface and, on the left-hand side, click PSTN Devices. Go ahead and expand this by clicking the + sign next to it. Now, you will see our newly created Patton SN4114A gateway listed. Click the + sign again and expand that gateway. Next, click the Patton SN4114A name, and you will see the right-hand side window pane fill up with five separate tabs. The first tab is General. This is where you can change the gateway IP address, SIP port, and all the account details. If you change anything, you will need a new configuration file. So click the Generate config file button at the bottom of the screen. If you forgot to save the file previously, here's your chance to generate and save it again: On the Advanced tab, we have some Provider Capabilities. Leave these settings alone for now: We will leave the rest of the tabs for now. Go ahead and click the 10000 line information in the navigation pane on the left. These are the settings for that particular phone port (10000). The first group of settings that we can change is the authentication username and password. Remember, this is to register the line with 3CX and not to use the phone line. The next two sections are about what to do with an inbound call during Office Hours and Outside Office Hours. I didn't change anything from the gateway wizard but, on this screen, you can see that we selected Ring group 800 MainRingGroup. This is the Ring group that we configured previously. We also see similar drop-down boxes for Outside Office Hours. As no one will be in the office to answer the phone, I've selected a Digital Receptionist 801 DR1. In the section Other Options, the Outbound Caller ID box is used to enter what you would like to have presented to the outside world as caller ID information. If your phone carrier supports this, you can enter a phone number or a name. If the carrier does not support this, just leave it blank and talk to your carrier as to what you would require to have it assigned as your caller ID. The Allow outbound calls on this line and Allow incoming calls on this line checkboxes are used to limit calls in or out. Depending on your environment, you might want to leave one line selected as no outbound calls. This will always leave an incoming line for customers to call. Otherwise, unless you have other lines that they can call on, they will get a busy signal. Maximum simultaneous calls cannot be changed here as analog lines only support one call at a time. If you changed anything, click Apply and then go back and generate a new configuration file: For the most up-to-date information on configuring your gateway, visit the 3CX site: http://www.3cx.com/voip-gateways/index.html We will go over a summary of it here: Since nothing was changed, it is now time to configure the Patton device with the config file that we generated from the 3CX template. If you know the IP address of the device, go ahead and open a browser and navigate to that IP address. Mine would be http://192.168.2.10. If you do not know the IP address of your device, you will need the SmartNode discovery tool. The easiest place to get this tool is the CD that came with the device. You can also download it from http://www.3cx.com/downloads/misc/sndiscovery.zip, or search the Patton website for it. Go ahead and install the SmartNode discovery tool and run it. You will get a screen that tells you all the SmartNodes on your network with their IP address, MAC address, and firmware version. Double-click on the SmartNode to open the web interface in a browser. The default username is administrator, and the password field is left blank. Click Import/Export on the left and Import Configuration on the right. Click Browse to find the configuration file that we generated. Click Import and then Reload to restart the gateway with the new configuration. That's it . We can now get incoming calls and make an outbound call.

