Guide: Randall - ChamberAnswers.com
Guide Number: #001 of 5 lessons
Released: March 10, 2014\
Category: EasySocial > Applications - App Updates
Level: Beginner EasySocial Administrator

Overview of Video Class:
Randall takes you through the process of checking for App Updates in EasySocial. You will explore how to install App Updates in EasySocial.

This step-by-step class is a valuable addition for anyone wanting to see how Joomla sites are built.

The Importance of checking for App Updates in EasySocial after an update of the EasySocial Extension is Installed.

EASYSOCIAL - Episode #001 - HOW TO CHECK FOR APP UPDATES & HOW TO INSTALL APP UPDATES IN EASYSOCIAL
Monday, March 10, 2014 - #001

VIDEO OVERVIEW



START: Each time I update or install a new version of EasySocial I check the following items in the Administrator Dashboard:

1. Open EasySocial in the Administrator and check for App Updates in the Dashboard.

In the EasySocial Dashboard there are important Tabs to check for recent statistics and to access the tools to manage your users and related content.

It is always a good plan to check the App Updates Tab to see what Apps may need updating in EasySocial. This screencast will step you through checking for new Apps and updating the Apps in EasySocial Dashboard.



2. I check the date that the Apps were last updated and I download the Apps that I think I need to Update to an APP UPDATE folder on my desktop.

3. Then I got to EasySocial > DashBoard > Applications and I check to see if any of the Apps that may be automatically installed after Updating EasySocial is published or not published, and I Publish the Apps listed.



4. Once I have determined what App Updates are new, I download and Install the App Updates and I make sure they are Published.

I do hope others will share what they have learned today about EasySocial.

Guide: Randall - ChamberAnswers.com
Guide Number: #002 of 5 lessons
Released: Tuesday March 11, 2014
Category: EasySocial Profiles - Photos & Albums
Level: Beginner EasySocial Administrator

When you set up EasySocial one of the common set of questions asked by social network administrators that are new to the extension is:

Where do I set the maximum number of photos per user, the maximum photo size, and the number of photo albums?

In this video Lesson I will show you where to change the settings for photos and photo albums.

EASYSOCIAL - Episode #002: How and where to change the Photo and Photo Album Settings in EasySocial
Monday, March 11, 2014

OVERVIEW VIDEO


1. Open EasySocial in the Joomla Administrator. Go to the Dashboard, and select t Settings > and Open Photos to can the general photos settings first.

The first place new administrators will look to set all the photo settings and album settings is in Settings > Photos. These some are the general GLOBAL PHOTO SETTINGS for your social network or online community. This is where you will be able to enable photos, if you choose to allow photos to be uploaded to your network or community, and you can also change the photo pagination, photo quality, and the general upload limit for photos. These settings are important for you to set, but these are not the settings most new administrators have trouble finding. Most administrators want to control or limit the number of photos that users can upload and the number of photo albums that a user can create.

Path: Dashboard > Profiles > Select user Profile Type > Editing "The Profile Type Selected" - Select Access > Albums (make your changes) and then you will select Photos and make your changes.



Maximum number of Photos and Photo Albums - Set by member or user Profile Type
Remember. EasySocial has been carefully designed to be a flexible as possible. Since EasySocial allows you to create social networks and online communities that can have different user types or Profile Types, you have full control over the photo settings and photo album settings for each Profile type. One Profile type could be restricted from uploading photos, another can be given a basic level for the number of photos and photo albums that this user can create, and another set of members can have a Profile Type that allows them to upload a much larger number of photos and photo albums.



In this example, I will show you two Profile Types for users on my online community. I want to allow my Registered users to be able to upload a set number of maximum photos per day, and a total maximum number of photos, the size of the photos they can upload. I also want to restrict the number of Photo Albums that this user type can create.

1. Registered Users - I want to give my registered users a lower number of photos that they can upload, and a lower number of photos albums that they can create compared to chamber of commerce users.

2. Chamber of Commerce - I want to give chamber of commerce staff members a larger number of photos that they can upload, and also a much larger number of photo albums that they can create.

You can always change these settings to increase or decrease the number of photos, and photo albums, and the file size, but keep in mind the following. Once you set the numbers, you do not want to lower the number too much later on if the user types have already reached the maximum amount of photo uploads. Approximate the file size allowed, the number of photos, and number of albums for each Profile Type, and leave the settings.

