1. In your Twitter account, create a list and add all users whose tweets you want to display. Make sure the list is public and not private. Add some users to this list.
2. In your AJAX Scroller parameters select “Twitter” as Type in “Basic Options”.
3. Under “RSS & Twitter Specific Settings” select “List timeline”, enter your Twitter username and the name of the Twitter list you just created.
4. Save and, if you’ve done everything correctly, you should now see tweets from all users added to your list.

It’s also possible to display tweets by any user mentioning a specific hash keyword, using the search timeline. This can make your site very dynamic as it posts most recent trend for a specific keyword.

Now, the video is quite old, made almost 2 years ago. AJAX Scroller and its DEMO site have evolved since, but the author still catches the essence of AJAX Scroller and its most important features:

• It uses AJAX, and that’s quite important, because it’s on the front page. So, if we can scroll through a number of stories, you don’t want all of those stories loading as the first page loads, cause you’re just gonna slow down people getting on to your home page. The AJAX Scroller actually loads one story bringing the others in as it needs them.
• The AJAX part is written in JavaScript, which is fantastic. But everything else, like the layout and all of the rest is written in CSS. We liked that because that gave us absolute freedom to start working with it and really melt it into what we wanted.

Now we reveal how you can add a version for Joomla 1.6 or 1.7 to the same package and create a single installation file of your extension for all Joomla versions!

As described in the previous post, the trick for creating “hybrid” installations was to take advantage of differences in Joomla 1.0 and 1.5 installers. Using a special directory structure within our extension package we would serve the appropriate manifest file to the right Joomla version. Namely, the Joomla 1.0 installer will use the manifest file found on root, while the Joomla 1.5 installer will take the first XML manifest file it founds, which can reside in a folder called “1.5″. This way we could separate the installation files for different Joomla versions while still using a single installation package.

So how can we now add files for Joomla 1.7 and create a single extension installation package accepted by all Joomla versions: 1.0, 1.5 and 1.7? Well, we will use the same trick again: the difference in how installers handle the installation files. Let’s package our extension as follows:

The only difference now is that the files for Joomla 1.5 are located in a folder called “_1.5″ while the manifest and files for Joomla 1.7 are located in “1.6″.

The 1.7 installer will look at the “1.6/mod_example2.xml” while 1.5 will first find ”_1.5/mod_example2.xml”. As before, 1.0 installer will use the manifest residing on the root.

Again, the files for Joomla 1.0, 1.5 and 1.7 are nicely separated in different folders and zipped together in a single package that installs on all Joomla versions.

Finally, I attach the example module which you can test installing directly on all versions of Joomla.

The example used here is a module but the same method can be analogously applied to components, plugins, or anything that uses the Joomla installer.

mod_example2.zip

EDIT: The post above also applies to Joomla 1.6
EDIT 2: Another useful post on creating hybrid Joomla extensions in a single package can be found here.

Fixing the issue

There are 2 ways to fix this problem:

1. Turn off the Mootools upgrade plugin.
   If your other modules or templates don’t require extra features of Mootools 1.2 the easiest way for you to fix this issue is to turn off the Mootools upgrade system plugin. This will downgrade you to default Mootools 1.12 which works just fine with IE9. To do this go to Joomla admin > Extensions > Plugin Manager > Select Type > system. Find “System – Mootools Upgrade” on the list and disable it.
2. Upgrade to Mootools 1.2.5
   If you do require Mootools 1.2 you will need to upgrade to 1.2.5 to fix the issue with IE9. Download the new mootools.js file here, unzip and upload it to ./plugins/system/mtupgrade/

Thanks to ghazal for the fixed Mootools 1.2.5 package for Joomla 1.5.

See the module in action on joomla.ba and download it here.

There are different tools for mixing and blending multiple RSS feeds available. But only one can be the best: Yahoo Pipes. I am going to describe how you can combine several feeds into a single one to be added to AJAX Scroller using Yahoo Pipes.