PSTN trunks A Public Switch Telephone Network (PSTN) trunk is an old fashioned analog Basic Rate Interface (BRI) ISDN or Primary Rate Interface (PRI) phone line. 3CX can use any of these with the correct analog to SIP gateway. Usually these come into your home or business through a pair of copper lines. Depending on where you live, this may be the only means of connecting 3CX and communicating outside of your network. One of the advantages of a PSTN line is reliability and great call quality. Unless the wires break, you will almost always have phone service. However, what about call quality? After all, many people would like to have a comparison between VoIP and PSTN. Analog hardware for BRI ISDN and PRI's will be discussed in greater detail in Chapter 9. For using an analog PSTN line, you will need an FXO gateway. There are many external ones available. Until Sangoma introduced a new line at the end of 2008, there had not been any gateway which worked inside a Windows PC with 3CX. There are many manufacturers of analog gateways such as Linksys, Audio-Codes, Patton Electronics, GrandStream, and Sangoma. What these FXO gateways do is convert the analog phone line into IP signaling. Then the IP signaling gets passed over your network to the 3CX server and your phones. My personal preference is Patton Electronics. They are probably the most expensive FXOs' out there, but in this case, you get what you pay for. I have tried all of them and they all work. Some have issues with echo which can be hard to get rid of without support, or lots of trial and error, whereas some cannot support high demands (40 calls/hour) without needing to be reset every day, so if you are just testing, get a low-end one. For a high demand business, my preference is Patton. Not only do they make great products, but their support is top notch too. We will configure a Patton SmartNode SN4114 later in this article. SIP trunks What is a SIP trunk? A SIP trunk is a call that is routed by IP over the Internet through an Internet Telephony Service Provider (ITSP). For enterprises wanting to make full use of their installed IP PBXs' and communicate over IP not only within the enterprise, but also outside the enterprise—a SIP trunk provided by an ITSP that connects to the traditional PSTN network is the solution. Unlike traditional telephony, where bundles of physical wires were once delivered from the service provider to a business, a SIP trunk allows a company to replace traditional fixed PSTN lines with PSTN connectivity via a SIP trunking service provider on the Internet. SIP trunks can offer significant cost savings for enterprises, eliminating the need for local PSTN gateways, costly ISDN BRI's or PRI's. The following figure is an example of how our phone system operates: You can see that we have a local area network containing our desktops, servers, phones, and our 3CX Phone System. To reach the outside world using a SIP trunk, we have to go through our firewall or router. Depending on your network, you could be using a private IP address (10.x.x.x, 172.16.x.x, or 192.168.x.x) which is not allowed on the public Internet, so it has to get translated to the public IP address. This translation process is called Network Address Translation (NAT). Once we get outside the local network, we are in the public realm. Our ITSP uses the internet to get our phone call to/from the various carriers PSTN (analog) lines where our phone call is connected/terminated. There are three components necessary to successfully deploy SIP trunks: A PBX with a SIP-enabled trunk side An enterprise edge device understanding SIP An Internet Telephony or SIP trunking service provider The PBX In most cases, the PBX is an IP-based PBX, communicating with all endpoints over IP. However, it may just as well be a traditional digital or analog PBX. The sole requirement that has to be available is an interface for SIP trunking connectivity. The enterprise border element The PBX on the LAN connects to the ITSP via the enterprise border element. The enterprise edge component can either be a firewall with complete support for SIP, or an edge device connected to the firewall handling the traversal of the SIP traffic. The ITSP On the Internet, the ITSP provides connectivity to the PSTN for communication with mobile and fixed phones. Choosing a VoIP carrier—more than just price I feel two of the most important features to look for when choosing a VoIP carrier is support and call quality. Usually once you setup and everything is working, you won't need support. I always tell clients that there is no "boxed" solution that I can sell, every installation is a little different. Internet connections are all different even with the same provider. If you have a rock-solid T1 or something better, then this shouldn't be a problem. DSL seems different from building to building, even in the same area. So how do you test support before giving them your credit card? Call them! Try calling support at the worst times such as Monday afternoons when everyone is back to work and online, also try calling after business hours. See how long does it take to connect to a live person and if you can understand them once you speak to them? Find where is their support located? Try talking to them and tell them you are thinking about signing up with their service and ask them for help. If they go out of their way before they have your money, chances are they will be good to work with later on. Some carriers only offer chat or email support in favor of lower prices. While this may work fine for your business, it certainly won't work