Do you have a question about EasySocial, and how to do something in EasySocial?

I will do my best to find out how to do what you are asking if I don't already know, and I will create a video tutorial as a guide for you to follow. My goal is to create ONE VIDEO TUTORIAL EPISODE per DAY in the "What did you learn about EasySocial today? LEARN. SHARE. REPEAT. series.



Please share what you have learned today. What you learn about EasySocial, or if you have a question about EasySocial, ask a question or share what you have learned today.

Everyone can learn something new each day and share it with others.

Guide: Randall - ChamberAnswers.com
Guide Number: #003 of 5 lessons
Released: Wednesday, March 12, 2014
Category: EasySocial Applications
Level: Beginner EasySocial Administrator

Wednesday, March 12 , 2014 - EASYSOCIAL - Episode #003: How do I configure the stream related settings for Users when a User logs in to the site in EasySocial?

Another common question asked by new EasySocial social network administrators is: How do I turn off the setting for: User just logged into the site on the Stream? I don't want this feed information to clutter up the site stream, and some users don't want their status to be shown.

When users login to EasySocial, there will be be a login status notification that shows up on the Stream each time the user logs into the site unless the Administrator turns this setting OFF.

The stream will look something like this below and this can clutter the stream so the Administrator can turn this feature OFF to not show when a user logs into the site.



In this video Lesson I will show you where to change the settings to turn off so that all users login information does not show on the Stream each time any user logins into the site.

Wednesday, March 12 , 2014 - EASYSOCIAL - Episode #003: How do I Configure the stream related settings for Users login to the site in EasySocial?

OVERVIEW VIDEO


1. Open EasySocial in the Joomla Administrator. Go to the Dashboard, and select Applications > in the filter by setting: Select Type > Applications to filter all applications.

2. Scroll down the Applications list and find User - Users. This is the Application that you will make changes to turn off the user login status from showing on the Stream each time a user logs in.



The Application icon for User - Users will look like this:



3. Double.click [b]User - Users application to open up to the Settings section.

4. Scroll down to Stream and turn Login to from Yes to NO.



By setting this to Yes or No it determines if stream items should be generated when the user logs into the site.

Sream > User > Login > Setting State:
- Yes - This will set it to show that the User has logged into to the site. The user will appear on the Stream.

The stream will show something like this:

- No - This will set it so when the user logs into the site it will not show on the Stream.

What does Stream Filter setting do? This determines whether the User Application will appear as a Stream filter or not.

This concludes the EasySocial lesson for today. If you have any questions, please post a comment below, and I will answer, or find out the answer as soon as I can.

Look for new EasySocial Lesson Guides posted daily, in this discussion thread.

I hope you have found this EasySocial Tutorial Learning Guide valuable, and please leave your feedback below, or post a reply to request a new tutorial for EasySocial.

I do hope others will share what they have learned today about EasySocial.

Guide: Randall - ChamberAnswers.com
Guide Number: #004 of 5 lessons
Released: Thursday, March 13, 2014
Category: EasySocial > Templating
Level: Beginner EasySocial Administrator

Overview of Video Class: CUSTOMIZING THE EMAIL LOGO IN EASYSOCIAL - How to change the email branded logo in emails sent out to users from EasySocial
I take you through the process of changing the logo in emails sent out to users from EasySocial, so the emails contain your own branded logo of your choice.
Once you create your logo and make it the correct size, you can easily update the logo and not have to change it every time EasySocial is updated because I (Randall) will show you how to place your branded logo in a template OverRide folder.

This step-by-step class is a valuable addition for anyone wanting to see how EasySocial sites are built.



By default, the email template would include a logo automatically. If you would like to customize or change the logo that appears in the e-mail template, you could create a template override folder and store the image of the logo.

Ideally, the size of the logo should be within 160px width x 40px height to avoid distorting the layout.

Default Logo
The default logo is included in the wireframe theme and it can be accessed at the path below:

/components/com_easysocial/themes/wireframe/images/emails/logo.png

Sample of logo:

What file manager can you use to easily create your template override folder and upload your new branded logo?

