ReGoHo

Joomla Forms

The ReGoHo Team — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 00:01:20 +0000

Some of you may have already noticed that it is not possible to use and create custom forms in Joomla. At least, it is not supported without extra efforts. It is not clear to us whether support of custom forms will be added in future release. However, we will present you some extensions that add this feature to your Joomla installation.

Let’s have a look on the possibilities to enhance the simple contact form of Joomla with custom fields. There are several extensions that offer a more sophisticated form. So which to choose. Well… there are a few general guidelines when it comes to choosing Joomla extensions:

has the extension been frequently and recently updated by the developer?
does the extension come with a rich list of features?
are there lots of people using the extension and do they give good ratings?
does the extension address a large set of problems?

One of the extensions that scores highest regarding those questions is Fabrik. It is a feature rich form that does not only support email contact but also database inputs. This way you can allow users to fill out a form and then merge their input with your database. Afterwards, this input can be displayed as lists on your page. Such a feature can be used for user profiles, bookmarks etc.

With Fabrik you can also create you own field types. It already comes with database joins, images, file uploads, text areas, captchas, user details etc. There is also an active forum where your question will probably be answered quickly.

CubeCart

The ReGoHo Team — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 20:52:55 +0000

A lot of our customers ask for small, cheap eCommerce-Solutions. They are in need of a shopping cart software for small web shops. A common demand exists for programs that are cheap or free and easy to maintain. As most of these customers only run basic web hosting packages with limited server power the software also has to be modest in its demand of system resources. One of the tools we recommend for these scenarios is CubeCart.

Shopping Cart © by Itiro

CubeCart comes with the advantage of being easily installed and not demanding a lot of configuration effort. The source code of the web shop’s html pages is clear and devoid of to much tables. The backend is much more basic and straight forward than it is on the more common but also more complex tool “xt:Commerce”. It is quite easy to maintain several shops with the same database.
There are some nice little features that distinguish CubeCart from its competitors. For example, you can turn the whole shop offline with a single click in order to do maintenance works. You can also define shipping costs per category which is great if you ship items that need special transportation. There is even a very handy feature to assign pictures for articles that miss a dedicated picture. Xt:Commerce or osCommerce can only achieve the same once you edited several template files.

Of course, CubeCart is not as feature-rich and flexible as more complex shopping cart programs. However, given that it is free if you are comfortable with the copyright notices (otherwise you have to pay only 70 USD) it is a good choice for small web shops that want to reduce costs.

WordPress and phpBB integration

The ReGoHo Team — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 00:00:15 +0000

There are quite a few blog owners who want to host their own forum. This enables them to extend their community, enhance communication and let user generate their own contents. If you are one of these blog owners, read our recommendations below.

You might be on a big budget but that is likely not the case. If you have some money to spend you can chose forum software like VBulletin which provide a full featured bulletin board experience. Otherwise your best choice would be the free phpBB. PhpBB is an open-source bulletin software that provides a very easy way to setup a forum. It is just as easy to install as WordPress. Of course, you will need a webserver and a hoster supporting PHP.

Once phpBB is installed you need to setup the forum structure by creating forums and subforums. If you are happy with the custom appearance. There is nothing more for you to do here. However, you usually will want the forum to appear with the same skin as your blog. To achieve this, you will have to port the blog’s CSS to phpBB. This is a more complicated process and you might want to let a skilled programmer do this (ask ReHoGo… we can include this in your webhosting package).

An alternative to a tailor-made CSS it to use a theme that supports both: the blog and the forum. For WordPress and phpBB exist the socalled “Revolution Themes” by Brian Gardner. They are premium themes that perfectly blend your blog and your forum into each other.

About this blog

The ReGoHo Team — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 16:43:35 +0000

Dear Customers,

with this blog, we want to shed a light on the tools we provide for our clients. We will cover some exciting news about Joomla!, WordPress, Webhosting, eCommerce etc. We hope to inspire you to some new ideas and will be happy to answer your questions. Use the customer login on the sidebar to access more detailed resources.

Regards
The ReGoHo Team