If you are running a Joomla! website, you’ve already heard about the Joomla 1.7 upgrade. It’s recommended to upgrade to this version specially if you run Joomla 1.6.

Basic steps to update/upgrade to Joomla 1.7:

• How to Upgrade 1.6 to 1.7 http://docs.joomla.org/Upgrade_1.6.5_to_1.7
• How to Upgrade 1.5 to 1.7 http://docs.joomla.org/Upgrade_1.5_to_1.7
• How to Install 1.7 http://docs.joomla.org/Install_1.7

In some situtations, you might have trouble upgrading Joomla with the built-in “Joomla Updater”.

Joomla 1.7 Upgrade errors:

• “Update: :Collection: Could not open http://update.joomla.org/core/list.xml”

  To solve this errror, you need to “allow fopen” on your server:

  1. Create a php.ini file in your Joomla site’s root. This file should contain the following line:
        

     allow_url_fopen = on

  2. Make sure that the file is having the 644 permissions at least.
  3. Check if fopen is allowed by running a simple php file inside your Joomla root directory containing the following line:

     <?php phpinfo(); ?>

     and look for “allow_url_fopen”, it should say “ON”

  To upgrade to Joomla 1.7 on a Godaddy hosting running PHP5, you should create a “php5.ini” instead of the php.ini stated above.

• Joomla updates do not appear, and Joomla says there is no upgrade available at the moment?

  If you run Joomla 1.6.x,

  1. Go to the “Extension Manager”, hit the “Manage” tab, click the “Refresh Cache” button.
  2. Go back to “Update” tab, click “Purge Cache”
  3. Click on the “Find updates” button,
  4. Joomla should appear as an update option, check it and click the “Update” button.

• Fatal error: Cannot instantiate abstract class JDatabaseQuery in mysite/plugins/system/jat3/jat3/core/joomla/modulehelper.php on line 292

  When you run a JoomlaArt template, as of today, you will get an error after upgrading to Joomla 1.7.

  As the error message says it, the error is on line 292 of the above file. With your FTP client, or web file manager, navigate to the file mentioned above and edit the file.

  On line 292, comment out this:

  $query = new JDatabaseQuery;

  and insert this line below it:

  $query = $db->getQuery(true);

  so the final result at lines 292 and 293 looks like this:

  //$query = new JDatabaseQuery;
  $query = $db->getQuery(true);

• Fatal error: Cannot instantiate abstract class JDatabaseQuery in mysite/plugins/system/jat3/jat3/core/menu/base.class.php on line 329

  If you use the mega menu of JoomlaArt, you need to do the same proccess for the file base.class.php

  That is, the lines 329 and 330 should be as follows:

  //$query = new JDatabaseQuery;$query = $db->getQuery(true);

Online stores, e-commerce software…

More than 50 thousand online stores run on PrestaShop, an online e-commerce software. There are lots of advantages using this software, e.g. it’s open source, it’s got a huge community of developers and users, lots of modules and themes are being added to it regularly…

PrestaShop’s Drawback

But the main drawback of PrestaShop is that most of its modules are not free and to run a decent business you gonna spend a lot of money over the modules. Well, I would recommend to buy the modules you need without hesitation, because it is an investment in your business, but I know that you are looking for the Free ones at first.

Google +1

You’ve certainly heard of the “+1″ button from Google, and it would be nice to add it to your shop so that your users can recommend your products on Google.

There are modules on the PrestaShop’s market to allow you putting a “Google +1″ button to you store, and they are priced at around 40€ (about 50USD).

Free Google +1 for PrestaShop

The great news is that odience.net offers a “Google +1″ button for PrestaShop, completely FREE! and that saves you about 50USD!

As you know, you can donate to thank the developer

I got a copy of the oGooglePlusOne module from odience.net and tested it on one of my e-commerce websites. It is complete and integrates itself automatically! Go to odience.net and grab yourself a Free copy of oGooglePlusOne for Prestashop!

Don’t forget to say Thank You and send a donation if you think it’s worth it.

PHPMailer has lots of features, even if it’s a bit old.

One great feature is that it allows you to embed images inline within your e-mail’s body. In most email clients, the inline embedded images are shown in their right place just as on a web page and are “also” in the attachements list.

To be able to use this feature, proceed as follows:

1- Instantiate PHPMailer:

$mail = new PHPMailer(true);

$mail->CharSet='UTF-8';

...

...