A FileManager for Joomla - I use the free eXtplorer extension developed by Soeren Eberhardt-Biermann of http://extplorer.net/ as my file management tool for my site development. You can download this free file management tool from Joomla.org or his website:

1. Joomla.or listing: eXtplorer - http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/core-enhancements/file-management/2630

2. eXtplorer website: http://extplorer.net

To learn more about installing and using eXtplorer file management tool from Joomla go here:
Getting Started Guide for eXtplorer: http://extplorer.net/projects/extplorer/wiki/Getting_Started

EASYSOCIAL - Episode #001 - HOW TO CHANGE THE LOGO IN EMAILS SENT OUT IN EASYSOCIAL
Thursday, March 13, 2014 - #004

VIDEO OVERVIEW



START: Each time you update or install a new version of EasySocial if you do not create an email override folder for your site, the branded email you added to easysocial will be overwritten. Most every administrator wants the emails sent of from their Easysocial site to include their own branded logo.

Go to the Joomla Administrator Dashboard:

Overriding the email template logo for an EasySocial site
To create a template override, you should go to your site's templates folder. Assuming that you are using yourtemplate as the template for Joomla, you could create the folder below:

Joomla root > templates > yourtemplate > html > com_easysocial > emails
Path for the template override folder that you will create: /templates/yourtemplate/html/com_easysocial/emails/

After you create the com_easysocial folder and the emails folder, you will upload the logo.png file into this folder and EasySocial will automatically pick this up.

1. Open eXtPlorer file manager in the Joomla Administrator > Components > extplorer and go your the Joomla templates folder.

2. Open the templates folder in the Joomla site root directory.

3. Find your template. Open your template, and you will see a number of files and folders.



4. In your template folder, locate the html folder and open the html folder.



5. Create a new folder directory and label it: com_easysocial What you are creating is a template override folder for EasySocial html items.



6. Create a new folder directory and label it: emails - This is where you you upload your branded logo, so that when your easysocial site sends out emails to users, the branded logo will override the easysocial logo, and your emails will contain your logo.



7. Open the emails folder, and then Upload your branded logo to this folder: logo.png <----- the logo has to be labeled logo and ideally, the size of your branded email logo should be within the 160px width x 40px height range to avoid distorting the email template layout.



Now, when your emails are sent out to all users in your EasySocial powered site, your own branded logo will appear in the emails.

Example on my ChamberAnswers.com Small Business Networking Community site:



This concludes the EasySocial lesson for today. If you have any questions, please post a comment below, and I will answer, or find out the answer as soon as I can.

Look for new EasySocial Lesson Guides posted daily, in this discussion thread.

I hope you have found this EasySocial Tutorial Learning Guide valuable, and please leave your feedback below, or post a reply to request a new tutorial for EasySocial.

I do hope others will share what they have learned today about EasySocial.

Randall - ChamberAnswers.com - Small Business Networking Community

Randall, thank you so much for sharing these. I can see you've gone to a great deal of effort and I for one have picked up a few tips!

Mark H wrote:

Randall, thank you so much for sharing these. I can see you've gone to a great deal of effort and I for one have picked up a few tips!

Your welcome Mark. I am having a blast creating these. My new site will be all about providing Lesson Guides to Small Business owners and chamber of commerces, and this is a real good practice area for me to perfect my video and lesson guides.

Appreciate your kind words and comments. This is encouraging to me. Today I went back to the first 3 lessons and resized the screenshots (made them more uniform and smaller size) and put red markers and red borders around the images to clean up the lesson guides and make them look more professional, and also easier to view on all devices. I am just finishing up the video guide for Lesson Guide #004 and I will upload it to Youtube in a few minutes.

Tomorrow, (Friday March 14, 2014) I am going to create a lesson guide on overrides for emoticons for EasySocial. I have not done this so I will be learning myself, and then making what I learn available to other EasySocial Administrators.

Randall

Thx Randall nice work!!!! Please keep sharing...

Mark, if you read this, perhaps this could have its own category in the forum?

That way Randall and hopefully others, including the stack team can post a new topic for each tutorial. This could turn out to be a very popular and usefull resource for many.

Antonio Simmons wrote:

Thx Randall nice work!!!! Please keep sharing...

You are welcome Antonio. I appreciate this. I will keep sharing. I just have to shut my brain off tonight somehow because it's in overdrive thinking about new lesson guides. It's 2:17am Friday, and I only slept for 3 1/2 hrs tonight and I woke up after dreaming EasySocial lesson guides.

Randall

Mark H wrote:

Mark, if you read this, perhaps this could have its own category in the forum?

