For about 12 years I've been working on a couple different web sites in Dreamweaver or even wayback in Homesite. That said, I've gotten very comfortable with the traditional set up of URLS with definite structures where you can logically follow the directory set-up and it was very clear how to program the relative/absolute links and more. I would either FTP the files through in Dreamweaver or would use some kind of Management Console. Recently I took a new job to help on a web site that currently lives and was built using Joomla. I'm looking to see if there is a way to get this entire site on my Hard Drive so I can work on it locally and then upload as pages are finished, or at the very least find out how best to work with this site.
Joomla has many things about starting a page from scratch, but I'm really trying my best to investigate a site that's already developed and find ways to make the necessary adjustments and take inventory of everything that's on the site. Any help would be much appreciated.
Thanks.
In order to administer a site in Joomla, there is no need to have any files locally. You can add, edit, and delete pages all through the administrative back end of the website. The entire site is built based on the query string of the URL. The string determines which component is displaying the content and which content to display.
There is really only one page in a Joomla site, the index.php file in the current template directory. Every page is built using that page. The only time you would need to modify that page is when there is a structural change in the site. Even then, if the template is well coded it should have various module positions available for use that collapse when they are not in use. This allows you to have a 3 column layout on one page and a 2 column layout on another simply by adjusting which modules display on a particular page.
I would highly recommend reading some tutorials before messing around with editing any files. Here are a few decent resources:
http://www.virtuosimedia.com/dev/php/joomla-administration-explained-a-joomla-15-admin-tutorial
http://www.joomlashack.com/tutorials
http://docs.joomla.org/Beginners
Part of the purpose of Joomla is to be able to manage the content of a website without requiring local copies of all the pages. So what you are asking sort of defeats the purpose of using Joomla in the first place. To do what you ask you would have to get an offline copy of the entire website, uninstall Joomla, and then upload your "static" copy. I would predict that the end result would be a web site that is very hard to maintain.
If you really really want to do this you could use a website copy tool like HTTrack. It supposed to be used to copy a website so you can browse offline, but the end result is what you are looking for: a local copy of the website.
Related
My website files got corrupted and lost all the backup files somehow. Can any one please suggest the process to download entire site.
Its a simple html site. Once after downloading how can I host it ?
Please help
You can't use a regular crawler because the contents served have the original links, so you get out of the first page immediately when you're crawling it if you don't rewrite the links: in the browser they are rewritten with a client-side script to point back to the Wayback Machine.
If it's simple html, like you mentioned, and very small you might want to save the pages manually or even copy the contents by hand to a new website structure. If it's not small, then try the tools mentioned in the answers to this similar question in superuser: https://superuser.com/questions/828907/how-to-download-a-website-from-the-archive-org-wayback-machine
After downloading it you may have to check the structure of the files downloaded for links that may have been incorrectly rewritten or for missing files. The links that point to files that belong to the website should be local links and not external ones. Then you can host it again on a web hosting service of your preference.
A friend has asked me to do some work on his existing site which was built in Rapidweaver. I'm on Windows, so is there another way I can access and edit his site?
The Rapidweaver project file is meant to be edited only in Rapidweaver, really. As far as I know, the only way around would be to use an HTML editor to modify the pages that are already in the server. However, I would not reccomend you to do it unless you are not going back to Rapidweaver anymore. Because changing the files in the server does not update your local Rapidweaver files. So, you could end up editing something in the server, then getting back to Rapidweaver and upload a "new" version that would not be completely up to date (the previous changes in the server version would be overriden by the older rapidweaver project).
For that kind of work, a CMS (Content Management System) is a more flexible way to work. Nowadays, one of the most common is Wordpress. It will require an inicial setup but after it is working it can be updated from anywhere via web browser, or even from an app in your iPhone. But it is not a Rapidweaver based sollution.
There are a couple CMS related plugins or stacks (Dropkick CMS, Armadillo, Easy CMS, Total CMS...) for Rapidweaver that could also be useful in this context. Once again, first you would need to buy a licence and to setup the website using one of those plugins or stacks. Only then you would be able to edit on the go.
I am pretty new to cms and hope you can help me. I'd like to install modx on a ftp server. My problem is my predecessor created a website with joomla. Now I want to create a completely new website out of the old one (just content, layout and design will be new), but with modx. I know how to built it, but i do not understand how to install modx and building the new website without crashing the existing.
