StackIdeas

I use JCE which I have set to auto-resize on upload (like WP).

Hey Aidan,

You can actually specify a maximum width / height at the backend of EasyBlog. This way, your maximum width / height of the image will not break the template or display inappropriately.

You don't really need to upload into the folder manually too. I am not too sure if you are doing it correctly but if you actually use the media manager (The icons above the editor), you could actually upload via the file manager (Which we will greatly improvise on EasyBlog 2.1)

OK, thanks Jack and guysmiley. I'll have a closer look again, maybe there's something I have missed.

Hey Aidan,

No problem

Hi Jack,
I'm back doing the rounds of Joomla blogging /content editing solutions again to see if I can find an easier way for our non-technical users to add content to Joomla. (Really I just want a decent article editor that can upload images *easily* for non technical users rather than a blogging tool per se).

My main issue as described above is that our authors wont author via Joomla editors - the photo upload/insert process is too cumbersome.

When I try this in EasyBlog (just tried the demo), by clicking on the Insert Image button over the editor box, I get a little pop up windows with a title "Add An Image", but no functionality other than that - I cant seem to browse to an image on my PC etc. Is this normal, or do I have some conflict ? I've tried the latest google chrome and IE browsers. I've attached a screenshot to this reply.

While I'm here - can you confirm that Easyblog posts end up as normal Joomla articles in the database ? Which Joomla category do they get posted in ?

best regards & thanks,
Aidan.

did the screenshot attachment go up this time ?

Hey Aidan,

Sorry but the image button that you click within the editor is actually the image functionality of the editor itself. If you try our own image editor (The small buttons above the editor), you'll see our own image manager. I've attached the screen shot below.

By the way, EasyBlog posts doesn't get stored in Joomla's article database. It stores in it's own table actually.

Hi Jack,
May thanks for reply. I'm using the image button *above* the editor OK.
There is the work "Insert", and are three buttons to the right of it. (a) an "Infinity" symbol (add link to content), (b) add image (c) add Video.
I hit the second of the three - the Image button , and I get a *very small* pop-up window with the title "Add an Image", but theres no functionality in it. I tried this on google chrome and Internet explorer, I'll double-check this evening.
I've tried the same on my Office PC this morning and it worked OK - the same window is bigger and show me a list of images, and an Upload button that will upload from my PC without asking me to browse to folders on the Joomla site - great, easy enough for our non-technie users!.

Only trouble is why didnt it work for me at home ? Any thoughts?.. I'll try again this evening, maybe try Firefox as well.It looks like my screenshot attachment illustrating the problem didnt attach either - could there be some sort of an imcompatibility going on affecting both?

It's a pity that there isnt an option to store Easyblog posts as Joomla articles - do you know if it is feasible /cost-effective to modify it do so ? I don't really need the blogging capabilities, just the article editing /image uploading features & would ideally like to store content as Joomla articles so it's available to display in news extensions etc.

best regards & thanks,
Aidan.

Ah, for anyone else readin this, I've just recalled where I got the idea that EasyBlog stored posts as Joomla articles....
http://stackideas.com/support/discussions/are-easyblog-posts-stored-as-joomla-articles.html

While it's not native, it looks like there is a free plugin to duplicate posts into Joomla articles. This would be a roundabout way for me to get the easier Easyblog editor/image upload features in order to allow non-technie users get articles into Joomla ? Jack , Is the plugin supported by StackIDeas ? It would be great to see this as a core feature too...

Hey Aidan,

Strange, the image uploader seems to work for me on the demo site. Are you able to see the upload button in the popup?

As for storing the blog posts as a Joomla article, this is really not advisable (While we do have a FREE plugin for that). Is there any reasons for doing so? If it is just to have it appear in your specific modules (This will not link correctly as well since they will link to com_content), I could just add those hacks for your modules

Hi Jack and Aidan, if I may just add an additional comment here concerning duplicating EasyBlog posts to Joomla articles. This isn't exactly advisable for SEO purposes. This was a feature MyBog offered, but now having the same article duplicated on one site is very poor SEO according to the new Google search algorithm, is viewed as thin content, lowers your search engine ranking, and send you less organic traffic.

