At itoctopus, we like to share our extensions for the benefit of the Joomla users and the Joomla ecosystem. One of the extensions we have developed recently is a module that displays the number of Tweets for the current page on a Joomla website. The module is super simple. All you need to do is […]

One of the most used Joomla extensions is Akeeba Backup, but we don’t recommend it to our clients. Why? Well, because we don’t think it’s a good solution, and we don’t think that backing (and restoring) a Joomla website should be done from within Joomla, and here are 7 reasons why we think that: Akeeba […]

If you’re using Joomla 2.5, then we have news for you, it is now time to migrate to Joomla 3. “Why?”, we hear you ask. Well, because by the end of December, Joomla 2.5 will no longer be officially support it (we will still support it at itoctopus though). This means that Joomla 2.5 will […]

Note: The solution described in this post requires you to make a simple modification to a couple of Joomla core files. If you are not comfortable with that, then please contact us (we can do this with a plugin). If you have been using Joomla for a long time, then you are probably a bit […]

We are currently developing a small plugin to modify head data prior to serving the page. Although we have done something similar quite a few times before (changing the code inside the head tag), it is the first time that we describe how to do this from an extremely technical perspective. In short, we use […]

This post is an opinion. It has no technical information whatsoever. Just a heads up in case you wanted to read this post because you thought it was about securing a Joomla website. We love Joomla. We make a living out of it, it puts bread on our table, it feeds our precious babies, and […]

Earlier this week, Joomla released 2 updates: Joomla 2.5.23 and Joomla 3.3.2. Less than 24 hours later, Joomla released another 2 updates, Joomla 2.5.24 and Joomla 3.3.3. It turned out that the first 2 updates had issues: they were causing problems with email obfuscation. It’s really hard to imagine how come no one tested email […]

If you’re regularly following the news about major CMS’s, then you’d have probably heard by now that over 50,000 WordPress websites were hacked in the course of a few days. Potentially, another million or so WordPress websites could be also compromised. The cause of this onslaught of hacks is an exploit in a WordPress plugin […]

Some websites have the following business model: They display, on a certain page(s), a list of articles with a teaser for each article. The visitor clicks on an article of his choice. If the user is not an already subscribed member (and if he’s not logged in), then he’ll be redirected to a page where […]

We have discussed blank pages on Gantry templates before, but yesterday, a client called us and told us that the suggested fix did not work for him. So, we checked his website, and we discovered that although he was seeing a blank page, the HTML code wasn’t empty. In fact, the HTML code was full […]

In software products, having features that you don’t need is generally a good thing. However, if an unneeded feature is causing more harm than good, then it’s probably a good idea to completely disable it. For example, one of Joomla’s features is the ability to send e-mail (the mail sending functionality is used for notifications, […]

Note: This post is not about setting a default share image for your K2 content on Facebook. If you want to do that, then you’re better off checking this post. Content editors working for a major client of ours were having an issue when they were trying to share their K2 articles through Facebook. The […]

Note: A pre-requisite to implement the solution in this post is to install and activate the Modules Anywhere plugin by NoNumber. That plugin is much better than Joomla’s own plugin (Content – Load Module) of injecting modules into a page (e.g. {loadposition …} and {loadmodule …}). It’s amazing that Joomla still hasn’t created a reliable […]

It’s Friday, it’s sunny here in Montreal, the sky is blue, and we think it’s better to write about a Joomla tidbit instead of going out and enjoying the sun. How is that for dedication? Anyway, if your Joomla backend is cluttered with extensions that you’re not using but you don’t want to install, then […]

Heads up: To implement the solution in this post, you will need to install Jumi, which is a free Joomla extension that allows you to place PHP code anywhere on your Joomla website. This past weekend, a client of ours called us and told us that he wanted to place a button on his website […]

Large corporations don’t typically use YouTube to host their videos, they use something else, something like Brightcove. The reason why they do that is because Brightcove is a paid video hosting platform, which means that they can get support if they run into problems, and they can hold the company (Brightcove) accountable if something goes […]