//Path to image file (use full path)

$filepath= '/path/to/file/logo_mail.jpg';

//File token ID, use unique interger.

$filecid = 1001;

//File name which will be in the mail, overrides default filename.

$filename= 'shop-logo.jpg';

//Encoding

$encodingtouse = 'base64';

//File type MIME

$filemime = 'image/jpeg';

//EMBED IT

$mail->AddEmbeddedImage($filepath, $filecid, $filename, $encoding, $filemime);

//Message Html Body

$mail->MsgHTML(file_get_contents('/path/to/contents.html'));

2- In your /path/to/contents.html file, which is your mail template message, you can include the inline image. Use this syntax for the <img> tag:

<img src=”cid:1001” alt=”shop logo used in emails” width=”182″ height=”75″ />

Note the CID here, it should be the same as the one you defined for your embedded inline image.

Tested and working with PHPMailer 5.1 on GMAIL, Yahoo!Mail and Mac Mail application

ref: http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/php-34/embed-images-phpmailer-586789.html

PHPMailer 5.1 in PrestaShop 1.4

Trying to integrate PHPMailer in Prestashop and use it instead of SWIFT Mailer 3 (which is the default mailer script included with Prestashop 1.4), I spent hours to no avail and was getting the Could not instantiate mail function error.

mail() function

The mail() function by itself  was working correctly before and after loading Prestashop and every passed argument seemed to be correct. I did get the “Bad parameters to mail() function, mail not sent” error for mail() too.

Debugging and Abracadabra!

I’ve done lots of debugging and found in my case that the following functions were causing the error, when passing the $Subject parameter to mail():

SecureHeader();

EncodeHeader();

To solve the “Could not instantiate mail function” error in PHPMailer, I removed the above 2 functions from the mail() function arguments.

Just be careful to remove these functions correctly from all places in your class.phpmailer.php.

I recommend using the PHP function

mb_encode_mimeheader()

http://php.net/manual/en/function.mb-encode-mimeheader.php

because it encodes your stuff correctly for the headers in emails.

To be more clear,

1- open the PHPMAILER class file (class.phpmailer.php)

2- Locate:

protected function MailSend($header, $body)

function and in its body,

3- In every call to mail(),

replace this:

@mail($val, $this->EncodeHeader($this->SecureHeader($this->Subject)), $body, $header, $params);

by this:

@mail($val, mb_encode_mimeheader($this->Subject,$this->CharSet, 'B', ''), $body, $header, $params);

This way you are sure to correctly encode your subjet.

Remember to set the correct Charset for your PHPMAILER instance. That is, when calling PHPMailer, just after:

$mail=new PHPMailer(true);

add:

$mail->CharSet = 'UTF-8';

(or any other charset you need).

This solved my “Could not instantiate mail() function in PHPMailer issue. I hope it helps you out if you got this issue too.

Evenmore:

I’ll write more about PHPMailer and PrestaShop later,

In my next post, learn how to correctly include inline images in PHPMailer email to display in GMAIL, YAHOO, Mac Mail app and other email clients correctly as inline images.

En plein developpement

En plein développement de plusieurs modules PrestaShop, j’ai rencontrer plusieurs souci dans les code du package PrestaShop. Ce qui m’étonne, c’est qu’il y a beaucoup de gens qui utilise PrestaShop, même si c’est du gros n’importe quoi en terme de codage et programmation.

Alors pourquoi je créer des module?

Tout simplement parcequ’il y a de la demande.

(Restez connecté pour avoir des nouvelles de mes modules:

• Module Contact avec formulaire de contact et carte Google Maps avec possibilité de montrer l’itinéraire (oContact 1.0)
• Module de gestion des HOOKs pour PrestaShop ou “Le” Hook Manager de PrestaShop (oHookManager 1.0)
• Module d’affichage des devises dans un déroulant avec jQuery, pour economiser de l’espace dans le Front Store de PrestaShop (oCurrency 1.0)
• Module “Gratuit” pour ajouter le bouton “Google +1″ a votre boutique PrestaShop (oGooglePlusOne 1.0)
• Module de mise à jour pour jQuery (dans le pack oBasics 1.0)

Ces modules sont créer pour odience.net et seront sont disponible sur odience.net)

Retour à nos moutons

Je vous explique un bug que j’ai trouver aujourd’hui et la solution.

Le problème est ceci:

La variable SMARTY qu’utilise PrestaShop pour stocker les informations des magasin est nomée “$stores”. On peut y acceder et donc afficher les details de nos magasin un peu partout dans les pages et les modules sans diriger le visiteur sur la page de “nos-magasin”.