That way Randall and hopefully others, including the stack team can post a new topic for each tutorial. This could turn out to be a very popular and usefull resource for many.

Mark H,

Thank you for the feedback. I appreciate ut very much.

I was thinking tonight about how the lesson guides could be presented in the forums. I have found when I do individual guides that they kinda get lost or buried, afer posting each lesson guide, especially if the guide was posted more than a month ago. Thus my reasoning to create this thread. There are draw-backs with one thread full of guides, so tonight what woke me up after only sleeping 3 1/2 hrs is this solution:

1. Create a weekly guide that contains 5 EasySocial Lessons guides, or one per day, Monday to Friday, with a weekend follow up challenge.

The format would be like this:

Mar 10-14-2014: What Did You Learn About EasySocial Today? LEARN. SHARE. REPEAT.

EasySocial Lesson Guides for the Week of March 10 to March 14, 2014
Same format as above with list of daily lessons and check marks - I plan to add some small feedback images so people can use them to post things like Popular, 5 Stars, 1 Star, 2,3,4 Stars so I can improve the lesson guides. Suggestions here please, as visual feedback is easier to spot.
,
# 001.- Monday, March 10, 2014 - Planning & Mapping out your Member Profiles.
# 002 - Tuesday, March 11, 2014 - Creating your first Member Profile
# 003 - Wednesday, March 12, 2014 - Planning and Setting up your ACLs for Member Priofiles
# 004 - Thursday, March 13, 2014 - Creating your 2nd Member Profile using new fiellds. Access
# 005 - Friday, March 14, 2014 - Overview of General, Profile, Avatars, Fields, Access

2. A paragraph and bulllet points outlying the 5 Lessons Guides for each day of this week.

3. The 5 lessons.in the replies. followed by comments and feedback so each daily guide can be expanded or discussed further. 5 guides is easily digested, and since Mark and his team will be creating a Weekly digest in the future, this format seems to make sense.

SEARCH MADE EASY
Searching for lesson Guides is easier if the discussion topic always has these words:

What Did You Learn Today about EaySocial? Do a search on: "What did you learn about" in the search above and all guides and related replies come up quick. This way people can more quickly refer back to the guides using search. I have had difficulting remembering the titles of previous guides I created, so one common search set of words makes it real easy for me to search and find the guide again. Add in EasySocial and it is like a secondary filter to find guides on EasySocial. Or EasyBlog etc.

( any suggestion here by you and others is so much appreciated).

What Did You Learn Today about EasyBlog? - yes I plan to add lesson guides for EasyBlog

What Did You Learn Today about EasyDiscuss? - yes, I plan to add lesson guides for EasyDiscuss?

What Did You Learn Today about Community Management? - This topic I believe is extremely important to have discussions, lesson guides, and feedback.
It's a topic that wraps all the extensions and knowledge base into Online Community Management.

I plan to break the lessons up into topic categories such as one week of Lesson Guides on Creating Profiles and the features of Creating EasySocial Profiles. This topic would allow for many weeks work of guides. I will make sure to link the weeks guides with say a week in June, so that as users go through and learn this weeks guides, they can also reference back to the previous guides that are related.

I would appreciate all the feedback and suggestions that anyone has to offer.

Randall

I think this great I'll check for the lessons everyday There was a guy that started something like this in the JomSocial community and it became their most poplar group. I have a webmaster so I'm not very knowledgeable about some of this stuff but your directions were very clear cut and made it very easy. Please continue I'm tuned in

Wow thanks for all those tips. I look forward to learning more

Paul Murray wrote:

Wow thanks for all those tips. I look forward to learning more

You are very welcome Paul. I appreciate the kudos, as I am enjoying this a lot. I am learning lots myself and making it available to others is so important to help make this Si community all it can be. I am creating a Lesson Guide on language overrides today for EasySocial and it will be posted in a few hours. Then I am planning next weeks Video Lesson Guides.

Hopefully all common questions and things can be documented and turned into lesson guides so Mark and his Team can just point them to the video and step by step lesson guides so they can focus on development and the more bug related tasks for customers. As people learn, then if they see someone who is asking a question, those that have learned how to do it can point those new people to these guides. If you have any ideas or video lessons you would like me to create, please let me know.

Randall

Thank you Randall for these tutorials they are a great help.