for the ones who need answers right away. I know I seem to be stressing a lot on support but it's for good reason. If your business depends on phone service and it goes down then you need answers! I pay more for a product if the support is worth it. Part of this is your Return On Investment (ROI). For example, if you have 3 lawyers billing at $200/hour and they need phones to work, that's $600/hour of lost time. Does the extra $50 or $100 upfront cover that? Now back to the topic at hand. Once you have connected 3CX to the carrier, how is the call quality? If it sounds like a bad cell phone, you probably don't want it, unless the price is so cheap that you can live with the low quality. Certain carriers even change the way your call gets routed through the Internet, based on the lowest cost for the particular call. They don't care about quality as long as you get that connection and they make money on it. Concurrent calls with an ITSP are a feature that you may want to look for when choosing an ITSP. Some accounts are a one-to-one ratio of lines per call. If you want to have 5 people on the phone at the same time (inbound or outbound), you would need to pay for 5 lines, this is similar to a PSTN line. You may get some savings here over a PSTN but that depends on what is available in your area. Some ITSP's have concurrent calls where you can use more than one line per call. Not many carriers have this feature but for a small business, this can be a great cost saving feature to look for. I use a couple of different carriers that have this feature. One carrier that I use lets you have 3 concurrent calls simultaneously on the same line. If you need more than 3 calls, you're a higher use customer and they want you to buy several lines. VoIP IP signaling uses special algorithms to compress your voice into IP packets. This compression uses a codec. There are several available, but the most common one is G.711u-law or A-law. This uses about 80kpbs of upload and download bandwidth. Another popular codec is G.729, it uses about 36kpbs. So for the same bandwidth you can have twice the number of calls using G.729 than G.711. You will need to check with your ITSP and see what codec they support. Another carrier I use is based purely on how much internet bandwidth you have. If you have 1Mbps of upload speed (usually the slowest part of your internet connection), you can support about 10 simultaneous or concurrent calls using G.711. You then pay for the minutes you use. This works very well for a small office as your monthly bill is very low and you don't have to maintain a bunch of lines that don't get used. Cable internet providers are also offering VoIP service to your home or business. These are usually single-use lines but they terminate at your office with an FXS plug. To integrate this with 3CX, you will need an FXO just like it's a PSTN line, same setup but you get the advantage of a VoIP line. Another great benefit of a SIP trunk is expandability. You can easily start out with one line which can usually be completed in one day. As you grow you can add more, usually in minutes as you already have the plan setup. Time to consolidate lines? You can even drop them later on without having contracts (most of the time). Try doing that with the local phone company! Call for a new business and it can take 1-2 weeks to get set up, plus contracts to worry about. No wonder they are jumping on the VoIP band wagon. Disaster recovery What do you do when your internet goes down? Some of you might be saying, "Ha! It never goes down". In my experience, it will eventually, and at the worst time. So what do you do? Go home for the day or plan for a backup? Most VoIP carriers provide some kind of disaster recovery option. They try to send you a call and when they don't get a connection to your 3CX box; then then re-route the call to another phone number. This could be a PSTN line or even a cell phone. It can be a free feature or there can be a small monthly fee on the account. It's worth having, especially if you rely on phones. Okay, so that covers inbound disaster recovery. What about outbound? Yes just about everyone has a cell phone these days, if that isn't enough, I'd suggest you invest in a pay-per-use PSTN line. This keeps the monthly cost very low but it's there when you need it. Whether it's an emergency pizza order for that Friday afternoon party or a true emergency when someone panics and dials 911—you want that call to go out. Speaking of emergency numbers, make sure you have your carrier register that phone number to your local address. Let's say you are in New York and you have a Californian phone number to give you some local presence in that part of the country. Your co-worker grabs his chest and falls down and someone dials 911 from the closest phone they see. Emergency services see your Californian number and contacts California for help for your New York office, that's not what you want when someone is clutching their chest, even though it was just heartburn from that pepperoni pizza. Mixing VoIP and PSTN Some of my clients even mix VoIP and PSTN together. Why would you mix? Local calls and inbound calls use the PSTN lines for the best call quality (and do not use any VoIP minutes if they have to pay for those). Long distance calls use the cheaper rate VoIP line. Another scenario is using PSTN lines for all your incoming and outgoing calls and use VoIP to talk to your other offices. Your own office can deal with a lower call quality, and management will appreciate the lower cost. These types of setups can be controlled using a dial plan.

