Joomla
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IUC38 tutorial, “Building Multilingual Websites with Drupal 7 and Joomla 3”
Posted by Jim DeLaHunt on 31 May 2014 | Tagged as: CMS, drupal, Joomla, meetings and conferences, multilingual, Unicode
I’m delighted and proud to have been invited back to give my tutorial to the 38th Internationalization and Unicode Conference (IUC38) this November in Santa Clara, California.
Title: Building multilingual websites in Drupal 7 and Joomla 3
Date: Monday, November 3, 2014, 10:30-12:00. Track 3, tutorial morning session 2.
Here’s my abstract:
A practical look at the language and locale capabilities of Joomla! 3 and Drupal 7, two leading free software content management systems (CMSs). They let you build more powerful, more international websites faster. We look at: their core internationalisation and locale services, and localisation of UI and content. Each platform just had a major release, with advances in internationalisation. You will leave with specific tips for building your own site. We don’t assume Joomla or Drupal experience, but do include material for advanced practioners. A good tutorial for web site product managers, web designers, developers, and managers of international web teams.
Trip report: IUC37
Posted by Jim DeLaHunt on 31 Oct 2013 | Tagged as: drupal, Joomla, meetings and conferences, Unicode
Delightful! Last week I came home from the gathering of my trip, the 37th Internationalisation and Unicode Conference. My tutorial on Building multilingual websites in Drupal 7 and Joomla! 3 again went well. And I found inspiration, new knowledge, and old friends there.
Those of you looking for my slides and handouts, they are at the preceding link. You are welcome to share them, per their Creative Commons license. I’d appreciate credit when you share them. And I’d appreciate your feedback on this blog’s comments. Continue Reading »
“Building multilingual websites in Drupal 7 and Joomla 3″ (IUC37 tutorial)
Posted by Jim DeLaHunt on 30 Sep 2013 | Tagged as: drupal, Joomla, meetings and conferences, Unicode
I can’t believe I didn’t announce this before now. I’m delighted to be asked, once again, to present a tutorial on Building multilingual websites in Drupal 7 and Joomla! 3, at the 37th Internationalization and Unicode Conference (IUC37), this October in Santa Clara, California, USA.
This is my abstract, from the Unicode conference program for my talk: Continue Reading »
I18n and Unicode conference, and tutorial on multilingual Drupal and Joomla web sites, complete
Posted by Jim DeLaHunt on 31 Oct 2012 | Tagged as: CMS, culture, digital preservation, drupal, i18n, Joomla, meetings and conferences, multilingual, Unicode
Another stimulating Internationalisation and Unicode Conference (IUC36) just finished up last week (October 22-24, 2012). As usual it was rich with interesting people, stimulating subjects, and inspiration. My tutorial, Building multilingual websites in Drupal 7 and Joomla! 2.5, was well-attended and seemed to go well. My final paper and slides are posted at the preceding link.
“Building multilingual websites in Drupal 7 and Joomla 2.5” (IUC36 tutorial)
Posted by Jim DeLaHunt on 30 Jun 2012 | Tagged as: drupal, Joomla, meetings and conferences, Unicode
I’m delighted to be asked, once again, to present a tutorial on Building multilingual websites in Drupal 7 and Joomla! 2.5, at the 36th Internationalization and Unicode Conference (IUC36), this October in Santa Clara, California, USA.
Ads Factory “GoogleX, GoogleY” means (lat, long) not (horizontal, vertical)
Posted by Jim DeLaHunt on 30 Jun 2011 | Tagged as: CMS, Joomla, robobait, software engineering, web technology
I want to pass along a tip about confusing field names used in the Ads Factory component for Joomla for geographic data. I encountered this while customising this component for a client. At first I thought it was a bug, but now I think it’s just an odd naming convention.
Ads Factory, by Romanian developers The Factory, is a commercial component for Joomla 1.5 which lets you add classified ads to your Joomla site. (My client had me working with version 1.x on Joomla 1.5, but I see there is also a version 2.1 of Ads Factory which is Joomla 1.6 native.) There are quite a few places where Ads Factory includes geographic information: each user record can record a latitude and longitude for that user; each ad can record a latitude and longitude for the advertised merchandise; and there is way to make a “radius search”, i.e. find all ads within a given distance of a user-specified location.
These latitude and longitude values are stored in database fields with name suffixes “X” and “Y”. The user’s latitude and longitude are stored in fields “GoogleX” and “GoogleY” of the Ads Factory user table. Similarly, but not completely consistently, the ad’s latitude and longitude are stored in fields “MapX” and “MapY” of the Ads Factory ads table. The confusion comes in understanding which field stores the latitude, and which stores the longitude.