Quand vous changez la configuration de l’affichage simplifié dans le Back Office, la variable $stores devient VIDE partout sur votre boutique. Donc vous ne pouvez plus afficher les details comme un numéro téléphone ou une photo tiré directement de la variable $stores.

Ceci est du au faite que une fois la configuration dans le Back Office modifié, PrestaShop relance une requete vers la base de donnée pour recréer $stores, mais cette fois il relance la requete en cherchant a calculer un distance! Donc la variable $stores reste vide.

Essayez d’ouvrir votre boutique en ligne en ajoutant “?all=1″ à la fin de votre URL et vous verrez que la variable $stores fonctionne correctement et affiche bien les infos de vos magasins.

Remède, Solution

Le remède a ceci est de modifier le fichier

PSdir ->controllers -> StoresController.php

qui gère la variable $stores.

Au environs de la ligne 73, on ajoute une nouvelle requete SQL qui remplit la variable $stores avec la liste de tous nos magasins, et une deuxième requete SQL qui servira a calculer la distance en cas de recherche.

$stores = Db::getInstance()->ExecuteS(' SELECT s.*, cl.name country, st.iso_code state FROM '._DB_PREFIX_.'store s LEFT JOIN '._DB_PREFIX_.'country_lang cl ON (cl.id_country = s.id_country) LEFT JOIN '._DB_PREFIX_.'state st ON (st.id_state = s.id_state) WHERE s.active = 1 AND cl.id_lang = '.(int)($cookie->id_lang)); $results = Db::getInstance()->ExecuteS(' SELECT s.*, cl.name country, st.iso_code state, ('.(int)($multiplicator).' * acos(cos(radians('.(float)(Tools::getValue('latitude')).')) * cos(radians(latitude)) * cos(radians(longitude) - radians('.(float)(Tools::getValue('longitude')).')) + sin(radians('.(float)(Tools::getValue('latitude')).')) * sin(radians(latitude)))) distance, cl.id_country id_country FROM '._DB_PREFIX_.'store s LEFT JOIN '._DB_PREFIX_.'country_lang cl ON (cl.id_country = s.id_country) LEFT JOIN '._DB_PREFIX_.'state st ON (st.id_state = s.id_state) WHERE s.active = 1 AND cl.id_lang = '.(int)($cookie->id_lang).' HAVING distance < '.(int)($distance).' ORDER BY distance ASC LIMIT 0,20');

A savoir que la variable $results sera vide si il n’y a pas de demande de recherche de distance et donc StoresController.php ne genèrera pas de fichier XML servant a la mise en place d’une carte Google Maps dans le Store Locator. Pour assurer que le fichier XML sera créer seulement si $results contient quelque chose, je fait une verification avec:

if (!empty($results))

Téléchargez, tout simplement

Vous pouvez télécharger la version corrigée de ce fichier dans la page téléchargement de Gibni.com (nom du fichier: StoresController-1.4.Amir.zip)

Pour l’utiliser,

1- Allez dans:

DossierPrestaShop/controllers/

2- Renommez votre present fichier StoresController.php en StoresController.php.bak,

3- Placez le fichier php que vous avez télécharger et décompresser dans le même dossier.

Maintenant la variable $stores est de nouveau accessible, quelconque la configuration dans le Back Office de PrestaShop.

Je souhaite un grand succès à la communauté PrestaShop et j’espère qu’un jour ils auront du code concrete, correcte, scientifiquement étudié et structuré.

Cette article est sponsorisé par odience.net¦works

I’ve had a problem with WordPress last 3 months, and at last, I found the solution. Here is the story:

WordPress Custom Fields

WordPress posts have meta data (Custom Fields) where additional information on the post are stored. For example the featured image, number of views, comments count, keywords, SEO description and so on…

When posting new posts, the Custom fields where not getting stored on WordPress, so basically nothing was “tracked” and optimized. I looked everywhere on forums and internet resources for a solution to this issue, no luck!

Today I was rechecking Gibni’s data base and in the “post_meta” table, I found that “meta_id” was not set to “auto_increment”. You can see this in the “extras” column in phpMyAdmin while you see the “post_meta” table’s structure. Once setting this parameter to the “auto_increment” value, everything got back in order.

Problem Solved!

Now all the “custom fields” get stored and updated as they should. If you have the same issue, check your database!

