Joomla is a great platform for distributing content. Whether you are a personal blogger or a large group of content creators with thousands of articles to manage, Joomla can be the right platform for you. Unfortunately, Joomla is not always the easiest CMS to use, especially if you are fairly new to this platform. There are some common problems you may come across as you start using Joomla. We are going to review some of those problems and discuss how you can avoid or solve them in no time.
This article is obviously for experienced Joomla users. Well, those who have set it up at least. If you’ve stumbled across this article and haven’t setup Joomla yet, there is a great article from the guys at HostPresto who talk you through getting your first site up and running from the ground up. So if that’s what you’re looking to do, be sure to check that out. Anyway, let’s get started –
Pasting from Microsoft Word
I know how easy it is to write in Microsoft Word. As a matter of fact, I’m writing this article on Word and will copy-and-paste the finished article to publish it. There are a lot of new Joomla users who experience difficulties when pasting text from Word. The problem lies in the way Word adds unnecessary codes, usually used to reflect Word styles and other elements, to the actual text.
These codes get pasted to the editor on your Joomla site as well. When you hit publish, the same codes are also published. Some browsers such as Google Chrome can work around these unnecessary codes automatically, but others may not have the same ability. As a result, you will see the article displayed in a weird way.
A simple workaround to this problem is to force JCE, Joomla’s built-in editor, to strip Word styles when you paste your text. To do this, go to Components > JCE > Editor Profiles > Your Profile and find Plugin Parameters. You will see a tab marked “Paste” in which you can set Microsoft Word cleanup to Always.
That’s it. You can now compose in Microsoft Word as always and copy-paste your article to Joomla without an issue. You still have to add your own styles to the text, but it is much easier than having to clean unnecessary codes every time.
Creation and Publishing Dates
By default, Joomla arranges articles based on their creation dates. When you write an article to be published right away, the use of creation date is not a problem. Your articles will appear in chronological order and your viewers can access them accordingly from the Main or Category page.
For scheduled posts, however, you may find their orders a bit weird. Since Joomla continues to use creation date to sort articles when the order is set to Default, you will find scheduled posts not appearing according to their schedules.
Let’s say you write post A and schedule it to be published at 12 pm. You then write post B and publish it right away. At 12 pm, post A will get published automatically, but it will appear below post B because the post is created before post B.
Of course, there is a workaround to this issue as well. If you want posts to appear in the correct order when you schedule them, edit the creation date before publishing. Set the creation date and time to the date you want the post to go live and you are all set. I believe the guys behind Joomla are working on a fix, but in the meantime, you can use this quick-fix to help you.
Reinstall Joomla
I remember the days when all I did with my Joomla site was try extensions and themes. It is a great way to explore this platform and it can really help you get the functionalities – and the front-end design – you are aiming for. At a certain point, I wanted to clear everything and start fresh.
Instead of deleting everything, there is actually an easy way to reinstall Joomla. When you first install the CMS, you are asked to delete the /installation folder for security reasons. You don’t have to delete the entire folder. You just have to rename it to something unique (something no one can easily guess).
Whenever you need to start fresh, delete the configuration.php file and rename that /installation folder back. You can then access the standard Joomla installation wizard and setup everything again.
Another good way of trying different things on Joomla is to use one-click script installers such as Softaculous. You can create and delete Joomla installations in one click. You can even have different Joomla installations use the same database or perform general maintenance tasks – such as updating Joomla itself – directly from the installer.
One-click script installers can also handle other tasks, including automatically making backups of your Joomla site. Depending on the hosting service you use, you can also customize the one-click installer to include preconfigured extensions and themes that suit you best.
There are still so much to explore, especially since Joomla is a very robust platform. Don’t be afraid to try new things and you will love every bit of Joomla. It is a great platform for bloggers and content creators. For more tips and tricks, be sure to stay tuned right here on this site.