Let's get started! Ring groups Ring groups are designed to direct calls to a group of extensions so that a person can answer the call. An incoming call will ring at several extensions at once, and the one who picks up the phone gets control of that call. At that point, he/she can transfer the call, send it to voicemail, or hang up. Ring groups are my preferred call routing method. Does anyone really like those automated greetings? I don't. We will of course, set those up because they do have some great uses. However, if you like your customers to get a real live voice when they call, you have two choices—either direct the call to an extension or use a ring group and have a few phones ring at once. To create a ring group, we will use the 3CX web interface. There are several ways to do this. From the top toolbar menu, click Add | Ring Group. In the following screenshot, I chose Add | Ring Group: The following screenshot shows another way of adding a ring group using the Ring Groups section in the navigation pane on the left-hand side. Then click on the Add Ring Group button on the toolbar: Once we click Add Ring Group, 3CX will automatically create a Virtual machine number for this ring group as shown in the next screenshot. This helps the system keep track of calls and where they are. This number can be changed to any unused number that you like. As a reseller, I like to keep them the same from client to client. This creates some standardization among all the systems. Now it's time to give the ring group a Name. Here I use MainRingGroup as it lets me know that when a call comes in, it should go to the Main Ring Group. After you create the first one, you can make more such as SalesRingGroup, SupportRingGroup, and so on. We now have three choices for the Ring Strategy: Prioritized Hunt: Starts hunting for a member from the top of the Ring Group Members list and works down until someone picks up the phone or goes to the Destination if no answer section. Ring All: If all the phones in the Ring Group Members section ring at the same time then the first person to pick up gets the call. Paging: This is a paid feature that will open the speakerphone on Ring Group Members. Now you will need to select your Ring Time (Seconds) to determine how long you want the phones to ring before giving up. The default ring time is 20 seconds, which all my clients agree is too long. I'd recommend 10-15 seconds, but remember, if no one picks up the phone, then the caller goes to the next step, such as a Digital Receptionist. If the next step also makes the caller wait another 10-20 seconds, he/she may just hang up. You also need to be sure that you do not exceed the phone company's timeout of diverting calls to their voicemail (which could be turned off) or returning a busy signal. Adding ring group members Ring Group Members are the extensions that you would like the system to call or page in a ring group. If you select the Prioritized Hunt strategy, it will hunt from the top and go down the list. Ring All and Paging will get everyone at once. The listbox on the left will show you a list of available extensions. Select the ones you want and click the Add button. If you are using Prioritized Hunt, you can change the order of the hunt by using the Up and Down buttons. Destination if no answer The last setting as shown in the next screenshot illustrates what to do when no one answers the call. The options are as follows: End Call: Just drop the call, no chance for the caller to talk to someone. Connect to Extension: Ring the extension of your choice. Connect to Queue / Ring Group: This sends the caller to a call queue (discussed later in the Call queues section)) or to another ring group. A second ring group could be created for stage two that calls the same group plus additional extensions. Connect to Digital Receptionist: As a person didn't pick up the call, we can now send it to an automated greeting/menu system. Voicemail box for Extension: As the caller has already heard phones ringing, you may just want to put him/her straight to someone's voicemail. Forward to Outside Number: If you have had all the phones in the building ringing and no one has picked up, then you might want to send the caller to a different phone outside of your PBX system. Just make sure that you enter the correct phone number and any area codes that may be required. This will use another simultaneous call license and another phone line. If you have one line only, then this is not the option you can use. Digital Receptionist setup A Digital Receptionist (DR) is not a voicemail box; it's an automated greeting with a menu of choices to choose from. A DR will answer the phone for you if no one is available to answer the phone (directly to an extension or hunt group) or if it is after office hours. You need to set up a DR unless you want all incoming calls to go to someone's voicemail. You will also need it if you want to present the caller with a menu of options. Let's see how to create a DR. Recording a menu prompt The first thing you need to do in order to create a DR is record a greeting. There are a couple of ways to do this. However, first let's create the greeting script. In this greeting, you will be defining your phone menu; that is, you will be directing calls to extensions, hunts, agent groups, and the dial by name directory. Following is an example: Thank you for calling. If you know your party's extension, you may dial it at any time. Or else, please listen to the following options: For Rob, dial 1 For the sales group, dial 2 For Zachary, dial 4 Solicitors, please dial 8 For a dial by name directory, dial 9 I suggest having it written