Acqal Experts Blog About TYPO3 and Other Hot Topics

Creating a MySQL Database for TYPO3 using CPanel

By: Virgil Huston

Today, I created a development site for a support client's web site. A development (dev) server allows you to try all kinds of things without affecting the live site. Not everything can be done in the draft workspace on a live site, so dev sites are essential.There are a number of ways to copy a site to another server, but as I was going through the process, I thought that some things tend to be taken for granted by writers of instructions. One of these things is actually creating a MySQL database for the new site. This applies to copied sites and completely new sites. Some writers assume you...

Create a simple "Contact Us" mail form in TYPO3

By: Michael Cannon

Name | *name=inputEmail | *email=input | | EMAILPhone | phone=inputSubject | subject=select | Consulting, Sales, Support, Training, Web HostingRequest | comments=textarea,25,10| formtype_mail=submit| Request Free Consultation| html_enabled=hidden | 0

You can change Name, Email, and Subject of above to display as you'd like on the front-end. Don't change name, email, and subject or else the sent email from name, from email, and subject will not be what the submitter provided. The * before name and email denotes those fields as required. The EMAIL of email, informs...

Configure TYPO3 for Localized Websites

By: Michael Cannon

A bit older of a multi-lingual setup guide, but the principals are the same.

Prepare cPanel/WHM and Ruby for Redmine: A Walk-Through

By: Michael Cannon

Despite our abysmal first attempt with installing the Redmine project management software back in September, we've been loving Redmine for helping keep our projects on track. As we get closer to a mid-February launch of high-availability, failover TYPO3 hosting, we wanted to migrate our non-TYPO3 websites and special server configurations to new environments.

As Redmine is a Ruby-based project management system, this meant spinning up a new CentOS 5 server with cPanel/WHM and Ruby. This time around though, our week-long headache only lasted 4 hours. Out of it, comes the following...

TYPO3 Acqal log_analyzer and difference_viewer Extensions

By: Virgil Huston

A client recently asked me to provide them a list of front end web site changes between two specific dates. TYPO3 comes with a built-in Log (see "Log" in the image below).

However, what one gets when running a Log report can be quite confusing for someone not familiar with the terminology one sees. In addition, the Log really doesn't tell you specifically what was changed, particularly with content, which is what the client was interested in. User names may or may not be understood, etc. Bottom line is that the normal TYPO3 Log report is not detailed enough and readable for...

TYPO3, Marketing and the English Language

By: Virgil Huston

Sometimes coming up with a blog post topic can be hard, so this week, some odds and ends that are of interest and some things that keep rolling around in my mind.TYPO3, Marketing and the English LanguageI live in the US and use the US version of Google for searching. One thing I did while trying to come up with a blog topic, was run a search for TYPO3 on Google News. Wow, one would have thought I was using news.google.de. Out of the first 5 pages of news results (50 results), only 2 were English (one of them irrelevant as far as TYPO3 is concerned, the other a press release), the rest were...

TYPO3 Tips and Tricks - Mass Copy and Move

By: Virgil Huston

We are currently working on a web site migration to TYPO3 project that has thousands of pages. We imported the pages, but there is now a new site map, so many of the pages must be shifted around, placed in different sections, etc.

TYPO3's mass copy / move and paste functionality has made what could be an unbelievably tedious and time consuming task into a much quicker and streamlined process. For situations like this, mass copy / paste is essential, saves us time and saves the client money. It is truly a win-win situation.

I have created a short tutorial to explain the basics of this...

Add META Abstract & Author to seo_basics

By: Michael Cannon

Seo_basics is an excellent starter for rapidly implementing basic search engine optimization capabilities in TYPO3. For most, seo_basics when used with realurl for search engine friendly URLs is enough. However, for content publishers that require passing along more information about articles or publication contexts being included directly in a page, a meta abstract and author tag is needed.

After you've included seo_basics in your TYPO3 template, add the following TypoScript to the Setup box to enable meta abstract and author tags.

plugin.tx_seobasics { # Building the Abstract tag 70 =...

More TYPO3 Goodies

By: Virgil Huston

There was / is an interesting discussion on the LinkedIn TYPO3 Users Group called "Do you blog about TYPO3?"Some of the responses I was aware of, others were new. They are worth putting on the "Ultimate TYPO3 Reource List," plus I added a few more.David Smeringe's blog - Programming and web design centric weblog with a lot on TYPO3. mediaVROG Blog - Maik Vlcek's blog, XHTML/CSS, Javascript/Ajax mit mootools, Barrierearmut, Typo3 (German)Nikolay Orlenko's blog - TYPO3, Drupal and other CMS in Ukraine. (Russian)Scenic Living - From the Netherlands, blogging about typo3,...

TYPO3 Extension Manager Beginner Tip

By: Virgil Huston

TYPO3's Extension Manager is a great way to easily import extensions into your web site. But, how many times have you searched for an extension you know is there and had no results?

This may be because your settings on what extensions the manager is allowed to search for keep you from finding the extension you are looking for.

There are two settings, one for reviewed extensions and one for all extensions. Reviewed extensions are certainly completely safe, but so are many unreviewed extensions. If your are set to search only for reviewed extensions, you will miss many others.

As long...