Web Design and Web Development Blog from Webilicious in Tasmania

Thanks #JED Contributors

Neil Robertson
Joomla

The amount of extensions on the Joomla Extensions Directory (JED) that are given away for free is astounding.

Free extensions vary from simple plug-ins to comprehensive packages and support is often just as good or even better than some commercial extensions.

Some developers provide a facility to contribute financially if you find the extension useful but many do not. The least I can do is say "thank-you" via the review feature in JED and I do this periodically.

To leave a review you need to create a JED account if you don't have one already (it's free).

I encourage everyone to take five or ten minutes to register an account and provide feedback to developers to show their work is appreciated. This hopefully encourages developers to continue updating and supporting the extensions that many of us find useful.

Tagging extensions as favourites is another handy feature that I use to help me find extensions I have used previously.

Latest JED Reviews

Some of my latest finds and reviews are as follows.

Heatmap (Non-commercial)

Heatmap shows graphically where users are clicking on the front page of your website. This makes it easy to see which content is most popular and help optimise your content.

SP Weather (Non-commercial)

A great looking weather module that is easy to install and configure. The developer is doing an excellent job of keeping the extension up to date when the Weather APIs have changed.

Plotalot (Mostly Non-commercial)

Plotalot is an awesome component that enables you to plot data from the database. I found it much easier to use that I thought it would be and the documentation is excellent if you need it. There is a very reasonable charge for the plug-in which enables you to insert plots into articles.

Saxum IPLogger (Non-commercial)

I am using Saxum IPLogger on a client website so that registered user logins can be tracked. Reports can now be provided showing how often registered users log in to training courses. A CSV export option would be perfect and hopefully this will be a future enhancement.

Slideshow CK (Non-commercial)

There are so many slideshow extensions but I like Slideshow CK because it is responsive, unlimited images can be included, images can be linked to unique URLs, image captions can be enabled, and most of all, only the first image is loaded when the page loads initially. This means you can include as many images as you want in the slideshow without affecting the initial page load speed.

WDS Twitter Widget (Non-commercial and Commercial Versions)

I tested a few Twitter feed modules after RocketTheme stopped support for RokTwittie and this one is the best! The styling is simple so the module fits in well with many different styles of website, there is an option to disable the link back to the developer website and leaving the width field blank makes the module responsive.

Another Free Online Icon Generator for Favicons and Apple Launcher Icons

Neil Robertson
iconifier.net website

Why Another Free Online Icon Generator?

Correct File Names

iconifier.net creates the Apple Launcher icons with the file names that devices expect, so there's no need to specify the icon locations in your HTML.

Transparency Preserved

Transparency for PNG and GIF files are preserved.

Higher Resolution Multiple Format Favicon

The favicon file is created with multiple embedded sizes of 16 x 16, 24 x 24, 32 x 32, 48 x 48 and 64 x 64 so the optimum quality favicon will be displayed. This is increasingly important as retina screens and modern web browsers embrace higher resolution icons.

Easy Operation

Uploads and downloads are all done simply from one screen. The created icons can be download individually or all together in one easy ZIP file that includes a folder so that icons aren't strewn across your desktop or elsewhere when the file is expanded.

Instructions

A ReadMe page at: http://iconifier.net/readme has instructions on where to upload the icons you generate.

The ReadMe page includes links and more information about favicons and Apple Launcher icons and reasons why I felt the need to improve on the existing icon generator websites.

Thanks

I'm very grateful to Chris Jean for sharing his excellent PHP-ICO tool which can now be found on GitHub. PHP-ICO enables favicon files to be created with PHP and the GD library only.

If you find the tool useful, please use the links on iconifier.net to share on your favourite social networks.

Top 10 Developer!

Neil Robertson
Nibber Badges

Always Learning

As a web developer, I am always learning about new technology and new ways to do things.

I was especially motivated during 2012 after discovering the free Nibbler test tool by Silktide. Nibbler analyses submitted websites and provides a free report and a score out of 10 on how well the website is put together including accessibility, technology, social networking and so on. Websites are awarded badges based on the Nibbler findings such as "W3C Compliant",  "HTML5", "Well Linked" and so on.

Nibbler is used by developers all over the world and thousands of websites have been tested.

Developers can claim websites and earn badges (examples at right) and a score of their own. Add a leaderboard into the mix and it can become quite competitive and addictive!

So Nibbler did influence me learning more about quite a few things in 2012 including:

  • W3C validation
  • HTML5
  • Content Delivery Networks
  • Print stylesheets
  • How to create a Joomla plug-in
  • Social Networking
  • Responsive Web Design
  • Compression and Caching

These are all useful things to know and have motivated me to continue improving both my own websites and client websites.

Top 50 Website
Top 10 Developer

Top 50 Website

During the end of year break, I took the opportunity to work on my own http://webilicious.com.au website, updating to a responsive HTML5 Joomla Template together with a few other minor adjustments.

The website made it into the Nibbler "Top 50" for a while which I am very pleased with.

Top 10 Developer

These extra points and some other badges boosted my own score and catapulted me into the Top 10!

Thanks to Nibbler and Silktide for making learning more fun than usual!

January 2013 Update: I made it to 2nd highest scoring Nibbler user!

Sitebeam

Note that the free Nibbler test tool only tests five pages of each website. Silktide also have a commercial tool, Sitebeam that tests all the pages on your website.

Protecting your Joomla Website from Spammers

Neil Robertson
No Spam

CAPTCHA is No Longer Sufficient

Forums, registration forms and other forms can usually be protected from spammers using CAPTCHA codes or other security extensions such as the excellent EasyCalcCheck PLUS.

Sophisticated spammers are now circumventing CAPTCHA codes on websites using techniques such as:

  • low paid human workers manually entering the codes
  • clever spam bots that use OCR to decipher the codes
  • high traffic websites owned by the spammers that redisplay the a target website CAPTCHA code on their own website, have it solved by a visitor and then use the solution on the website they wish to spam

At least one of my clients is affected and a better solution is required.

Keeping One Step Ahead of the Spammers

There are several services on the web such as projecthoneypot.org and stopforumspam.com that maintain lists of the IP addresses of known spammers and hackers. We can team these services up with a suitable Joomla extension to stop the spammers from accessing the website at all.

I have chosen Akeeba Admin Tools Professional as my preferred solution. An Admin Tools Professional subscription at €20 is excellent value for money and has many other useful features apart from the IP Address blocking.

Enable protection in Akeeba Admin Tools as follows:

  • Register an account and apply for a key at http://www.projecthoneypot.org/httpbl_configure.php (it's free)
  • At Components -> Admin Tools -> Web Application Firewall -> Configure WAF -> Project Honeypot integration, set:
    • Enable HTTP:BL filtering: Yes
    • Project Honeypot HTTP:BL Key: [enter your own key here]

Known hackers and spammers will now be blocked from accessing your Joomla website.

Free Spam Protection

You can find more free and commercial IP address blocking extensions in the Site Protection and Spam Protection categories in the Joomla Extensions Directory.

Some promising free extensions (so far untested by me) are:

What are you using to foil spammers?