down. This makes it easier to record and also gives the person setting up the DR in 3CX a copy of the menu map. Now that you know what you want your callers to hear when they call, it's time to get it recorded so that we can import it into 3CX. You have a couple of options for recording the greeting script. It doesn't matter which option you use or how you obtain this greeting file, as long as the end format is correct. You can hire a professional announcer, put it to music, and obtain the file from him/her. You can record it using any audio software you like such as Windows Sound Recorder, or any audio recording software. The file needs to be a .wav or an .mp3 file saved in PCM, 8KHz, 16 bit, Mono format. If you have Windows Sound Recorder only, I'd suggest that you try out Audacity. Audacity is an open source audio file program available at http://audacity.sourceforge.net/. Audacity gives you a lot more power such as controlling volume, combining several audio tracks (a music track to go with the announcer), using special effects, and many other cool audio tools. I'm not an expert in it but the basics are easy to do. First, hit the Audacity website and download it, then install it using the defaults. Now let's launch Audacity and set it up to use the correct file format, which will save us any issues later. Start by clicking Edit | Preferences. On the Quality tab, select the Default Sample Rate as 8000 Hz. Then change the Default Sample Format to 16-bit as shown in the following screenshot: Now, on the File Formats tab, select WAV (Microsoft 16 bit PCM) from the drop-down list and click OK: Now that those settings are saved, you can record your greeting without having to change any formats. Now it's time to record your greeting. Click on the red Record button as shown in the following screenshot. It will now use your PC's microphone to record the announcer's voice and when the recording is done, click on the Stop button. Press Play to hear it, and if you don't like it, start over again: If you like the way your greeting sounds, then you will need to save it. Click File | Export As WAV... or Export As MP3.... Save it to a location that you remember (for example, c:3CX prompts is a good place) with a descriptive filename. While you are recording this greeting, you might as well record a few more if you have plans for creating multiple DRs: Creating the Digital Receptionist With your greeting script in hand, it's time to create your first DR. In the navigation pane on the left side, click Digital Receptionist, then click Add Digital Receptionist as shown in the following screenshot: Or on the top menu toolbar, click Add | Digital Receptionist: Just like your ring group, the DR gets a Virtual extension number by default, Feel free to change it or stick with it. Give it a Name, (I like to use the same name as the audio greeting filename.) Now, click Browse... and then Add. Browse to your c:3CX prompts directory and select your .wav or .mp3 file as shown in the following screenshot: Next, we need to create the menu system as shown in the following screenshot. We have lots of options available. You can connect to an extension or ring group, transfer directly to someone's voicemail, end the call (my solicitors' option), or start the call by name feature (discussed in the Call by name setup section). At any time during playback, callers can dial the extension number; they don't have to hear all the options. I usually explain this in the DR recorded greeting.

Enabling weblog pings Now that you have a Technorati account, let's enable your Roller weblog so that it can ping Technorati automatically each time you post a new entry or edit a previously posted entry. Time for action – enabling automatic pings in your weblog This exercise will show you how to enable automatic pinging in your weblog, so that every time you post a new entry or update some entry you posted before, Technorati will receive a ping and will update your blog status: Go to the Front Page: Weblog Settings tab in your web browser, click on the Preferences tab to see your weblog's configuration page, and click on the Pings link: The Configure Automatic Weblog Pings page will appear next. Scroll down the page until you locate the Technorati row under the Common Ping Targets section: Click on Technorati's Enable link to enable automatic pinging for your weblog, so it can send automatic pings to Technorati: Click on the Send Ping Now button to test whether everything works correctly. Roller will show the following success message: Now you just have to wait until Technorati grabs your blog's most recent information, as shown in the following screenshot: What just happened? Now Technorati will keep your weblog information updated every time you post a new entry in your weblog. Once you register with an aggregator, it's very easy to configure automatic pinging in Roller, as you saw in the previous exercise. Now all you need to do is configure all the pings you can to other aggregators and blog search engines, so that people from everywhere can see your weblog! Have a go hero – configure more ping targets Now that you learned how to configure automatic pings to Technorati for your Roller weblog, check out the other ping targets available in the Common Ping Targets list. Go on and enable all the ping targets that you can in order to promote your weblog in all the available blog search engines and aggregators. You can also register with Digg, StumbleUpon, and the other popular aggregators/blog search engines and add new ping targets for them if you click on the Custom Ping Targets link in the Configure Automatic Weblog Pings page. So what are