These are for those fiddly settings you can never find.
Settings
cron jobs
You need to setup a cron job for both EasyBlog and Komento because
- Emails are sent out via 'Send E-mails During Page Load' mechanism. This is slow and can cause issues with high traffic sites.
- This will move the email handling away from the normal running of the website and will not suffer timeouts or other issues related to emails.
- EasyBlog has a feature where it can autopost emails as articles from a defined mailbox. This feature will not work without a cron setup.
- The crons can handle a lot more emails than the page load method.
- Stackideas - In short, sending e-mails is a long process and it requires your server to communicate with the recipient's e-mail server. Sending one e-mail is perfectly fine but imagine sending it to 500 recipients because you have 500 subscribers. Two main issues for not utilizing cronjobs:
- The only way to dispatch e-mails is when someone accesses the component area (either EasyBlog or Komento). Imagine having 5000 pending e-mails and you do not have the sufficient traffic to these pages. Those e-mails would stuck in the queue.
- Even if you have sufficient traffic, it would cause delays when anyone accesses these pages because your mail server would need to communicate to the recipient's mail server.
Send E-mails During Page Load Location
Use this information to turn the feature off, if not already. This also where you can setup other notification options.
- EasyBlog (Settings-->Notifications-->General-->General Settings-->Send E-mails During Page Load) = off
- Komento (Settings-->Notifications-->General-->General-->Send E-mails On Page Load) = off
Official Documentation
Notification of the requirement to use cron
Currently the only notification that you need a cron job is if you visit the following pages. they also have a link to the official documentation for setting up a cron job.
- EasyBlog (Mail Activities-->Mail Activities)
- Komento (E-mails-->Email Activities)
Shared Hosts
remember that on shared hosts you will have limits on your email send and receive volume and the frequency that your cron can run.
These are a typical example of limitations on a well run server.
- cron
- Any client who schedules cron jobs in such a manner that jobs take more then half the time to complete before the next scheduled iteration, and more frequently then 10 minutes is abusing the cron system.
- Any automated processes that excessively consume resources and impact server stability may be disabled at our discretion by our technicians.
- Maximum email rate
- The maximum allowed email send rate is 350 messages per hour per domain (cPanel is irrelevant). Please keep in mind that each recipient counts as a separate message as it is being sent to a separate address. This should be the only limitation in place as far as outgoing messages.
Setup your cron to run every 10 minutes with a 50 emails max send. You could push it to 100 emails max send.
Toolbar
Disable Blog Header Title and Header Description
The settings to disable these are at
- (Settings-->Layout-->Toolbar-->General)
- Enable Headers Above Toolbar – set to no - This disables the global title at the top of easyblog (optional)
- Enable Headers Description Above Toolbar – set to no – This disables the global description at the top of easy blog (optional)
- (Settings-->Layout-->Toolbar-->Toolbar)
- Display Tags Link = off
- Display Bloggers Link = off
- Display Teamblog Link = off
- Enable Archives Link = off
Enable Automatic Approval of Posts
- (ACL-->Author 'Group'-->Compose-->Compose-->Allowed To Publish Post) = Yes
- Also you must add content-editor into the Author group (publisher will not inherit author settings for EasyBlog)
In EasyBlog user author settings
NB: EasyBlog retrieves the info from Joomla, not a separate database
- (Authors-->{username}-->Details)
- (Authors-->{username}-->Blog Settings)
- Blog Permalink – set to this something sensible, not the account username
Change the a blog post to userX
Assuming EasyBlog Composer
- (Posts-->Posts)
- Edit the requires Blog Post
- Edit the Author on the top right
- Select the userX account
- Update the post
Storage Paths
(Settings-->Media-->General-->Storage Paths)
I need to test my folder selection to see if it all works as expected.
