OSTraining Blog Post and Tutorials

The Disappearance of Open Source?

May 16, 2012 | General

A little while ago we made the decision here at OSTraining.com to alter how our name is shown to visitors.

We changed "Open Source Training" to "OSTraining" throughout our site. The main reason? In our user testing and customer interactions we constantly found that people were confused about the phrase "Open Source". We kept on hearing comments like these:

 

Our Joomla Security Class is Here and Free!

May 15, 2012 | OSTraining News

securityIt's hard to think of a more important topic than keeping your site safe and secure.

So, we're pleased to say that our new Joomla security class is now live, and it is freely available for the public.

In this class we show you how to keep your Joomla site and extensions up-to-date. We also show you how to take backups with Akeeba Backup and explain how to restore your site from those backups. We then cover the Admin Tools extension which provides numerous extra security features.

 

The OSToolbar is Now on WordPress.org

May 15, 2012 | OSToolbar

OSToolbarLast week we released a completely free version of the OSToolbar.

In more good news, the OSToolbar is now available on WordPress.org.

The OSToolbar's official home on WordPress.org is now http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/ostoolbar.

 

A New Layout for Our Training Classes

May 14, 2012 | OSTraining News

new-layoutOver the last week we've been rolling out a new layout for all of our training classes.

Hopefully this will be a big improvement for our members, our guests and our staff. Here's a description of the new features ...

 

Auto-Notify Drupal Authors About New Comments

May 14, 2012 | Drupal Tutorials

Managing comments on a busy website can get tedious if you need to login and check continually. It's very convenient to get an email with the comment text, so you can see if it's legitimate or comment spam.

To do this in Drupal we're going to use two core modules, Actions and Triggers. We'll also use the Token module to control over the content and recipients for the email

In this tutorial we're going to use Actions, Triggers and Tokens to show you how to automatically send customized emails from Drupal.

 

Content Versioning for Joomla 2.5

May 13, 2012 | Joomla News

6260 box twoDo you have several people all contributing and editing articles to your Joomla site? Do those people sometimes make mistakes? Are you the one messing things up sometimes? We all do it. Simple Content Versioning is the solution.

 

Fabrik and Custom Joomla User Registration Forms

May 8, 2012 | Joomla Tutorials

Fabrik and Custom Joomla User Registration FormsFabrik is a wonderfully powerful and flexible Joomla extension.

In a previous tutorial we showed you how to use Fabrik to create a contact form. In this tutorial we're going to use Fabrik to create a custom user registration form.

 

Fabrik: Create a Custom Joomla User List

May 8, 2012 | Joomla Tutorials

FabrikThis is another of our series of tutorials on Fabrik. Now, instead of using Fabrik to collect information, we're going to use it to display information.

In this tutorial we're going to do two things:

  • Create a list of your Joomla users.
  • Search that list in advanced ways. 
 

{loadposition} and {loadmodule} in Joomla Articles

May 7, 2012 | Joomla Tutorials

 and {loadmodule} in Joomla ArticlesThere are two features in Joomla that allow you to easily place modules directly inside articles:

  • loadposition allows you to publish all the modules in a particular position.
  • loadmodule allows you to publish just one particular module.
One of our students was using these features to create a layout but wasn't happy with how it looked inside his article. He wanted more control.
 
This tutorial will show you how to place modules inside your article with more style. Here's what we're going to do:
 

Nodequeue: Control the Order of Drupal Nodes

May 7, 2012 | Drupal Tutorials

There are various ways to create lists of nodes in Drupal. So what's different about the Nodequeue Module?

Nodequeue allows you to manually control the order of your nodes. You can use drag and drop to re-order a list of nodes. Whereas a module like Views will automatically publish all of your nodes that meet certain criteria, Nodequeue allows you to control the order of those nodes.

Nodequeue is very often used for slideshows and other site features where you need to choose which articles to show.