Written by Landis Arnold on . Joomla

Moving forward with Multi-Domain Setups

In Joomla there is a sequential approach that needs to happen when setting up a Multi-Domain environment.

Of course, the first part is running down the extensions you need, testing them, learning them, implementing them.

The second part is a continuation of the first.  More specifically though, you want to build out your Array of Resources.  I would prefer this to be a checkbox rather than a Bullit List but here we go.

First Requirements

  • Stable and Controlable, generally Linux based Server - lots to this but I can help.
  • Joomla Up to Date - should be easy
  • As many of your Extensions up to date - should be easy unless some subscriptions have expired - move on
  • Disable or Remove unused Extensions -  Many things you can do under the "Manage" tab on the backend of Joomla

Add Specifically

  • Virtual Domains
  • Smart Search (buildin)
  • OS Map (joomlashack)
  • Other Mappers for testing
    • Aimy SiteMap is helpful.  JSitemap is helpful, XML Sitemap Pro - external, is helpful
      • turn them off when you are not using the extras and don't submit to Search engines unless you need a second one for some reason.  Lots to discuss there.
  • OS Content (a great way to start your content buildout)
  • OS Meta (a great way to be sure you have covered your bases)

Remove:  

  • Search Modules

Add:

  • Smart Search Categories for each Menu
  • Smart Search Modules to each Menu
  • Custom Module that links to each of your Virtual Domains
  • Second Custom Module with Restricted Access for your in development Virtual Domains.
  • You can also do this with Articles but I find it too slow
  • SSL Certificate(s) for your domains (assumably applied in Apache)
  • Google Analytics Code to each Template being used by a Domain, and segregated to that Domain
  • Site Map registrations to google for each Domain  (you need to organize yourself here with Menus)

Test:

  • You will test alot, so keep your initial structures as simple as possible
  • Be Patient and Persistent.
  • You should do the same tests on each of your domains sequentially.
  • When all is working, move on to the next
  • Keep a good Checklist for Issues.  You can even write notes to your system with restricted access

Know:

  • You will get errors if you are repeating content in your menus the wrong way.
  • That means,  do not include the same content in two different Menu Items exactly the same way.  One needs to take precedence.
  • Move from one subject to the next throughly
  • Joomla ACL is very powerful.  It is complicated.  It is useful.  It is not always obvious what changes, so test the differences in settings.  
  • You generally won't kill your site, but sometimes you may need to remove something you just added that made your site stop working.
  • Big Changes should be preceeded with a System Backup that you can restore from and which you know how to restore from
  • I repeat:  Big Changes should be preceeded with a System Backup, manually triggered.
  • Have a Daily Backup system in place as well.

Check:

  • Your Virtual Domains Menu Filtering regularly.
    • If you add Menus Elements in Joomla you must add them to the "don't filter" (Menu Filter) set if you want to see them.
    • You can spend extended periods of time thinking your system is broken just because of this or some "bad key stroke sequence there.

Comment

    • An update to Virtual Domains was done recently, and it is clear that there can be more done.
    • All that said, it works very well and can save $ Time and Mind.  
    • Check out that Formatting Trick.  Never had 2 Bullets stacked before.
    • Have some fun and have some things to talk about other than your web site  (I am taking notes).

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Magento - Odoo - OCA Connector

Magento - Odoo - OCA Connector

This was a very functional system which brings the ability to work the "backend" of Magento by actually building and purchasing items you sell,

We used this system marrying first OpenERP 7, then  Odoo 8 to Magento 1.x.  It was very very effective.

(old bullet points next)

  • Functionally you get all of the aspects of Odoo, including CRM, Product Management and more
  • You also get the great E-Commerce capabilities of Magento, and its increditble extensability.

Sadly, systems moved on.  Adobe took over Magento,  Odoo started becoming closed source and upgrading very very fast.  From what I can see, the Odoo/Magento Connector which was part of OCA (Odoo Community Association) stalled out at Odoo 10-11 View on Github  .  Moreover, it only supported Magento 1.x implementations which became almost impossible to maintain for security reasons because of Adobe's decisions to leave 1.x and its architecture behind.

The OCA/PrestaShop connector is quite active, and probably the best way to proceed now.  PrestaShop is easy to install and should be easy to maintain (unlike Magento in my experience from some years ago now).

The fact is that Odoo has effective E-Commerce built in and from a maintenance point of view it may be easiest just to stick with that.  But other reasons point to maintaining a separate E-Commerce system, and simply supporting it through Odoo on the back end.

Check out the OCA/PrestaShop connector here.  https://github.com/OCA/connector-prestashop

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Organizing your culled information stream

Organizing your culled information stream

It is tremendously complicated these days keeping track of what you are learning.