Latitude is, of course, the signed number of degrees north of the equator of a point on the earth’s surface. It ranges from +90.0 (the North Pole) to 0.0 (the Equator) to -90.0 (the South Pole). Thus, it’s a vertical coordinate. Longitude is the signed number of degrees east of the 0° meridian (roughly Greenwich, England). It ranges from +180.0 to -180.0. My part of North America is 122-123° west of Greenwich, so we have longitudes of -123.0 to -122.0 or so. It’s a horizontal coordinate. This is a well-established convention in many mapping standards.
Tidy Cartesian mathematicians like me use the convention of (X,Y) coordinates, where X is the horizontal coordinate and Y is the vertical coordinate. This is a well-established convention in geometry and graphics (though there are some exceptions).
My first interpretation of Ads Factory field names like “GoogleX” and “GoogleY” was to interpret them according to the Cartesian convention: X is horizontal, and so stores longitude, while Y is vertical, and so stores latitude. Thus (MapX, MapY) would be (longitude, latitude), the opposite of what one expects from mapping. Odd. I was surprised to find some parts of the code storing latitude in X (the horizontal coordinate!) and longitude in Y (the vertical!), which was surely a bug. I was horrified when it appeared that every part of this code had the same bug!
Then I understood the convention. Ads Factory’s developer appear to have used the (X, Y) convention to indicate just the order of the coordinates, but not their Cartesian meaning. (MapX, MapY) means (latitude, longitude), as is conventional in mapping. X is the vertical coordinate, Y is the horizontal coordinate, in the Ads Factory context. If you remember that X means “first”, not horizontal, and Y means “second”, not vertical, the Ads Factory field names are self-consistent, and the code uses them correctly.
I haven’t seen any Ads Factory documentation which explains this, so I hope this note will help some of you Ads Factory enhancers who are using these fields.
Postscript: what did my client ask me to do with Ads Factory for their site? Modify the radius search to search around the user’s latitude and longitude, instead of a location the user enters. Also, to sort the keyword and category search results by distance from the user. Quite straightforward to do, though it requires customisations to the Ads Factory code that have to be re-done everytime one upgrades the Ads Factory component.
Building Multilingual Websites in Drupal and Joomla, at IUC34
Posted by Jim DeLaHunt on 31 Oct 2010 | Tagged as: CMS, drupal, i18n, Joomla, meetings and conferences, multilingual, Unicode
Once again I was fortunate enough to be invited to present at this year’s Internationalization and Unicode Conference (IUC). I have posted the paper and slides for my tutorial, Building Multilingual Websites in Drupal and Joomla, over on jdlh.com.
This was my abstract, from the Unicode conference program for my talk: Continue Reading »
“Getting in touch with your Joomla’s inner database”
Posted by Jim DeLaHunt on 30 Nov 2009 | Tagged as: Joomla, meetings and conferences, Vancouver, web technology
I’m giving another talk at the coordinates:
Getting in touch with your Joomla’s inner database
Monday, 30. November 2009, 18:30-20:30h. At The Network Hub, 422 Richards Street, 3rd floor, Vancouver, BC V6B 2Z3. tel +1 604 767 8778.
A monthly meeting of the Vancouver Joomla User Group. Admission free. All people interested in learning more about the content management system, and helping others learn more, are welcome.
Agenda
- Introductions.
- Featured topic: Getting in touch with your Joomla’s inner database, by Jim DeLaHunt.
- Q&A.
- Door prize drawing.
- Networking.
“Going live: adding a staging server to your Joomla development process” at Vancouver Joomla User Group
Posted by Jim DeLaHunt on 08 Oct 2009 | Tagged as: CMS, Joomla, meetings and conferences, Vancouver
Going live: adding a staging server to your Joomla development process
Thursday, 8. October 2009, 18:30-20:30hAt The Network Hub, 422 Richards Street, 3rd floor, Vancouver, BC V6B 2Z3. tel +1 604 767 8778.
A monthly meeting of the Vancouver Joomla User Group. Admission free. All people interested in learning more about the Joomla! content management system, and helping others learn more, are welcome.
“International and multilingual Drupal and Joomla! sites” at LinuxFest Northwest
Posted by Jim DeLaHunt on 29 Apr 2009 | Tagged as: CMS, drupal, i18n, Joomla, meetings and conferences, multilingual, web technology
Last week I gave a presentation, International and multilingual Drupal and Joomla! sites. I’ve posted my slides and handouts at that link for anyone who wants to catch up on them.
The occasion was LinuxFest Northwest 2009, held at Bellingham Technical College in Bellingham, WA, USA. It was a delightful event. It’s thoroughly grassroots and volunteer, it has a friendly and accessible vibe, yet it attracts very knowledgeable people.