In earlier versions of (Joomla <1.6), this meant editing the language file or loading in your own file programmatically.

Editing the file directly is simple (so long as you have identified the correct file) but short sighted!

The problem with updates

If you update Joomla you will either wipe out your changes as the language file is overwritten or need to spend significant time diffing to reconcile the language files. Even using a fancy IDE diff or an external graphical diff tool, the thought of sifting through the lines makes me shudder!

Loading in your own file to override is possible but shouldn’t that be a feature of the language files anyway? I was happy to find in Joomla 2 you can override language strings!

Language overrides in Joomla 2

Simply name your Joomla language file with the appropriate language identifier prefix and .override.ini

e.g. for British English:

en-GB.override.ini

Place your override file in (this directory already existed on my Joomla install):

administrator/language/overrides/

Full path:

administrator/language/overrides/en-GB.override.ini

No nasty surprises when updating Joomla or any core hacks locking you in to an old version of Joomla.

I wanted a place to write technical articles and share what I’ve learned working on *nix operating systems over the years and a dedicated website that I can develop into a useful resource will fulfill that aim.

sudash.net covers the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) applications stack, with a focus on working at the command line for System Administration tasks. There are three sections: articles on System Administration, a Commands Manual, and articles on Applications used by Web Developers.

One section I particularly enjoy writing is a supplementary Linux commands manual with easily digestible basics, details, and tips for each command. I’ve structured the website so the commands are easy to access e.g. http://www.sudash.net/man/less/.

It’s early days so far but I’ve got the look I wanted, a clean site structure, and lots of useful articles waiting to be published.

WordPress Theme

I’m using my own custom WordPress theme for agtb.net. I started, as usual, when I develop WordPress websites by hacking the ubiquitous default WordPress theme, Kubrick, into shape.

I have developed websites using themes designed for rapid development such as Sandbox, but I found the amount of extraneous cruft to be a time sink to remove. Kubrick has, what I would consider, a lot of junk (e.g. pixels for text layout, repeated CSS selectors, no obvious order) in the CSS stylesheet and custom functions but I like the overall website layout.

WordPress Plugins

Aside from the usual plugins WordPress needs to function properly (caching, spam blocking, SEO) the one plugin I usually install first is Pathless Category Links. It simply removes the ‘category’ level of the website for posts, which I think pollutes the website’s URL structure.

I’m running my own plugin to automatically add meta description tags, which can be used by Google for descriptions in search engine results pages, to the pages on agtb.net. I’ll be developing and releasing this and other WordPress plugins soon.

Techniques

CSS Typography

One CSS technique that I like and have used here is sizing text by ems after normalizing.

The idea here is that Web browsers default to a medium text size of 16px. So by resizing that to a useful number (10px) it is then possible to define size by ems based on that value and so use relatively resizable text.

body { font-size: 62.5%; } /* (16px @ 62.5% = 10px) */

Now simply set a legible text size for the main container element:

div#content { font-size: 1.2em; } /* (approximately 12px by default) */

jQuery Validation of Comment Forms

I wanted a clean and clear way to highlight any errors preventing submission to users of the comment forms at agtb.net. The default WordPress action is to take the user away to a new page listing problems, which seems awkward.

I’ve used jQuery with the Validation plugin to validate the comment forms. The default actions of jQuery: Validation are good and very quick to implement. After including jQuery in WordPress and appending a class of required to <input> elements the plugin inserts a <label> for each field to notify the user of the form’s requirements.

I wanted to notify the user of any problems by highlighting the fields and listing any errors clearly at the bottom of the form. Thanks to the good quality Validation plugin documentation I had soon added custom highlighting, messages, and error placement. To see this in action try submitting a comment without entering a name, valid e-mail, or comment. It’s a pleasure to use mature projects like jQuery:Validation.

Graphics

I do my own graphics whenever I can. I enjoy keeping my Photoshop and Illustrator skills keen and find that if I don’t use them regularly I can get a bit rusty. I’m not a graphics artist by trade so I lack a certain creative flair but I have a eye and attention for detail.

I’ve also used or tweaked some icons from the excellent Silk Icons package on agtb.net. There are probably enough good quality icons there to create your own Operating System.

XHTML and CSS Validation

Once the majority of development has been done it’s time to validate the HTML and CSS. I usually do this at the end of introducing a new feature because writing standards compliant code comes naturally. I find validation is useful for revealing mistakes such as missing HTML elements depending on the PHP path taken or the occasional typo.

I changed the DTD from XHTML 1.0 Transitional to Strict. To comply with Strict I only had to remove a few non-standard HTML attributes left over from the Kubrick theme.

You can validate this page and the website CSS with the buttons below. I also display validation buttons at the foot of the page so you (or I) can quickly check my code is standards compliant.

Development Workflow

I use Eclipse PDT (Ganymede) as a PHP editor with the Subclipse plugin for Subversion version control using a repository hosted at Dreamhost. I’m using XAMPP as a local testing server. And life is good!

I use a pretty standard repository layout of trunk/branches/tags directories for the agtb.net theme. I’m planning on using the vendor branch pattern for the WordPress core but the frequent security updates would probably be an unwelcome chore to integrate. I keep all website images under version control. Checking out and committing however run quite slowly so I export the website files via SSH on the Dreamhost server.

The rest is Firefox, Firebug, and Photoshop or Illustrator before switching back into Eclipse.

Cannot open theme file /usr/share/apps/kdm/themes/CentOSCubes

It wasn’t a critical error – more of an annoyance. Dismissing the message box displayed a basic-looking KDM that allowed me to log in.

Problem

The problem on my system was that the default CentOS KDM theme was updated and the old one, CentOSCubes, dropped from the artwork package. Here’s a (resolved) CentOS bug report on the issue.

Fixed

To get rid of the error message I simply changed the KDM config file to point to the new theme:

Check what themes are available:

ls -1 /usr/share/apps/kdm/themes/

Change the line begining ‘Theme=’ in the config file:

/usr/share/config/kdm/kdmrc

e.g.

Theme=/usr/share/apps/kdm/themes/TreeFlower

Error message gone!

Local server up in minutes

I have to say I’m very impressed with XAMPP-lite! Once I’d got round the usual oddities (e.g. file locations based on physical drive locations, such as C:, instead of a proper hierarchy) of running software originally developed for *nix on Windows I had a working test server running locally in no time at all.

Configuring XAMPP for local domain names

Testing a website from localhost file paths instead of DNS worked well but I soon added a hosts file entry and a bit of virtual host configuration magic to avoid problems (e.g. with Apache RewriteRule directives).

I chose to use a fake subdomain of ‘local’ and then mapped that in XAMPP’s vhost.conf equivalent.

hosts file

e.g. notepad %WINDIR%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

127.0.0.1	local.example.com

virtual hosts file

e.g. notepad %SYSTEMDRIVE%\xamp\apache\conf\extra\httpd-vhosts.conf

NameVirtualHost *:80

<VirtualHost *:80>
        DocumentRoot /xamp/htdocs/example.com
        ServerName local.example.com
</VirtualHost>

Hats off to Apache Friends for XAMPP.