Guide: Randall - ChamberAnswers.com
Guide Number: #005 of 5 lessons
Released: Friday, March 14, 2014
Category: Joomla Language Overrides - EasySocial
Level: Beginner EasySocial Administrator

Overview of Video Class: LANGUAGE OVERRIDES IN EASYSOCIAL THROUGH the JOOMLA ADMINISTRATOR - How easy it is to change the language strings that are contained in your EasySocial site. Once you learn how to do this, you will be making your site exactly the way you want it to be, so it is unique from other EasySocial powered sites.

Many administrators are content to leave the language or wording within an EasySocial site as it is in default installation. But some administrators want to tailor their site for their users, and often this includes changing the language text and wording.

Making changes to Joomla's or EasySocial's core files is often necessary, but there's a Correct Way and an Incorrect Way to do it.

The wrong way is to directly edit Joomla's or EasySocial's core files. If you do edit these core files, you'll lose all your changes that you make to these files when you next update your site with a new version of EasySocial or Joomla.

The correct or right way is to use what is referred to as an Override. In this Lesson Guide, I will show you what language Overrides are about, and how you can create Language Overrides to safely edit the language of your site.

EASYSOCIAL #005: CREATING LANGUAGE OVERRIDES IN EASYSOCIAL THROUGH the JOOMLA ADMINISTRATOR



LANGUAGE OVERRIDES IN EASYSOCIAL THROUGH the JOOMLA ADMINISTRATOR - Changing the Account login text to be unique to your site.

In this example, we're going to override the language or text for the login in EasySocial. The language string we will Override is: "Don't have an account?"



LESSON GUIDE STEP by STEP

STEP 1. To change the language text in core Joomla or in an the EasySocial extension, or any other extension (other than installing a new language) it is advised to perform a language override in Joomla. To do this you need to go into the Joomla Administrator (Joomla Admin) back-end, then in the top menu under "Extensions" click on "Language Manager".



STEP 2. In the sub-menu on the left side of the page, select or click on "Overrides" as shown in the image below.



STEP 3. Creating Language Overrides for your EasySocial Site

Click on "New" in the Joomla toolbar. This is where you can change any language or text string in Joomla. You can use the box on the right to search for a string that appears in the front end. Or if you know the constant you wish to override you can immediately enter that in the box on the left-hand-side.



STEP 4: Click New.

Enter "Don't have an account?" and click Search.

You'll see the results of your search below the search box. You want to select the language text for EasySocial, as this is the one you want to override.

NOTE! You can also override the language text strings for EasyBlog, EasyDiscuss or any other extension, but in this lesson we will only override the EasySocial language text.



Once you have selected the "Don't have an account?" language string for EasySocial, you will enter the changes for the language text into the "Language Constant" box on the left of the screen.



STEP 4: Now type in the text area beneath, to change the current text to the new language text that you want to display within your New Account login screen in EasySocial.

Enter the following text "Sign up free for a new Account! or you can enter your own text string to whatever you want to display for your site.



STEP 5: Once you've done this click "Save and Close", and then repeat the previous step for each of the text strings that you want to override in your site.

STEP 6: Refresh your Browser Cache to make sure you can view the updated changes. Go to your site and you will see that the Login Screen text in the EasySocial section of you site is now changed to the language string that you entered into the text box for the language override.

In my site I now have the text displaying the way I want it to display. I made two changes, or two language overrides to the EasySocial text strings in my site:

Don't have an account? ----------------------------- > Now displays: Sign Up for a free account?
Register now to join the community! ------------ > Now displays: Register now to join the ChamberAnswers Community!



What are the Key Benefits of doing it this way?
This may seem like a harder way of doing language string changes rather than simply going into the site back-end and editing the language string files - but there are many advantages to doing it the correct way. I was constantly always having to go back into change the language strings before learning how to do Language string overrides from other knowledgeable administrators in these forums and from Mark Lee, and ever since learning the correct way, I now have more time for other things, because I don't have to worry about updating the language strings after updating EasySocial each time a new version comes out.

Updating Joomla or your extensions: Each time you perform an update to an extension in Joomla, these Override language strings won't get overwritten by the Joomla or EasySocial, or other extension updates, and this makes it much easier to do it the CORRECT WAY once, than it is to do it every time you update Joomla or your extensions get updated on your site, instead of always having to edit the language string .ini file again, and again, and again.

