Joomlatools

J! And Beyond is the first community driven International Joomla Conference, taking place in Germany, May 30 till June 1st. It grew out of the vibrant community site All Together As A Whole. This is the Joomla event of the year, you don't want to miss it!

The program is entirely up to you, as everyone can vote for presentations. 

• First, register (even if you intend to stay at home and watch the video streams). 
• Then vote for the presentations you like.

We've submitted presentations for everybody: developers, system integrators, and end users:

Nooku Framework Masterclass

Target audience: Joomla and PHP developers. 

We'll show you how to get started with Nooku Framework'snear-zero-code MVC, and how to leverage some of the exciting new features for extreme re-usability: taxonomy, trash management, ...

Want to learn how to wield all this power? Vote for the master class and join us for a wild ride into Nooku Framework development. 

Read more about the Masterclass and vote...

Nooku Framework for System Integrators

Target audience: Anybody building more than one Joomla site a year.

Typical Joomla extensions are very inflexible. They do the job, but if you want just that little bit extra, you're stuck. You either have to hack them, or persuade the developer to include the feature.

Extensions built with Nooku Framework are different. You get extreme flexibility, and you get it out of the box. With a basic understanding of PHP, you can change every aspect of a Nooku Framework powered extension. And we'll prove it by showing how it's done!

Nooku Framework Extension Showcase

Target audience: Joomla users and administrators

J! And Beyond is the ideal time to introduce the first generation of Nooku-based extensions to the world:

• Ninjaboard, a brand new Jooma forum by Ninjaforge
• Anahita Social Engine, the mother of all social network applications
• Nooku Content, the multilingual extension with advanced SEO and content management features

We also have some exciting announcements to make. Curious? Register, vote, and come and see for yourself!

Short on the heels of our Productivity Pack for DOCman we are pleased to announce the immediate release of DOCman 1.5.3, our latest maintenance release.

DOCman 1.5.3 is the third release in the three months since we released DOCman 1.5, and in keeping with our commitment to provide the Joomla community with professionally developed and supported extensions.

DOCman 1.5.3 fixes a number of issues, as well as seeing more performance improvements. Notable changes include :

• IIS compatibility drastically improved.
• Searching of international characters.
• User loading in front end 2x faster.
• Document view 10% faster
• Files view 60% faster

As usual, users who bought v1.5.x get free updates. To get you own copy, head over to the Joomlatools Store.

Finally we would like to thank our users many of whom have been glowing in their praise.

"I can't say enough about this product. It is the must have Joomla extension!" - halbertech

"I have paid the small fee for the 1.5 version willingly and am very impressed with this product. Installation and configuration works very well. There is much in the way of documents and assistance both directly on their site as well as via the forum." - Romuba

"is also very easy to use, so easy my sister can use it" - Daniel Hughes

Your feedback is always welcome and it is one of the things that motivates us the most.

Whether you are running an intranet or a public website, as an administrator, you often need to keep a close eye on what your users are doing. Especially when they are allowed to edit documents or upload new files. With DOCman Notify, it's easy to set up email notifications. Notify is part of the DOCman Productivity Pack. Tom made another great video tutorial, showing how it's done.

Watch the DOCman Notify 1.5 Video.

1. Install the plugin iusing Joomla's extension installer
2. Go to the Plugin Manager and edit the plugin's settings
3. Don't forget to enable the plugin. If you want turn of notifications later, just disable it again
4. In the "Send to" field, enter your email address
5. If you want to send to multiple recipients, separate the email addresses with the pipe symbol "|"
6. Turn on the notifications you wish to receive. The first three options will send an email whenever a user uploads, edits or downloads a document in the front-end of your site. The last option notifies you when a manager or (super) administrator edits a document through the backend interface.
7. Save the plugin settings
8. Try one of the upload, edit or download actions that you enabled
9. Check your inbox. The email contains all kinds of useful info about the user, the document and the file.