There’s a great plugin for the WordPress platform, called SEO Super Comments, which creates a single “virtual” page for each comment on your site. It increases the number of pages you have on the site, and improves your SEO a lot. Read more on SEO Super Comments on the authors page: SEO Super Comments by Vladimir Prelovac .

“The concept relies around optimizing the target page using title and H1 tag using the context of the comment. So basically we will take the excerpt of the comment and use it to create the page title and H1 tag and in the body we will hold the content of the comment…” says Vladimir.

Download modded Google XML Sitemap Generator 3.2.3

I created a modded version of XML Sitemap Generator 3.2.3 to work with SEO Super Comments which puts all your comments pages in the sitemap, and once submitted to Google, you should see a huge raise in your traffic.

Installation

To install, you should replace the downloaded sitemap-ui.php and sitemap-core.php in your Google XML Sitemap Generator Plugin’s directory and overwrite the original files. I would recommend you back up your original files.

Once installed, Go to your administration panel, and to the XML Sitemap Generator settings, and check the ‘Include Comment Pages’ option, click ‘Update Options’ at the bottom, and “Rebuild Your Sitemap”

I personnaly recommend this plugin and would thank the developper for it.

Please send your comments and queries here if you have any issues regarding my modded version of Google XML Sitemap Generator for WordPress.

Donate

Please go to the Donations Page  and contribute to the developpment of more updated plugins if this modded version helped you increasing your traffic.

The first goal of the PrestaShop Revolution, is to use the latest JS librairies, as latest jQuery, and its plugins. Here is the place for everyone interested to share their knowledge, and work toward making PrestaShop a better e-commerce solution.

To be more efficient, I beleive that loaded JS and CSS files should all be defined in template files, and not main PrestaShop PHPs; e.g. the JS files for the Product Page, which are defined in /prestashop/product.php rather than prestashop/themes/mytheme/product.php

For longtime I’ve been a WordPress developper and I beleive that the success of WordPress not only relies on its community, but also on its way of handling themes and interfaces.

 Basically, Smarty – the templating framework used for PrestaShop – is complex and difficult to understand, so why making it more unreliable by using unclean and unhealthy coding?

I’m actually working on integrating latest jQuery 1.4.2 on PrestaShop and updating latest jQuery Plugins, and most important, I moved JS librairies to theme’s folder, rather than PrestaShop’s JS directory.

I invite everyone interested in this project to share their work, knowledge, experiences and ideas here, and on a dedicated forum in PrestaShop Forums called PrestaShop Revolution.

Just now, I got a $30 web hosting coupon from the best web hosting site !

If you doubt buying a web hosting plan, this could help you make the right decision. Here’s a ThinkHost coupon, giving you $30 off your bill! So no more hesitation please!

ThinkHost Coupon Code: oak_ah98 

Why choose ThinkHost?

1. It’s a “perfect” host,
2. It runs on renewable energy (wind and solar)
3. Gives you 100% uptime guarantee
4. Gives LOTS of unlimiteds ( Space, Bandwidth, Websites, Databases…)
5. AND FREE SITE BUILDER FOR BEGINNERS
6. It’s not expensive at all, and also becomes very cheap after the coupon code!
7. And above all, just because I recommend it!

Due to some yet unknown issue, WordPress version 2.8.2 might be causing server errors.

Lunarpages, my “current” and might become “ex” webhosting company, shut down Gibni.com yesterday without any prior notice, saying they’ve taken an emergency action, as the “index.php” script in my wordpress root was using huge server resources, and could cause a server crash.

First problem is, not only they changed the “index.php” permissions to “000″  (no read permissions) but they took ownership of the file, so neither I could make any changes to the file, nor analyze it for troubleshooting.

Secondly, they made the domain return an “internal server error” to all visitors.

Third, they did not manage to put an “under maintenance” page at the root untill the issue is solved.

Anyway, thanks to my linux skills, I managed to put an “under maintenance” page for Gibni, and get the site back online very soon.

Until I figure out what caused wordpress to eat server resources, and was it really wordpress or Lunarpages’s poor servers and administration, was it the running theme which ran without any issue for months or even the plugins installed on wordpress a year ago; I’ve decided to switch back to wordpress default theme and upgrade to wordpress 2.8.4.

After all, I believe that you should now:

• Enjoy Gibni, Ad free!
• Always have a maintenance page and an emergency code, just in case!
• Be careful choosing your webhosting company!