1. Go to http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/ and sign in with your Yahoo! ID. If you don’t have one register for free. While you are there have a look on the helpful Learn How to Build a Pipe in Just a Few Minutes video.
2. Click on Create a pipe link on the top. You will see a pipe editor with a Library at the left-hand side and a Canvas area on the right.
3. From the library on the left, open Sources, select the Fetch Feed module and drag it onto the canvas area. Enter a URL for the source RSS feed into the module. Do the same for each RSS source you want to mix.
4. Open Operators, select Union and drag it onto the canvas area. This will be used for mixing the sources.
5. Open Operators, select Sort and drag it onto the canvas area. This will be used to sort the feed entries by criteria of your choice. It’s most common to sort entries by date so select Sort by item.pubDate in descending order.
6. Now connect the modules together and to the Pipe Output according to the illustration. If you have done everything right you will be able to see the output in the Debugger area on the bottom.
7. Click on the Save button on the top, give the project a name and save.
8. If you now click on Run Pipe link on the top you will get a page with the feeds’ entries combined together. There will be option to Get as RSS. Copy the address and use it for AJAX Scroller.

Your AJAX Scroller module will now display entries for all RSS sources mixed together.

The chart is developed as Joomla module using the great amCharts‘ Stock chart. The chart data is updated live in real time with AJAX. The old data on the chart is also loaded dynamically without page refresh. There is also a dedicated history chart where user can select a market and date for which the appropriate data will be surfaced.

There is also a possibility for you to add WOW Index chart on your own site. A free Widget Generator tool will allow you to create WOW Index that suits your needs. You will get a line of HTML code that you can copy-paste on your site. The widget is also available as installable module / plugin for Joomla, WordPress and Drupal platforms.

Here is an example of the integration. The chart below represents WOW Index for SP 500 market and is updated in real time.

If you want to learn more about using the WOW Index to improve your trading head over to http://algofutures.com

Let me show this on an example. Let’s say you have a category called Animals, under that a subcategory called Birds and finally two items there: Eagle and Hawk. The parent category Animals is linked to menu.

The regular K2 SEF URLs are right now like:
Animals (category): http://domain/animals
Birds (subcategory): http://domain/animals/itemlist/category/4-birds
Eagle (item): http://domain/animals/item/3-eagle
Hawk (item): http://domain/animals/item/4-hawk

With the new extension for SEF Advance you get:
Animals (category): http://domain/animals/
Birds (subcategory): http://domain/animals/birds/
Eagle (item): http://domain/animals/birds/eagle/
Hawk (item): http://domain/animals/birds/hawk/

It works for unlimited category depth. As you can see there are no IDs nor strange words in the URLs and they are far more logical reflecting your content structure. The other K2 views are also covered with improved URLs.

You will notice there is no “k2″ component prefix in the URLs either which was the case in all previous extensions for 3rd party components. This is possible thanks to a new API format in SEF Advance which allows for this to be skipped (will require SEF Advance v2.3.1 or later). As K2 is often used as a replacement for Joomla’s own content component and tightly connected to the core, I figured you will appreciate this feature as URLs become far more advanced and simple.

The extension is almost completed and will be available soon for free download to all SEF Advance users. I would appreciate your help through this testing phase though.

How can you help?

If you have a well developed K2 site (preferably the latest version 2.3) with many categories and content and wouldn’t mind me testing the extension there please contact me with your admin password and FTP info. You will most certainly get the access to the extension first in that case.

Join the discussion on forum and help improving it.

The pattern is the same: someone would register on the site, passing the visual CAPTCHA, activating the account, commonly with Yahoo or Gmail account and immediately begin to edit the profile adding links to their signature, URL, even profile pictures. Some would also enter more or less meaningless posts to give their spam links more exposure. The registrations come from different IP addresses, mostly from Asia but also from USA and Europe.

To fight this I first started deleting the posts and banning the IP addresses but I soon realised that they change IPs and find proxies faster than I can ban them. A new registration would come every 5 minutes so I thought it must be some kind of smart script or bot doing it. I changed the visual verification to reCAPTCHA and added anti-bot question on registration. The attacks decreased a bit but quite a few were still able to get through. I even received an email from someone complaining that the reCAPTCHA was hard to solve! The same person then created a spam account.

Since this proved to be not just simple bot attack but a massive spam with human intervention, I switched to manually approving new registrations. A new user will now have to enter a reason for registration. I will then review the application based on this input, email and the IP address. The spammers are still trying, entering pretty smart inputs, but I can at least eliminate them effectively before they can contaminate the forum. The manual approval will unfortunately reflect on regular users making it more difficult to participate.

The spammers get more advanced switching from automatic bots to hiring humans to make fake registrations and enter spam links. How they manage to pull off such a massive attack using real man power so it pays off is still mystery to me.

EDIT (Oct 31st 2009): The server move has been completed. Hope everything went smoothly and you haven’t noticed it. Please leave a comment about how the new host feels: is the site faster, slower and where you surf from.