Get the DOCman Productivity today in the Joomlatools Store, for only €11.97

Advanced customization

If you don't like the look of the email, or you want it to have a different set of information, you can easily do so by modifying the email template. The /plugins/docman/notify/templates folder contains two php files, one for the email body and one for the footer. They contain standard html and css, plus a couple of php variables. If you have some html experience, you should have no problem editing these to your liking.

It's your workflow

Every organization has their own workflow needs. DOCman's flexible plugin system allows developers to add workflow rules and behavior to DOCman, and in fact, DOCman Notify is great example to start from. We'd love to hear how you use DOCman, and how you would like to see it improved. So make sure to vote for feature suggestions (or submit your own) in our ideas tracker.

Did you know that you don't need to worry about creating thumbnails for your images or other documents yourself? All you need is the DOCman Thumbs plugin, which does all the work for you. It's part of the DOCman Productivity Pack. This video shows how easy it is:

Watch the DOCman Thumbs 1.5 video.

1. After installing, remember to enable DOCman Thumbs in the Plugin Manager
2. You can adjust some settings, for example the thumbnail dimensions
3. Now when you browse the frontend, the thumbnails are generated on the fly for all supported file types (depending on your server setup)
4. If a document already has a thumbnail (for example because you set it manually), it will not be overwritten

Clearing thumbnails

If you want to start over (for example after changing the thumbnail size), you'll need to clear out the thumbnails.

1. Go to the DOCman Home screen
2. Click 'Clear Data'
3. Select 'Thumbnails' and click the 'Clear' button
4. Note that this will clear the thumbnails for all your documents

Advanced use

By default, most server setups have the GD library installed. This will work fine for standard images such as png and jpg. But if you want thumbnails for larger files, pdf's, movies, and range of other documents, you'll need to install some libraries, such imagick and ghostscript. If you are not familiar with installing libraries on your server, please ask your system administrator for help. To find out what is already available on your server, go to Help -> System Info -> PHP Information.

Did you know it's easy to batch import thousands of files into DOCman, all with just a few clicks? All you need is the DOCman Populate add-on. It's part of the DOCman Productivity Pack.

This video will show you how it's done:

Watch the DOCman Populate 1.5 video.

After you've installed DOCman Populate, follow these simple steps:

1. Upload your files using FTP, into the /dmdocuments folder. (It might have a different name -- check your DOCman configuration)
2. In the backend, go to Components -> DOCman Populate -> Configuration
3. Choose the default settings. These will be used for all documents that you generate.
4. Go to Components -> DOCman Populate -> Import Files
5. Select the files you want (you can use Ctrl-click / Cmd-click for multiple files)
6. Pick a category and click the import button
7. The documents are now available in DOCman.

Get the DOCman Productivity Pack here to boost your workflow.

We're happy to announce the release of the DOCman Productivity Pack, consisting of three must-have add-ons for any serious DOCman user. These add-ons will help you with your workflow, speed up dealing with lots of files, and make your front-end a lot more usable for end users. The new Productivity Pack is now available in the Joomlatools Store now for only €11.97.

1. DOCman Populate

Populate let's you import thousands of files into DOCman with just a few clicks. Just set some defaults, upload the files over FTP, and let Populate turn them into new DOCman documents. Couldn't be easier! Update: We've made a video showing how easy using DOCman Populate is.

Still too much trouble? Use the cron job feature to automate the whole process completely!

2. DOCman Thumbs

Thumbs will automatically generate thumbnails for your DOCman front-end. Not just for images: a whole range of document types, including PDF, are supported. (Depending on your server setup, you might need to install some additional libraries. See the README for more information).

3. DOCman Notify

You may want to keep a close eye on who uploads, edits or downloads documents on your site. Notify keeps you up to date with any of these actions you choose, by sending you notification emails full of relevant info.

All three add-ons have an intuitive and simple to use administration interface. They were completely refactored to make full use of the Joomla 1.5 native API.

You can get these three great add-ons for only €11.97 in the Joomlatools Store. It's the best way to boost your document management productivity today!