Can someone give me a little step by step (if possible as simple as you can, cause i'm really not so familiar to the topic) on where to install (some kind of subdirectory?!); and what i have to adjust in modx so while developing the old website can be used without some kind of crossing (or if possible, to install modx localy on a flashdrive and upload the website somehow when finished?).
And how, if the website is finished, to delete the old one (deinstall joomla,...) and get the new one to the root directory.
Ps. Sorry for my English, isn't the best... I am a German :)
Thanks :))
I you have access to the server management or some kind of control panel, I would suggest create a new subdomain, such as new.yourdomain.com and install MODx there. I would also suggest using a separate database, evenou though that is not crucial as you can use the default modx_ prefix to easily tell one set of tables from the old joomla ones.
Once you are happy with the new site, either transfer it:
http://rtfm.modx.com/revolution/2.x/administering-your-site/moving-your-site-to-a-new-server
or just change the DNS of your server to point the main domain to the new subdirectory. That would depend on your hosting prvider.
I was just looking into referencing css files in a theme, that reside in a different database and I was wondering:
Could I reference a whole theme that resides in a different database as well with "extend"?
The reason behind that is: Would it possible to keep themes in one central database that can be used by all kinds of applications and therefore, if there should ever be changes to the themes, they only have to be changed in one location and not in every application.
Thank you for your responses in advance.
no I don't think this is possible (happy to be wrong if someone else knows it is?)
to keep all your theme files in a central spot, an XspLibrary in an OSGi plugin is a good solution, however it is a steep learning curve if you haven't done this before. The benefit is once you know this technique it opens the door for 'centralizing' other parts of xpages.
you deploy the plugin to each server and each client if using xpinc, and the every nsf can use a theme from that plugin.
there are a few 'getting started with xpages plugins' articles popping up around. check through planetlotus.org (I'll edit this answer later with some links)
once you know how to do an XspLibrary, you can then download the source code of the bootstrap4xpages project on OpenNTF to see how they are serving up their theme from a plugin.
it relies on the Extension library though so if you don't use the exit lib you could reverse engineer the necessary parts of that project too!
this bootstrap project was set up by Phillipe Riand who was the chief architect of XPages, so it should be a good example!
I am halfway through creating a video series on doing a theme from a plugin but have temporarily lost motivation :(. I might finish it sometime this year, if I do I will post a link to it on this answer. in the meantime I am happy to answer any questions you have about it if you want to give it a go.
otherwise, a quick and dirty solution would be put the theme files / CSS / images directly on the file system of the domino server, where the other theme files are. 'Mastering XPages' might have some advice about this but I don't have it with me right now :)
I think the short answer is you won't be able to load just a theme from a different database.
Each NSF has it's own JVM, sitting on top of the server JVM. So you can extend a theme that's sitting on the server, but not one in another NSF.
XPages Single Copy Design loads a theme from a different NSF by effectively loading the template's JVM. So it's the theme, but also all other design elements.
Jesse Gallagher's done some work in OpenNTF Domino API to allow you to load an XPage or Custom Control from another database, but I'm not sure if that would work for a theme.
If you want to design once and use in many, you can add the theme to the server itself. Looks for the OneUI elements to see where you need to store it (or it may be mentioned in Mastering XPages). You can only nest themes to five levels, but you should be fine.
I am working on a dynamic site on Joomla!, most of the coding is done in Juni module and component.
I have some dynamic features which I want to test it on my already published site, I fear that if any thing goes wrong by attaching it to the published site.
I want to ask is there any modules of plugins for Joomla! which allows me to test my dynamic functionality on the published site, and Is there any extension to recover my site to previous state(like version control system of my site...)
Where is a quick checklist with what you can do:
The easiest way to play around is to install Joomla! on your own computer where you can test everything without any worries
To get your websites like "versioned" or to have a complete backup, the most used and trusted solution is AkeebaBackup.
My advice would be NOT to play directly with the live website without doing a backup, especially if you are "testing" stuff.
I actually think it makes more sense to test first on a copy that is in the exact same server environment as the live site.
How to test live is always a hard thing, sooner or later you have to do it, but you want to get as much testing done as you can without doing it. Depending on how the feature is being rendered you may be able to use acl to prevent it being rendered to normal users.