I have been using Easy Social since Stack Ideas released it. I even migrated from JomSocial to the EasySocial platform. One thing that has always bugged me is that the default toolbar is blue. Some sites (Like this one) and others just don't work well with that color. Facebook isn't everything. 

So with some help from the StackIdeas team, I was able to create my own custom CSS and override the default colors. Adding this code to your custom.css for your template will produce a nice black toolbar that should work with most any site. Feel free to change the hex colors to accomodate your own design.

I wanted to do some further styling to my Phoca Download page, that placed a "play indicator" icon before the word play on the button and wanted it to better match my site. I also wanted to change the color of the details button to make it less obtrusive.

Here's what to do (with some help from the Phoca support forum):

Today I needed to add links to my Phoca Download component. In the category list, the tag links were just to large and not separated. So, I created the option to add a font awesome tag in front, shrink the font size & make the file title larger for a better user experience.

Below is the code that I added to my custom.css:

Recently, I needed to add several events, on a repeating basis to JEvents. If you are not familiar, it is one of the (if not the) best tools to building and tracking events for Joomla CMS. Frankly, I have used the free version for years, and intend on buying the commercial version just to support the further development. Their support is top-notch, even to free users - something not easily found these days, they love what they do!

So let's look at the design problem first. I needed to create daily tasks, that a user could click a link, open a new window and complete. This could be used for seminars, videos, really anything that needs to happen on a consistent basis. I wanted the link to open in a new window, to preserve my site in their browser and facilitate their return to my page. Don't want to loose any eyes.

The issue was that when the event was listed, it showed raw html on output, I wanted a cool clickable link. So, I reached out to JEvents support, and boy did they come through for me!

So, if you having the same problems as me, with the front end appearance of JEvents inside the latest events module, here is the fix.

1 - You cannot put links, HTML, or anything of that nature inside the title of the event on google calendar, period.

They MUST be placed into the description.

Enter your HTML code into the description.


2 - Run the update calendar function in JEvents Back End

3 - Set your "Custom Format String" in the module settings, mine looked like this:

<h3> ${title} </h3>

${content}

4 - Enjoy the final result of a fully formed, bootstrap button, that opens in a new page and handled by JEvents!

Test Task Result

It seems to me that this would almost be core functionality in Joomla, but it's not. Having a single homepage can detract from a user's experience. So today I began using the "Nomad Plugin" for Joomla on one of my sites. I use the Purity III template by JoomlArt  (this template) almost exclusively now even though it has a whopper of a learning curve, but once you know how to properly manipulate the design, you can accomplish some pretty amazing things. When Purity III is in mobile mode, it displays the sites logo or name as a button and I need the target of that button to change depending on if you are a guest, or an authenticated user.

A couple of notes on Nomad - first, it does what it says - 

Nomad is not login redirection, it's homepage redirection!!! Joomla gives you a single homepage - Nomad gives as many as you need! Per-group or per-user - as many as you need.

but, there are some caveats.

First, it does not override the default joomla menu item - where you put the star still determines what pages new visitors will see. Second it does redirect users once they are authenticated (social, joomla or EasySocial) logins. Once the user is identified as a group member - Nomad will silently redirect that group to the page you have assigned with almost no overhead.

If you are using Nomad or trying to accomplish the same thing, I would love to hear from you in the comments.  Also, please excuse the emptiness of the site, recently migrated to 3.2 and still moving data over, so please be patient.

Mike