you waiting for? Go and promote your new Roller weblog! Google webmaster tools Now that you have a cool weblog, it would be great if the weblog would show up in Google every time someone searches for a subject related to the things you're writing, don't you think? That's why Google invented the webmaster tools—a great resource to help you find out how your weblog is interacting with the Google bot. With these tools you can get detailed information about broken links, popular keywords, and basically, all the stuff you need to have a successful weblog! Time for action – enabling Google webmaster tools This exercise will show you how to configure Google webmaster tools for your Roller weblog, so you can start receiving important information about visitors and how your weblog interacts with Google: Open your web browser and type https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools to go to the Google webmaster tools website: If you created a Gmail account when installing Roller, you can use it to sign in to Google webmaster tools. Or you can create a new Gmail account in case you don't have one already. Click on the Sign In button when ready. The Google webmaster tools Home page will appear next. Click on the Add a Site button at the bottom to add your Roller weblog: Now enter your weblog's URL in the pop-up box and click on Continue: Google will show you a Meta tag that you need to copy and paste in your Roller weblog. Select the meta tag, right-click on it, and click on Copy: Now open a new tab in your web browser, log into your Roller weblog, and go to the Design tab. The Weblog Theme page will appear. Click on the Custom Theme option and then on the Update Theme button: Roller will show the Successfully set theme to – custom message. Click on the Templates link and then select the Weblog template: Scroll down the page until you locate the </head> HTML tag and paste the Google webmaster tools meta tag right before it, as shown in the following screenshot: Scroll down the page until you locate the Save button and click on it. Roller will show the Template updated successfully message. Return to the Google webmaster tools tab in your web browser and click on the Verify button to verify your weblog: If all goes well, Google will verify your weblog and take you to the Dashboard:

So let's get on with it. Managing group blogs Suddenly, your boss bursts into your office and shouts: "Well, let's give Roller a try for our company's blog!" And now, you have to enable group blogs in your Roller installation. Time for action – creating another user The first thing you need to do in order to enable group blogging is create another user, as shown in the following exercise: Open your web browser and type your Roller's dynamic hostname in the Address bar (for example, mine is http://alromero.no-ip.org). Now click on the Login link on your weblog's main page: The Welcome to Roller page will appear. Instead of logging in, click on the Register link in order to create a new user: The New User Registration screen will show up next. Fill in the fields for your new user, as shown in the following screenshot: Click on Register User when finished. If all goes well, you'll be taken back to the Welcome to Roller screen, and the following success message will appear: Select the Click here link to continue. Type your new Username and Password, and click on the Login button. The Main Menu page will appear: Click on the Create new weblog link, under the Actions panel. Roller will take you to the Create Weblog page. Fill in the required fields to create your new weblog. Use the following data for the Name, Description, and Handle fields: The Email Address field will already contain the e-mail address you used when creating your new user. Leave the default values for Locale, Timezone, and Theme, and click on the Create Weblog button to continue. The following page will appear indicating that your weblog was successfully created: Now click on the New Entry link in order to create the following new entry in your weblog: Scroll down the page and click on the Post to Weblog button to post your entry. What just happened? Well, now there's another user in your Roller server, how about that? Your boss is going to be proud of you and very happy, because your company will have a multiuser blog! The next step is to invite other people to create user accounts and weblogs in the Roller blog server. If you're using Roller in your office, just start spreading the word to your colleagues. Or if you're experimenting with Roller in your home, you can invite some friends to blog with you, create a family group blog, and so on. Have a go hero – inviting members to write in your weblog Now that you've learned how other people can register and get a user account in Roller, it would be a good idea to start exploring the Preferences: Members page, where you can invite other Roller users to collaborate in your weblog by posting entries. Roller has three user levels: Administrator: Can create/edit weblog entries and publish them in your weblog. An administrator can also change the Roller theme and templates, and manage weblog users. Author: Can create/edit weblog entries and upload files, but cannot change themes or templates, and cannot manage users. Limited: Can create/edit entries and save them as drafts, but cannot publish them. Go on and create several test user accounts, and try out the three Roller user levels by inviting the test users to collaborate in your weblog. To invite a user, use the Invite new member link under the Actions panel in the Preferences: Members page. Enabling a front page blog Up until now, you've been using