In addition to being user friendly, Easyblog must also be SEO friendly, such as what Wordpress blogging software does for non-Joomla sites. I do agree with Aidan however that adding images must be simple and thoughtless unlike how it's done in Joomla articles. I must say EasyBlog is quickly becoming the Joomla equivalent of Wordpress and that's a great thing.

Hi Jack/Wade,
Many thanks for responses...
(1) Issues with Image Upload. I don't understand why it doesnt work for me at home (it did in the office this morning). I'll experiment & post any additional info I can gather - but what I saw from using the demo this morning in the office looks like a *much* easier/simpler image upload than the standard Joomla process.

(2) My reasons for hoping that Easyblog posts would be stored as standard Joomla articles are twofold (a) if for any reason Easyblog were to dissapear or lose development drive, all our content would still be easily available (b) more importantly, standard articles would be easier for integration with other extensions - eg. modules used on the site such as news modules, "latest articles", etc. all work from Joomla articles. Our azrul comments extension works on joomla articles - I'd prefer not to have another commenting mechanism. Also, we're considering another extension JMailAlerts which automatically emails out new content from a range of core Joomla content and extension content (dont think it supports Easyblog yet?).
I understand Ward's point about SEO... If it stored in joomla articlces, there'a a good chance I may not use the Easyblog display features at all - only the back end dashboard & editing features - which from what I can see are much better than Joomla, and much closer to what I am looking for.

Keep up the good work !

Hey Wade,

Yep, I totally agree with you that storing blog posts into Joomla articles is a huge disadvantage for site owners (Which is why the auto article plugin is totally optional) . We have added tons of SEO benefits in EasyBlog (Not sure if you realized it and we put SEO a top priority in every new release we create ) Same goes for the image manager (Totally enhanced in EasyBlog 3.0)

Aidan,

Thanks for your feedbacks, totally appreciated

1. Ah, that's really strange. I am not too sure why it isn't working for you at your home. Perhaps there's some firewall or any programs that could prevent the script from being executed?

2. (a) This is something you shouldn't be worried at all actually as we are currently expanding and I don't foresee us dropping the development of EasyBlog at all

2. (b) Yep, this is what I think most of us are using the duplication on but I always advise users to not use this as a work around. If you really need the blogs to appear in your custom modules, log a ticket with us and we'll help you customize them. Why? It's actually because even if you store the blog posts as articles, the linkage are all wrong. This applies to other components that stores blog posts into Joomla article. They will all be linked back to Joomla's content component and not their own component. Hence, you will not get the appropriate layout upon clicking on them.

By the way, JMailAlerts supports EasyBlog natively but apparently they are selling it as a plugin instead of giving it out for free. Take a look at http://techjoomla.com/table/jmailalerts.-cms-delivered-via-email/

Hi Jack,

Sorry for delay in my response.... I tried the demo, and again it failed in Chrome version 14.0.835.202 m..... However - it works in Firefox. I didn't try IE, but it failed the last time I tried it. Are you aware of any browser compatibility issues with the image uploading mechanism ? It's very slick and simple I have to say - very tempting !

However, not storing the blog post content in joomla's standard content is bothering me - there are hundreds of extensions and joomla templates based on the standard joomla content system - and storing in a custom table(s) cuts all this out. I don't fully understand the details of SEO issues that you mention - couldnt Easyblog store the *content* in the joomla tables and add all the blog features in plugins etc. ? (as comment extensions do on standard joomla articles).
If EasyBlog administrators were worried about SEO implications of having the same content appearing in both Joomla articles *and* Easyblog displays (which would really be just 2 different presentations of the same content)... they could just hide the Joomla categories, and use Easyblog to display. If (like me), the really wanted a news/magazine display (using one of dozens of joomla templates for this purpose), or wanted to display articles using particular extensions chosen from many on the extensions directory... they could hide the Easyblog display and display the content as standard Joommla articles.
Is this a possibility do you think ? Alternatively, would you consider releasing that slick image editor/upload functionality as a JCE extension ?!

best regards & thanks,
Aidan.

