Month: April 2008

How to remove the “Welcome to the Frontpage” title in Joomla 1.5

If you install a new installation of Joomla! 1.5 on your server, you will see the “Welcome to the Frontpage” title on your Frontpage. It took me awhile to figure out how to change this. Here is how you do it:

Go to your Joomla! 1.5 Administration site and login. In your administration site go to:

  • Menus – Main Menu (now you are in: Menu Item Manager: mainmenu).
  • Click on ‘Home’ link to edit this link (you are now in: Menu Item: Edit).
  • Click on Parameters System and change or delete the Page title.
    • If you change the Page title, the changed title will be displayed on your Frontpage as a title.
    • If you delete the Page title, the menu link name will be displayed on your Frontpage as a title (in the this case “Home” will be displayed as title, because “Home” is the name of the link to the Frontpage).
    • If you don’t want to display any title, set Show Page Title below Page title parameter to “No”.
  • Don’t forget to save the changes.

Screenshot of Joomla frontpage title setting

How to Change the Favicon For a Joomla 1.5 Website

The favicon used for a Joomla 1.5 web page is located in the directory for the template which the web page is currently using. For example, if the website template you are using is named “foo” then the favicon.ico file will be located at “/templates/foo/favicon.ico”. Simply replace that favicon.ico file with your custom favicon.ico file and any page that uses the template will display your new favicon. If your website uses multiple templates, then be sure to replace the favicon.ico file for each template your website uses.

If you change your favicon and it doesn’t immediately change when you refresh your web page, try deleting your web browser’s cache. You can also try loading the favicon.ico file directly in your browser to “force” your browser to update it’s cached copy of the image. To load the favicon file directly use the URL http://www.yourwebsite.com/templates/foo/favicon.ico. Change the template directory name to whatever template you are using on your website.

If you need help generating a new favicon.ico file there is a great website which allows you to upload a picture and the website will convert the picture to a favicon.ico file for you. Here is a link to the website.

Joomla logo

Avoid Speed Traps with Trapster

Trapster is a website that uses Google Maps to show you where police speed traps are located. Combine this with a GPS-enabled cell phone and you can get a warning whenever you are approaching a “speed trap”. Users of the website can mark new speed traps they encounter to warn other users of the site. Here is a video demo of Trapster in action:

http://www.trapster.com

Trapster website screenshot

How to Configure CentOS for Graphical X11 or Multiuser Mode on Boot

Sometimes when I install CentOS it does not start up in “graphical mode” – that is it starts up directly at the command prompt rather than automatically starting up X Windows. You can configure CentOS to start up in whatever mode you want including graphical mode by editing the file /etc/inittab. To change the startup mode of CentOS open that file with a text editor.

# nano /etc/inittab

The file should look like the following:

# Default runlevel. The runlevels used by RHS are:
# 0 - halt (Do NOT set initdefault to this)
# 1 - Single user mode
# 2 - Multiuser, without NFS (The same as 3, if you do not have networking)
# 3 - Full multiuser mode
# 4 - unused
# 5 - X11
# 6 - reboot (Do NOT set initdefault to this)
id:3:initdefault:

As you can see, the file gives you the number-to-mode mapping at the top. All you need you do is change the number in the last line listed above. So for me I needed to change the 3 to a 5:

id:5:initdefault:

So my final /etc/inittab file looked like the following:

# Default runlevel. The runlevels used by RHS are:
# 0 - halt (Do NOT set initdefault to this)
# 1 - Single user mode
# 2 - Multiuser, without NFS (The same as 3, if you do not have networking)
# 3 - Full multiuser mode
# 4 - unused
# 5 - X11
# 6 - reboot (Do NOT set initdefault to this)
id:3:initdefault:

Reboot your computer and it should now start up in whatever mode you specified.