Default:
- Article Images images/easyblog_articles/
- User media images/easyblog_images/
- Shared media images/easyblog_shared/
- User avatars images/easyblog_avatar/
- Category avatars images/easyblog_cavatar/
- Team avatars images/easyblog_tavatar/
Mine:
- Article Images images/blog/article-images/
- User media images/blog/user-media/
- Shared media images/blog/shared-media/
- User avatars images/blog/user-avatars/
- Category avatars images/blog/category-avatars/
- Team avatars images/blog/team-avatars/
This is much neater as all of the blog media is within one folder. I have many application installed in my Joomla website.
Themes
If you are using EasyBlog and Komento it is important to match the themes.
I like the following EasyBlog themes:
- bubbles
- x origami
- plain
- timeless
- wireframe
Kometo also has these themes:
- bubbles
- Wireframe
Questions and Answers
If easy blog has its own built in commenting system why do i need Komento ?
EasyBlog had its own commenting system, integrating with komento gives you more features given in the default easyblog comment.
- Instantly activate user interaction and get feedback from visitors to your site.
- Professionally control all incoming comments or spam in one easy centralized system.
- Migrate comments from EasyBlog and other comment extensions and have them display in Komento.
- Komento handles comments in K2, EasySocial, JomSocial, FlexiContent, ZOO, EasyBlog 3.5, VirtueMart, redSHOP, and more.
- Control certain activity that a particular user or user group can do in the comments area.
You could read more about it here --> Komento, by stackideas - Joomla Extension Directory
Do i need to use the inbuilt media manager?
You do not need to use media manager to upload your pictures, using your editor would work.
What are the benefits of using the inbuilt media manager?
The build in manager makes it easy for you to upload picture, it also automatically create thumbnails and full view and will come in handy when using lightbox. It also has additional features like pictures that you could share with others using the shared folder.
Can you recommend which comment system to use? i do not know if disqus is better because it is cloud based ?
You might need to check your requirements and what you will need for your blogs.
Why does Easyblog not use the Joomla template?
EasyBlog had themes which you could choose to better suite your site. We also have partners with template developer that supports easyblog
Link --> http://stackideas.com/partners
Will ever use the joomla template?
As for the Joomla template, the default theme that is included in EasyBlog was created to inherit most of the styling of your Joomla template but some of the elements are designed internally. For instance, the toolbar in EasyBlog, we have to design this on our own because there's no other Joomla template that is designing the toolbar :)
You can read this documentation link and see is it helpful for you? -> Template Overriding - Customizations - EasyBlog Documentation
Does Easyblog allows the use of joomla plugins
EasyBlog does trigger content plugins but whether or not it works with EasyBlog is another matter because some of these content plugins are explicitly configured to work with Joomla articles. We can't really tell you which plugin works and which plugin doesn't but if I recall correctly, allvideos plugin does work but EasyBlog has a built in video embed tool so not too sure if Allvideos is really necessary?
Where does the number come from of the folder my uploaded images are put it?
The number comes from the User ID
When i upload an image using your image manager, the manager uploads the image and puts it in a folder of that user, ie /easyblog_images/623/ is there anyway of turning this off because running a blog i do not want images all over the place. i want them like /images/blog/2014/09 etc.. no user number
There is also a shared folder in EasyBlog where they are stored in a shared folder . The shared folder does not categorize images into user id folders. However do take note that storing them in a shared folder also means that all authors on your site will be able to access them.
When inserting an image using your manager it uses an absolute image link ie http://www.mywebsite.com/images/easyblog_images/mypicture.jpg this is really bad, lets say i was developing on my test server and then moved it, none of the image links would then work. please can you tell me if you can turn this off as i do not understand why anyone would have this option on anyway.
The URL that is inserted into the blog post is actually dependent on your editor's configuration. If the editor that you are currently using is configured to use relative URLs, the url of the image will be relative because these WYSIWYG editors would format the urls accordingly.
This is only seems to work with JCE Editor. Does not work with None/TinyMCE/JCK
Other Notes
- SH404SEF - Remove the word easyblog from the URL
- Easyblog uses profiles + shared media, might be good just to use 'user media' like they want you to, this allows the easy implementation of team bloggin later and keeps all files assigned to 'your account'. It is easy to use the 'user media' whilst maintaining my url and media rules