A client called us this evening and told us that all of a sudden, everytime he tried saving an article belonging to a certain category (it was the “Technology” category), he was seeing the following error: Save failed with the following error: Invalid parent ID He told us that articles belonging to other categories save […]

One of our prominent clients is a US racing magazine. The magazine has a Joomla website that discusses everything related to racing, such as Formula 1, Indy 500, NASCAR, etc… The website has a lot of content and receives a substantial amount of visitors. The problem was that during peak hours, the website became very […]

One of our clients called us yesterday afternoon and told us that as of recently, whenever he tries to share a link from his website on Facebook, only the title of the link appears, the description and the image do not. Our client was using the latest version of Joomla, 3.3.1. We checked the generated […]

An established client emailed us this afternoon and told us that, in one of their menus, they had this link: http://ourclientjoomlawebsite/?Itemid=500 The URL was returning a “404 – Component not found” error and they were confused as to why the problem was happening. We logged in to the backend of the site and we immediately […]

Note: This post has some assumptions on how Google works since nobody, with the exception of a select secretive few at Google, is fully informed about the insides of Google’s search engine rankings. Please keep that in mind while reading this post. One of our major clients told us that they lost in traffic to […]

A new client called us yesterday and told us that he was seeing some blank pages on his Joomla website. Of course, we have discussed the blank page issue many times on this blog before, but, if you haven’t read any of our previous posts on blank pages, then, in short, here’s what causes them: […]

Note: This post applies to both Joomla 2.5 and Joomla 3.x. Warning: This post requires that you make a simple modification to a core Joomla file, which means that the next time you update Joomla, your changes might get overwritten and you will need to re-apply them. We have many clients that literally have thousands […]

This morning, we had a client calling us and saying that his website was displaying a “500 Internal Server Error” message. He told us that this started happening when he tried to fix the permissions by using Admin Tools, which is a well known Joomla extension that is used for security and fixing broken Joomla […]

About a week ago, a new client called us and told us that the her company’s corporate website is slow, very slow. So we checked the Slow Query Log (see here for more about it) on the website’s server, and we immediately noticed the issue. The log was literally over 200 MB in size and […]

If you’re using FTP to upload files to your Joomla websites, then, you probably know that you’re not alone. The vast majority of Joomla websites allow for FTP access. What you probably do not know, is that you’re compromising the security of your Joomla website when you’re using FTP. Why is that? Well, because FTP […]

Since the problem discussed in this post is becoming more common and is very critical, we have decided to start this post in reverse. We will first offer a very quick solution, and then we will discuss how we found the problem, and then finally offer a long term solution to the problem. If you’re […]

We had a very odd task today. A client called us and told us that she can’t add a new article (or update an existing one) on her Joomla 1.5 website (yes, even in May of 2014 there are still many websites using Joomla 1.5), because both the section dropdown and the category dropdown are […]

If you have have been working on Joomla for a long time, then most likely you ran into the situation where you’re seeing a blank page instead of your homepage. Under normal circumstances, changing the Error Reporting value (under Site -> Global Configuration -> Server) to Maximum will show the error(s) that is(are) causing the […]

A client called us yesterday evening and told us that he was getting a blank page when switching to a Gantry template. He told us that his website worked normally under a regular template, but, as soon as he switched to a Gantry template, he was seeing a blank page. Before going into the details, […]

Ah, Jumi! The simple yet very powerful extension that allows you to add code anywhere on your website. We’ve used this extension thousands of times so far and we’ll sure to use it thousands more, at least until Joomla has a built-in extension that does the same thing. From our experience, Jumi is almost perfect! […]

When migrating a website from a version of Joomla to another version, one of the extremely challenging issues that we face is maintaining the link structure. Yes, we know, having the same link structure should be seamless when migrating a Joomla website, but in most cases, it is not. Here’s why… Many Joomla administrators use […]

Joomla is a very powerful CMS (much more powerful than WordPress, in our humble opinion), but there are some basic things that cannot be done easily. For example, one of our clients told us that they wanted to display a few modules only on the category blog page, but not on the child categories. They […]

We got a call late at night yesterday from a new client. The client was frustrated with the current development company that she’s working (she wanted to create a small extension on her Joomla website and the development company kept delaying the project), and that’s why she called us… She discussed with us her requirements. […]