As an example,  I am diving into the realm of dropping pre-built Drive Images into Cloud Instances.  I need to keep track of the difference between a bzip2 and tar file, and how to decompress them.  Very nice people have commented their answers in various places.  Answers like:

bzip2 -d filename.bz2

tar cvjf myfile.tar.bz *.txt

Certainly there are many more of these as well.  I likely have 20 Tabs open talking about all the various approaches, but that is not the point now.

The point now is simply, how to "keep track" and if possible, how to perhaps help other people in similar quests.

3 Basic Elements I am finding useful:

  1. Bookmark Organizing
     
    1. "Bookmark Manager and Viewer" a Chrome Extension is particularly valuable.  It takes a bit to get used to with one or two foibles, but nothing better that I have found.  Use this in conjunction with Chromes Bookmarking (they have the same icon) and spread them out so you know which one you are using.
    2. "Tabs Outliner" also a Chrome Extension lets you explore and tab to your hearts content.  You can close whole windows and keep track of the tabs.  Ideally you will move from here to your actual bookmarks, but with this you can see what you have been searching for, reading up upon and in many ways also reflect on what is important
  2. Durable Checklists
    1. Honestly, I am still looking for the ideal version here, but what I do know is that Outlines go a long way.  Lets go there
  3. Outlines and Outliners
    1. Now discontinued Bonsai is very good.  Very Very Good
    2. Android Outliner is VERY VERY VERY GOOD  (number 1 really except that I work in Bonsai more)
    3. Workflowy is the best web outliner I have found so far

There are others.  They all deserve attention, but the point is not the program but the work.

Nothing is perfect and no integrations, yet, are perfect.  I do also use

  • Simple Mind for Outlining and Mind Mapping . 
  • Odoo to keep track of issues and many other details. 
  • Evernote..  must have
  • Dropbox,  for me anyway, must Have

All are also excellent programs:

Like threads in a spider web though, you need to have your own system of reference to keep them together.  Things are getting better, but, there is still you in the middle.

Getting things done..  a book and a mantra.  The program did not work very well unfortunately (may have had another name - written for PC Tablet computers in about 2005 ?).  It should have worked better.  The concept was incredible.  It just had big, in fact large and untenable, memory leaks.

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Key Reference and External Reference

Key Reference and External Reference

These are some of the "lower" list fill in's regarding Joomla Meta information in content.  Still worth some reasearch.  I found the following

https://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?t=844679

Key Reference

This is the reference that is used to pull the correct help information either from help files saved locally or on an online site like help.joomla.org

External Reference

Use this field to add a reference to an external resource that is relevant to this specific article. There is no global value for this field as it must be specific to each particular article.

Dave Huelsmann gives a great answer and he appears to know Joomla very very well.

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Magento Sunset

Magento Sunset

I have been running Magento since about 2012 with 1.3x in my memory bank. Up to 1.9x now and really just using Magento as a repository now.

Magento 2.x (2.3x to be precise) is here.  It does not work, at present, with this CMS system so I have a linkage taking place through Filemaker from J2Store to Magento and by extension to Odoo.

I will quite likely just take the Magento system down.  It will not be supported with updates after this coming June and the time investment of getting 2.x running and keeping it running does not seem available just now).  We will see.

Anyway, for now, I am going to start redirecting the URL's to land into this system.  Lets see what a pain that becomes.  Likely worth the effort but also perhaps now.

Sad, but Magento was aquired by Adobe and like Odoo, they are making it more and more difficult to use it as a Open Source software.  Not that either are impossible, but the reigns are steering the team towards privation.

Somewhat the nature of things these days I will say.

All good software, just a bit too time intensive.

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Turnkeylinux Hosting - volume size changes

Turnkeylinux Hosting - volume size changes

I have hosted Turnkeylinux images in the following ways

  • VMWare Vsphere
  • VirtualBox
  • BareMetal
  • TurnkeyLinux Hub
  • Linode Cloud

At present I am hosting nearly everything on Linode, though for the sake of speed and the ability to "turnoff" (and not be charged when not running) I am running a few servers also on the AWS based TKL Hub.

A few caveats.  Linode, if using their Kernel, will resize Drive Image sizes along with FileSystem Sizes very well.

It takes some work to do this on the TKL Hub - this is the current HOW To:

https://www.turnkeylinux.org/docs/expand-existing-root-volume-size

though I would skip the AWS section and just clone bigger, but then still do all of the following in SSH.

To be most specific:  

gdisk /dev/xvda
parted
print
fix
resizepart
resize2fs  /dev/xvda2

Instructions in the link above have "

"gdisk -1 /dev/xvda " and I had just now to skip the -1 to get it to work.
It would be better if everything just "resized" and it might be easiest to use TKLBAM for that just installing a bigger instance.

All things considered, Linode Feels "more like mine". but it is still important to learn different systems from time to time.

Bear Metal is somewhat going away.  So much work and energy to maintain a server these days.

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