The Techjoomla Blog

We are excited to announce the BETA release 2.4.2 for JMailAlerts. With this release we are introducing "Alert Types" in JMailAlerts(JMA). Now you can create different alert types with any number of plugins without being stuck with a single Email for all your Alerts. With Alert types, it means you chose what plugins go into each type, how frequentl...

I think all of us admire the User Experience improvements all of the social networks are continuously doing. Facebook keeps pushing these tiny things and so does LinkedIn. One thing that LinkedIn has had probably from day 1 is the fantastic search. You can choose what to search - People/Companies/Jobs etc

We have been hard at work at work on improving Invitex in many ways & whats most exciting for end users is the creation of Native API Plugins for Hotmail, Yahoo & Gmail. OpenInviter based curl contact imports have always been a bit pain & with major providers now stopping support for OpenInviter. So we started a couple of months back wi...

As part of our internal "Google+ Joomla" developer challenge to create Joomla Products using the new Google+ API in a full day coding session, we asked interested Devs to use the API & create new or improve our existing products. Here's what they came up with ..

Profile Imports for JomSocial

A while back we developed a Extension to allow users to Import their LinkedIn Profile to JomSocial (either as part of the Registration process or later via a button) . This hasnt been released yet.. But this was a nice starting point to extend the extension to support the Google+ API to allow you to import your Google+ profile into JomSocial.. Manoj took up this one & managed to get quite a bit of it done !  Read on for a walk through of how it works.. 

Yesterday morning i got an email from Google regarding the release of their new but restricted Google+ developer API. We immediately decided to hold a Google+ Joomal Developer challenge today for all those who had spare time on their hands..  The Goal - Use the full day to build whatever extensions they could with the Google+ API for Joomla.. ...

Note that starting today, our Content Management extensions - Author Pages & Title Tags have been made free & community supported. Owing to a large amount of development in CCKs in the last couple of years, the utility of these extensions is comparitively reduced as the same features can be achieved with some development & template cust...

We are pleased to bring you SocialAds 2.6 - packed with great features for Users, Admins & Developers !  One of the highlights is the awesome new dashboard for admins & site owners to see how much Ads are earning for you.  Plus you now get the power of Targeting plugins & with that you can now allow advertisors to target by JomSocial Profile Types (XIPT/ Native JomSocial) & also JomSocial Groups !

An now you get even more advertisng real estate with Advertising in Emails via J!MailAlerts. 

Thats not all ! Here's a full list of the superb features this release brings you ! We managed to get through over 120 bugs & features in this one !

• Joomla 1.7 Support
  
• Admin Revenue Dashboard
• Profile Type Targeting plugins - Native & XIPT
  
• JomSocial Groups Targeting Plugins
• Advertising In Email Via J!MailAlerts
• Show Estimated reach  - Ability to display the estimated number of people your Ad will reach, depending on the targeting chosen. Admins, if the site is new you can offset this amount from the Admin.
• Performance Dashboard - Give your Advertisors the best . The Manage Ads view is revamped to include more information & a nifty Graph.
• Weekly Statistics Mail -  Now Advertisers will get a Performance Update of their Ad via a weekly update email !
• Alpha User Points Payment Gateway - Based on User contribution from Jose Vieira
• Soft Registration Option for easy Ad creation for guests

For the full details of the changes in this version, please see the changelog below. Developers wanting to extend SocialAds targeting, watch out for our Targetting Plugin development docs coming soon ! Active Subscribers can download the release in "My Suibscriptions"

Not Using SocialAds to Monetize your site yet ? Buy it today

J!MailAlerts 2.4 is now available & comes with a host of bug fixes & addition of 2 Major features.With this version we add the ability to pass data to the plugin tags & use the tags multiple times in the JMA template. For instance, you can now use the JMA latest news tags like [jma_latestnews_js|secid=1|catid=1,3,32] & pass it the parameters that are normally stored in the plugin params ( just like you would with Joomla content plugins) . This adds a mightly lot of flexibility to JMA plugins. Please read the documentation in this relation.

