Posted by: twmeier
on May 19, 2009
Embedding videos inside your Joomla content is easy. There are several Joomla plugins that make it a snap.
The plugin I would suggest is called the AllVideos (by JoomlaWorks), and can be downloaded for free at www.joomla.org.
Once you have installed the plugin, you will need to enable it by going to the "Plugin Manager" in the backend of your Joomla site (/administrator).
Below are some of the plugins features:
1. Dozens of video providers supported, including localized versions of YouTube and Google Video (e.g. es.youtube.com).
2. Stream your own media content, using the most popular video or audio formats for the web (flv, swf, mov, mp4, wmv, wma, mp3, 3gp, divx). You can even use high-definition videos!
3. Easily embed your media content either directly from your server or a remote server!
4. Simple controls inside the plugin's parameters page provide layout consistency on all the videos shown in your Joomla! website. Set your preferences in seconds, publish the plugin and you're ready to start streaming content!
5. Easy, descriptive syntax for media embedding - {format/provider}filename{/format/provider}. You can also use syntax like {format/provider}filename|width|height{/format/provider} (e.g. {youtube}he73js822|600|450{/youtube}) to display videos at different dimensions!
6. Skinnable! AllVideos uses CSS templates to wrap the players, we provide 2 to get you started.
Basically to use this plugin, you must first install and enable it in the backend of you Joomla website (/administrator), then you would simply insert the curly bracket text into your content. This does not need to be done in HTML, and can simply be text.
To embed an FLV file directly into your content, you would simple upload the video to the folder that the plugin has designated (by default it is images/stories/videos), and use the following text:
{flv}btodd09|500|400|true{/flv}
From this example, you will notice that you do not need to include the .flv extension. You will also notice that the width and height are determined by the 500 and 400 respectively. By adding "|true", you will can also automatically start your video.
You can get more information on how to use the plugin at their website:
http://www.joomlaworks.gr/content/view/35/41/
Posted by: gbluma
on Feb 18, 2009
This article will show you how to build a quick plugin to replace some text in an article before it get's displayed to the user.
Intro
Lately I've been writing a number of content plugins for Joomla. They're pretty simple, but basically it allows you to transform the content at a number of points in Joomla's process of editing, saving, and displaying of that content. In theory you could use it to do anything but it's common to replace text and/or add special content into the articles.
I used to frown on these types of plugins because it's better to just get the data right in the first place. But sometimes controlling the input just isn't possible or perhaps you need to keep the article in a certain format but display it in another format.
Posted by: gbluma
on Dec 18, 2008
In my previous article Write an Advanced Joomla 1.5 Authentication Plugin I went over how to integrate Joomla with an alternate login system (i.e. legacy code from a previous project)
This is good, but we don't need to stop here. We can improve the authentication plugin by attaching session data from our legacy system and essentially merge our legacy session with our joomla session.
For example if we have a database table for session data with the following fields:
Posted by: gbluma
on Dec 10, 2008
Why Joomla's (or any CMS's) login system alone isn't enough
In the support of any long-lived project, chances are pretty good that you'll need to adapt the project to meet the requirements of another system. One specific area which I want to focus on is authentication-- that is, being able to extend Joomla's standard authentication system to support an alternate user table.
The problem we have is a CMS (Joomla) that needs to integrate with another project. This alternate project has it's own user database and login system which we can't modify. The resulting solution must work independently from the alternate project but also share login details with Joomla.