Today, Saturday the 18th of April 2014, is a historic day. We are going to do what no man (or group of men) has ever done. We are going to unveal a great secret. We are going to explain how Joomla’s Redirect Manager system plugin works! Yes, that dramatic introduction was necessary, because there’s not […]

If you have a Facebook Share button on your website, then you might have noticed that Facebook tends to automatically choose an image in the popup. In some cases, Facebook chooses the right image, because the image chosen is the one closest to the share button, which is typically located inside the article itself (so […]

Note: This post is extremely advanced and is geared towards those who are well versed in database administration and who have a vast knowledge of the ins and outs of Joomla. If that doesn’t apply to you, then please do not experiment with your live site (you may make things worse, much worse), and contact […]

If you’re using sh404SEF, then, first, we feel sorry for you! But second, we have good news! We have created a script that allows you to batch change links in sh404SEF. For example, say you have 5,000 links on your website that contain the pattern my-products/, and say you want to change my-products/ to products/ […]

A new phenomenon that we’re noticing lately is that a user with a username “JoomlaSupport” is registering automatically on Joomla sites that allow user registration. Once that user registers, the owner of the Joomla website is contacted by a shady company, (surprisingly) called “JoomlaSupport”, pretending to be Joomla’s Official Support and telling him that his […]

We have been working with Joomla for nearly a decade now (actually, more than a decade if you include the time we worked with Mambo), and we know it inside out. Joomla is a great CMS, and, in our humble opinion, it is the best CMS. Having said that, there is still room for improvement, […]

Although K2 is one of the most used and powerful Joomla extensions out there, there is very little documentation to do even the basic things with it. For example, how can one generate an SEF link to a K2 item based on the ID of that item? That’s why, at itoctopus, we decided to share […]

Custom HTML modules are by far the most used (and most loved) modules in Joomla. They’re very easy to use, they do the job, and they are extremely light. However, there is one problem with Custom HTML modules that stops them from being perfect, it’s that they always encapsulate the user’s content (e.g. the content […]

We are seeing more and more Joomla administrators doing the following when they have some issues on their Joomla websites that they cannot resolve themselves: They create a Joomla website from a fresh install (same version of the one that they currently have). They install some or all of the extensions they have on the […]

At itoctopus, we love to share our Joomla work with our readers. We think that by doing this we do our part to ensure that Joomla remains at the helm when it comes to CMS solutions. Why do we do that, you might be wondering? Well, because we believe, and rightly so, that Joomla’s success […]

If you’re an avid reader of our blog, you will probably know that we love K2 – no – make that we’re in love with K2. It just makes our lives much easier and happier: we can extend it, we can easily migrate from one version of K2 to another, it doesn’t suffer from the […]

Note: This post only applies to Joomla websites using MySQL. Another note: This post only applies to Joomla 2.5 and lower. Joomla 3.x uses the InnoDB engine across the board by default. The majority of crashes on Joomla websites are caused by database issues, in particular, database corruption issues. For example, if the table #__session […]

We are recently getting a barrage of Joomla 3.2.1 websites that are hacked and need to be fixed. Obviously, someone cashed in on the recently announced vulnerability on Joomla 3.2.1, and fast! We are saying someone (and not some people), because 90% of those hacked websites have the exact same hack: the Google hack! (Or […]

We were commissioned, earlier this week, to integrate reCAPTCHA with JComments on a website belonging to a super-major news company. Large companies usually have 2 environments, one called dev (for development), and one called prod (for production). Our job was to make the reCAPTCHA work on the development environment, and then, once everything’s OK, move […]

We get constant calls from clients telling us that their Joomla websites were hacked, that they are seeing, in the User Manager, new and suspicious users every day, although they don’t have any registration form on their websites. We first comfort them by telling them that their websites are most likely not hacked and what […]

Yesterday evening we had a very interesting call from a new client. The new client told us that when trying to login to the frontend of his Joomla website, he’s always greeted with the following error message: “Username and password do not match or you do not have an account yet” He told us that […]