The second Big feature is the ability to send insert Ads ( using our SocialAds extension) in JMA Mails. So now your advertisements can reach your users via email even if they havent visited your site in a while. You can configure the SocialAds JMA plugin to show ads from specific zones in positions you can set in your template using tags. Special care has been taken that an user will never be sent an email only containing Ads. The SA plugin shall only be triggered if there is any other content to send. More details about this will follow in the SocialAds release in a couple of days. The plugin will be part of the SocialAds package.

Another small feature is the addition of a CSS Editor in the JMA template editor. This will make it dead easy to change your JMA template. Just paste the html part of the template in the normal editor & paste the CSS in the CSS window.  Besides these there are tons of other fixes & small features. Plus there is Jooma 1.7 Support !

Update Instructions :  Please note that we are now generating a random Cron Secret Key on every install to ensure your security. So Please update your cron job according to this new key after you upgrade.

All Paid & free plugins have been updated & are available for Download. Please read on for the full changelog. Please note that ver 2.4.1 has been released to fix a bug with the url in simulating the emails

With version 2.4 we are introducing support for "data tags" in J!MaillAlerts.

What is data tag?

In this example, you will see 3 tags added to email template, out of which 1st and 3rd are data tags and 2nd is a normal JMA(JMailAlerts) tag.

Tamhini is an awesome place to visit...Especially in the monsoons. The road meanders through mountains covered with a lush blanket of green & gushing waterfalls welcome us at every other corner. This was the place that was chosen for our monsoon outing after much deliberations on whether to go for a Trek or a Trip.

A Private bus was hired and attendance for the trip was at an all time high ! Only 3 people couldnt make it.. But still there were about 24 of us as we started out on the Sunday morning. The Sun was out as we embarked on our journey ( not at all promising here in India in the monsoons ! - So there are no really 'Nice Sunny Days' here ;) ) . We were hoping for rains & a nice windy atmosphere.. but at least it didnt look like that in the morning :(

Invitex 2.1 is now available to all active subscribers. With this version, we introduce 2 main features.  The long awaited Facebook like look is one of them ! We have completely revamped the UI of Invitex to give it a nice slider layout. I am sure you'll love it !

The even bigger feature announcement is the Invites Anywhere feature using which Invitex can now be extended to be used with practically any extension. With this feature,its dead easy to setup Invitex to work with Groups, Articles, Events, Shops. Your imagination is the only limit. Read more about this feature here.

We have also solved a lot of reported issues in this release & sneaked in a lot of small but cool features like the ability to Import Friends & quickly add the people who are already on the site as your friends. For the Full change log & some cool screenshots, please read on. If you still havent got your hands on this awesome viral invitations extension, Buy it now !

Call for Sponsorship for Native API plugins
Next on our target list is adding support for Native API plugins for the major email & Social network providers. We are calling for sponsorships to help speed up the development of these API plugins. If you are interested, please drop us an email to [email protected]. 

This release has taken much longer than planned.. But we have added some awesome features that i am sure will make the wait well worth it ! Invitex 2.1 is coming with a snazy Facebook like look, ability to add Imported contacts if they are already on the site, Invite Anywhere - A system to allow you to use  Invitex for Inviting peopel to pract...

SocialAds 2.6 is all about nifty new features that will make SocialAds supremely more flexible & add more to the Wow value of your advertisers.

For Site owners & Admins

Awesome new Dashboard for tracking how much money you are making with SocialAds.

We just made an awsome commit to our REST api on github. This has  introduced support for Joomla 1.6! Yes you can now use the super simple REST api on Joomla 1.6 as well! Get hold of the REST api on github - https://github.com/techjoomla/Joomla-REST-API I hope all of you find this release useful. I can already imagine so many mobile app develo...

Invalid Tokens- I had been seeing this error on & off on some of the sites we were building both in Joomla 1.5 & 1.6. This error has caused a silent but significant furor on the Forums. Not just at Joomla.org but on the sites of quite a few Template & extension Developers as well. In this Blog, I hope to finally lay the question of why this error occurs to rest.