Hey Aidan,

Strange, I just tried the demo with with Chrome and it seems to be working fine. If you want, I could setup another demo for you on Joomla 1.7

As for storing the blog posts as article, it may seem fine doing that but if you really think about it, there is no real way to link these articles to your component. For instance, if you notice, most of the URLs in EasyBlog is pointing to "com_easyblog" . If you store them as articles and have some 3rd party module / templates to display the articles, it will link them to com_content thus the whole output of the article will be from "com_content" instead.

Normally, when a customer wants to utilize say a module from a 3rd party that probably lists blog posts as a news slider etc, we'll add the hacks for them as that's the only way to achieve proper results unless the 3rd party module supports EasyBlog out of the box (Which they should if they are looking at a broader market)

If your whole purpose of using EasyBlog is for the simplicity of the editor, but would still like to display the items in Joomla's article, you could then fall for the duplicate article plugin. Still you would need to hack the modules to link them to EasyBlog though if you want to use the layouts in EasyBlog.

Many thanks Jack...
In relation to the apparent browser issue with "Add image"... since IE works for me at work, I'll see if I can find time in work to install Chrome & Firefox to see if it works there and let you know how it goes.

"thus the whole output of the article will be from "com_content" instead"
I *kind of* understand what you are saying about com_content I think... by storing the articles in com_content and displaying it with standard joomla extensions that only work off com_content (have a look at the excellent RAXO plugin for com_content !), I will be losing the display features of Easyblog. I'm not aware of what I would be losing here through - Easyblog posts look just the same as Joomla articles with a commenting extension to me (Maybe there are some blog specific stuff I'm not aware of).

Unless one of the content editors (JCE/JCK) got their act together and did as good a job as you have done on the image uploading, then I think the best solution would be to use Easyblog simply as a way of getting articles into standard joomla content.

Is there any documentation of feature list of how this operates ? Will all Easyblog posts get "copied" to joomla automatically ... Will they have the right author associated with them ... If the Easyblog post is subsequently updated, will it be copied over again ... will Easyblog categories seamlessly map to joomla categories when operating in this mode ... are there any back-end features of Easyblog dashboard etc. that would be rendered useless by this approach.... is this add-on supported by stackideas ?

BTW, I thought it was about time I changed the orginal title of my blog post - since the Easyblog implementation of uploading/inserting images has turned out to be the easiest available in any joomla extension I can find. :-)

Hey Aidan,

The auto article plugin actually allows you to set the following,

- Default article status when copied over (Here you can set published / unpublished)
- Default article permissions (Here you can set Public , Registered or Special)
- Automatically unpublished if unpublished via EasyBlog (This will automatically unpublish the article when it is unpublished from EasyBlog)
- Default section to import into.

It doesn't matter which category you store them in EasyBlog but you can actually specify it from the plugin itself. Basically every blog post created from EasyBlog will actually use the same settings

When I click on the paper clip thingy it brings up the media manager, but I can't find any pictures in my computer. It says my search did not return any results.
I navigated to my desired folder, showed the entire path, copied it, pasted it, still no good. Since the search window starts with /: I deleted Windows's C:\ and left the rest of the path. still no good.
What am I doing wrong?
Jeff

Hey Jeff,

The 'search' path doesn't actually searches through your computer It only searches within your images path that you configured from the back end. I believe your issue is resolved as per your other forum post that you've created earlier. If you are still having troubles operating the file manager, let us know

Hi Folks,
I just went to add purchase EASYBLOG as part of our winter site upgrade that we do this time of year, and I just went into the Demo to check the latest version out before purchasing. It seems the media uploading functionality has changed ? It seems to open a "Media Manager" window, which shows folders/images on the stackideas site, and you can uplaod a file there, and then insert it into the Blog article.
Am I missing something, the old functionality I was wowed with on Septemner 30th (Quote below) is gone !