your main weblog as the front page for your Roller blog server. Now that you've enabled group blogging, each user can promote his/her weblog(s) individually, or you can create a community front page to show recent posts from all of your user's weblogs. The next exercise will show you how to create and use a front page blog to show posts from all the other weblogs in your Roller blog server. Time for action – enabling a front page blog In this exercise, we're going to create a new weblog to serve as the front page of your entire Roller weblog server. The front page blog will show a list of recent entries from all your other weblogs, and from all the other users' weblogs in your Roller blog server. Log into Roller (in case you're not already logged in) with your administrator account, go to the Main Menu page, and then click on the Create new weblog link under the Actions panel: Type My Roller Community in the Name field, The best Roller blog community in the Description field, and frontpage in the Handle field: Scroll down the page until you locate the Theme field, select the Frontpage theme, and click on the Create Weblog button: The following page will appear, indicating that your frontpage weblog was created successfully: Now click on the Server administration link located in the Actions panel. The Roller Configuration page will show up. Scroll down until you locate the Handle of weblog to serve as frontpage blog field, and replace its contents with frontpage. Then click on the Enable aggregated site-wide frontpage option to enable it: Scroll down the page until you locate the Save button and click on it to save your changes. Now click on the Front Page link in Roller's menu bar:

Rendering links to files using <media> tags Imagine, for a second, a dark world of web development without content management systems. You have a simple website with some text and links to files to be downloaded. Now, imagine that you need to move the files into a different folder. You would have to go through each page, and update the links to point to the new location of the file. In DAM, the physical file is separate from the record describing the file. Thanks to this separation, the pages can link to the DAM record, instead of the physical file. If the file is moved, only the DAM record will need to be updated (which happens automatically if you move the file within DAM modules), and all links will automatically update. We will now explore how the <media> HTML tag can be used to take advantage of this feature. Getting Ready Make sure both DAM and htmlArea RTE extensions are installed. In the Extension Manager click on the DAM extension to get an overview of enable configuration. Make sure that the media tag option is enabled. How to do it... Create a new Regular text element on a page. Enter the HTML mode in the RTE: Type in <media 1234>Link text</media>, replacing 1234 with the UID of the DAM record, and link the text with the text you want to appear inside the link. You can find the UID of the record in the information panel. Save and preview. How it works... The advantage of the <media> tag is that instead of linking to a file, you're linking to a DAM record. The record, in turn, points to the physical file—so if you move the files around, all links will be updated automatically. There's more It may be possible that after enabling all the options in the Extension Manager, the <media> tags are encoded by RTE, and appear in the frontend unparsed. In that case, you need to enter the following options in Page TSconfig: // Add txdam_media to RTE processing rulesRTE.default.proc.overruleMode = ts_css,txdam_media // Use same RTE processing rules in FERTE.default.FE.proc.overruleMode = ts_css,txdam_media // RTE processing rules for bodytext column of tt_content tableRTE.config.tt_content.bodytext.proc.overruleMode = ts_css,txdam_mediaRTE.config.tt_content.bodytext.types.text.proc.overruleMode = ts_css,txdam_mediaRTE.config.tt_content.bodytext.types.textpic.proc.overruleMode = ts_css,txdam_media Accessing Page TSconfig To access Page TSconfig, right-click on a page in the page tree, and choose Edit page properties: Alternatively, you can browse to the page in the Page module, and click the Edit page properties button either in the module body, or in the docheader —the bar across the top of the module housing the control buttons. From there, the Page TSConfig, is available under the Options tab: Creating a gallery using ce_gallery There are multiple galleries available for TYPO3. Each has its own advantages, and an entire book can be dedicated to comparing the various extensions. We will install and configure only one as an example. ce_gallery has an advantage that it is very easy to set up and customize, and relies completely on DAM for content and organization. Getting Ready Make sure you have the extensions DAM and dam_catedit installed. Create a root category, and a few categories under it. Assign a few JPG images to each category How to do it... Install ce_gallery. Accept database and filesystem changes. In a template record, include the static template Photogallery (CSS) (ce_gallery). Add a Plugin content element of type Photogallery to a page. In the General tab, uncheck the Slimbox (pmkslimbox needed) checkbox. In the Categories tab, select the root category and check the box that says Recursive: Save and preview. The output should appear similar to the following screenshot: How it works... ce_gallery treats DAM categories as albums, which in turn, contain pictures. If you want to add more photos to an album, just assign them to a category, and clear cache on the page where you added the Photogallery plugin.