There is the work "Insert", and are three buttons to the right of it. (a) an "Infinity" symbol (add link to content), (b) add image (c) add Video.
I hit the second of the three - the Image button , and I get a *very small* pop-up window with the title "Add an Image", but theres no functionality in it. I tried this on google chrome and Internet explorer, I'll double-check this evening.
I've tried the same on my Office PC this morning and it worked OK - the same window is bigger and show me a list of images, and an Upload button that will upload from my PC without asking me to browse to folders on the Joomla site - great, easy enough for our non-technie users!.

Have there been changes to the image uploading since September 30th, or am I somehow using another button. (I'm clicking what is now called "Insert Media" button which is one of three buttons *above* the editor area).

Note: I also see a message on the demo above above the words "Write a new post", which says "Warning! You are currently using a lower version of TinyMCE editor that is incompatible with IE9. Fix it here:"

Any ideas ? My whole reason for purchasing/installing Easyblog was to give authors as easy image insert, but it seems to have gone backwards in simplicity since I last tried the demo....

Hello Aidan,

Sorry for the confusions but we actually revamped the whole media manager experience to allow an easier to use upload tool. Not sure if you are seeing the same thing as I am but let me just attach the screen shot below.

As for the IE9 notices, it is actually because the TINYMCE editor which ships with Joomla is not compatible with IE9. We can't really provide a patch for this because I believe Joomla is already working on this (Hence the notice messages). There's actually a couple of errors on this in the Joomla forums.

hi Jack,
Many thanks for the very prompt reply, totally unexpected on a weekend. Take your point on the TinyMCE Joomla issue, just mentioned in case it was relevant.
Yes, I am seeing the same button as you, and the Media Manager as in the photo below. I can't seem to get it to insert into the article (I'm assuming when I click on the photo I've uploaded, and then insert it should apper in the article. I've tried both the INSERT button beside the image in the list on the left, and the insert button on the RHS also.
I hate to criticise, because I can see the work you guys are putting into this, but I have to say that (apart from the difficult inserting above) I'm dissapointed with the UI "flow" of the new media manager - what attracted me to Easyblog some months ago was a search high and low in Joomla extensions to find something that would allow non-technie users add images into "articles"... but this looks like a move away from the east of the previous functionality in Easyblog. I've forgotten exactly how the old demo worked, but it seemed much more streamlined ... browse/find photo on PC/double-click and it's in your article. No messing with uploading to folders on the server, then re-inserting into blog text etc. Users are just too used to the ease of microsoft word etc .nowadays, and many barely know what a server or a folder is.
What do you think ? I know I'm not the only one out there asking this Q.. there are lots of Q's in this space all over the Joomla web, but by and large people seem to be just put up with it ?
many thanks,
Aidan.

Hi Jack... just a bump to see if there's been any consideration on the Media Manager recently ? I'm doing the rounds again looking for a solution for casual users to be able to insert images into articles without knowing anything about "uploading" to the server. ... ie. just click , insert, done... with the uploading going on in the background.

No solution offered from the JCE & JCK editors yet .... any thoughts on the possibility of adding this to the Easyblog Media Manager ?

It's been a while, so just to recap... It would mean modifiying it to (maybe optionally):
1. *Not* display any images on the server (Apart from being confusing to casual users, MediaManager takes *ages* to load on the demo site, presumably it's scanning image files on the server in order to produce a list of folders/files?)
2. At the back-end store a special sub-folder for each user (under a common root maybe)
3. When the user selects an image

... do the upload to their private upload folder automatically without them knowing. (Generate a suffix for the filename using date/time to avoid filename conflicts).
... give the user the option of selecting administrator pre-defined image sizes ("small", "medium", "large" etc.) - ideally stored as preferences per user so they could add their own over and above the defaults.
... Insert the image immediately into the article.

This would come close to the simplicity of inserting images into the likes of Microsoft Word and other desktop tools, which even casual web users are generally familiar with.

I know there's a 1,000 pressing features, but this one really is a key one. Blogs are just about Text & Images. The text bit is handled pretty well all round, but nobody in the Joomla world seems to handle images well. My recollection is that the old Media Manager predecessor came close to it for simplicity (though not quite as I describe above). Could you at least have a think about it ?

Aidan.

Hey Aidan,

Thanks for the input here and this is greatly appreciated but what I don't quite get actually is how would the user's upload images when they don't need to know anything about "uploading" it to the server? Do you mean upon uploading an image, the image will automatically get inserted into the post?

Hi Jack,

Imagine that
- the administrator can specify a root folder, under which every user gets their own folder (by username?), and under each username folder, there is an (automatically created) folder for each article/blog post (perhaps using the ID as the folder name or suffix)
- the administrator can specify a list of "Standardized" image sizes such as "very small, small, medium, large", etc. (using his own names)... and each one equates to a set of pixel dimensions... specifying either a max height, width , or both in pixels.

Then, the user work-flow for adding an image would be:
(1) Click on "SIMPLE INSERT" in the article/blog post.
(2) User sees dialog which will:
- ask for the "size" he wants the photo to be when inserted in to the article (just a simple drop-down, nothing more).
- a "browse" button which would let him pick a local photo.
- an "OK" or "INSERT" button which would insert it into the article.
that's it, nothing more... no server folder dialogs (ideally), no pixel dimensions etc.

When the "OK" or "INSERT" button is pressed, behind-the-scenes .... the client-side code would send the image back to the server where it is (a) "uploaded" transparently into the right sub-folder for this article/blog post, and (b) the link to the picture is added to the article. The image resizing would be done automatically (on the client, or server I'm not sure which is most appropriate)... it would be done with reference to the maximum dimensions allowed by the administrator according to the "standardized" sizes defined earlier in configuration. This allows the users to "not worry about it", and helps the administrator ensure consistency on the site in image sizes, and prevent breaking templates with over-sized images etc.

Hope this makes sense ! The more I think of it, the more I think that this responsibility should really lie with the Joomla editors... they should offer a simpler alternative something along these lines. Combined with a front-end editing solution I think it would revolutionise the ease with which Joomla content could be added & maintained for casual users. The reason I've been checking in on Easyblog occasionally is that the (last) version of the Easy blog media manager seemed to me to be the simplest I could find @ the time I last looked. I don't recall exactly how it's workflow worked - I know it was a two-step process also, but seemed very simple enough... the recent update seemed to regress IMHO (from a simplicity point of view).

I'm an experienced developer myself by day, but in a non-joomla, non-web field, so while I think I can visualise what I'm looking for here, I don't have the skills to do it myself, nor the the time to acquire them at the moment.
Although I'm impressed by Easyblog, and like the concept of the "blog-in-a-box" solution, I've more or less decided to keep with standard Joomla content for now because of the wide array of third party display options working from standard content.... but I still think this type of development would be a great addition to Easyblog. If you consider it, and could do it as a standard JCK or JCE extension, all the better !

Many thanks for listening... the search goes on !

Aidan.

how would the user's upload images when they don't need to know anything about "uploading" it to the server? Do you mean upon uploading an image, the image will automatically get inserted into the post?

Sorry, I answered this in a roundabout way... the short answer is:
Well, not quite .. I think of it almost the other way around....
"When Inserting an image in a post, the image will automatically get uploaded to the server into some dynamically defined folder relevant to the post"

Casual users do understand the concept of inserting an image into an article, but most don't know what "upload", "server folder" or "pixel dimensions" mean !

Hi Jack,

I'm still searching for an easier way for non-techie users to upload content on Joomla. Since this discussion was last active, I've purchased & installed Easyblog, and while I like it... it still doesn't handle images as well as I'd like. I just came across Form2Content and tried the demo ... the image uploading/insert is really simple.... a once-click upload mechanism, without messing around with folders etc.

Have you guys thought about the possibility of allowing blog authors add photos into Blog posts using a mechanism like this ? Apparently FlexiContent and K2 offer similar functionality... check here : http://www.joomlablogger.net/joomla-tips/joomla-general-tips/easing-the-use-of-joomla-part-2-images/

It would be great to see improvements in this area !

best regards,
Aidan.

Hey Aidan,

In the next version of EasyBlog 3.5, we'll be refactoring the whole media manager and initially, we'll only show a simple form that allows user to upload the image. If there's a need to load up the media manager, the user then clicks on the "Advanced" properties or perhaps a "Show my images" link