This concludes the EasySocial lesson for Friday, March 14, 2014. If you have any questions, please post a comment below in the Questions and Answers Section, and I hope others will answer, or I will will do my best to answer questions and join into the discussion, so we can all share what we have learned about EasySocial today.



Look for new EasySocial Lesson Guides posted daily, next week of March 17 to March 21, 2014. I will be creating these new Lesson Guides in a new discussion thread.

I hope you have found this EasySocial Tutorial Learning Guide valuable, and please leave your feedback below, or post a reply to request a new tutorial for EasySocial.

I do hope others will share what they have learned this week about EasySocial.

The EasySocial Personal Learning Network WEEKLY WRAP UP QUESTIONS & ANSWERS SECTION

PARTICIPANTS: Anyone can ask questions and Answer. I am learning from everyone on the forums, and I hope to learn more from others.
WRAP UP DATE: Friday, March 14, 2014 (Wrap up for the week of March 10 to March 14, 2014
SECTION: Open Question and Answers discussion. weekly wrap up

Every Friday, I will do a week's wrap up with the Questions & Answers Section, and then during the weekend I will outline the plans for the video class next week so you can learn more about EasySocial.

This past week of March 10 to March 14, 2014 was the start of the Lesson Guides for EasySocial. I am very pleased that people are following, learning and enjoying the lesson guides, as it gives me encouragement and new ideas for future lessons. As you can tell if you have been following the daily lesson guides, I go back and make improvements to each of the lesson guides so that they are more clear, and I make improvements to the lesson guide images to make them smaller and highlight each of them in various colours so that they display on all devices, and so visually a learner can find what they are looking for while the follow the Lesson Guides. This week we covered a few of the most common things that I have seen new administrators ask about EasySocial since |I first started beta testing EasySocial back in September 2014. I am pleased with the progress and the feedback this past week, and my goal is get more people involved in providing Tips & Tricks to make it easier for everyone. I came up with the idea for the daily and weekly guides because I want to learn, and the best way by learning is to dig in a try things out.

I hope you have some questions and/or will join in to provide some lessons and tips of your own that you have learned, so that others can get answers. If you have any suggestions, how to improve the Lesson Guides, or format, by all means I am open to any feedback. Please add you lessons, questions, answers, suggestions, or discussion topics for the Week of March 10 to March 14, 2014 below in the replies

#001. Monday, March 10, 2014 - Video Episode #001 - HOW TO CHECK FOR APP UPDATES & HOW TO INSTALL APP UPDATES IN EASYSOCIAL
#002. Tuesday, March 11, 2014 - Video Episode #002 - HOW AND WHERE TO CHANGE THE PHOTO AND PHOTO ALBUM SETTINGS IN EASYSOCIAL
#003. Wednesday, March 12, 2014 - Video Episode #003 - Episode #003 - How do I Configure the stream related settings for Users login to the site in EasySocial?
#004. Thursday, March 13, 2014 - Video Episode #004: CUSTOMIZING THE EMAIL LOGO IN EASYSOCIAL - How to change the email branded logo in emails sent out to users from EasySocial
#005. Friday, March 14, 2014 - Video Episode #005: LANGUAGE OVERRIDES IN EASYSOCIAL THROUGH the JOOMLA ADMININSTRATOR - How easy it is to change the language strings that are contained in your EasySocial site. Once you learn how to do this, you will be making your site exactly the way you want it to be, so it is unique from other EasySocial powered sites.

Look for more What did you learn about EASYSOCIAL today? LEARN. SHARE. REPEAT. Lesson Guides each week. To easily find the Lesson Guides I have created and added to the forums each week, do the following.

1. Go to the StackIdeas Forums and search for the lesson guides by selecting Category: EasySocial > Tips & Tricks (sub-category) - then enter the following search text:

Search for: What Did You Learn about EasySocial today?



The results from your search in the EasySocial > Tips & Tricks forum sub-category will appear below. You can select the main discussion result or a reply.



Being connected makes us all learners…which in turn makes us better teachers.

So…what did you learn today?

Please share what you have learned today about Joomla. If you have a question about EasySocial, ask the question or share what you have learned today below.

Everyone can learn something new each day and share it with others.

Randall - ChamberAnswers.com - Small Business Learning Network

How to Use Firebug to Learn or Edit CSS code

I decided today, that I am going to spend an hour a day to learn how to use the Firebug extension for my Browser (Chrome) to Learn CSS code so I can edit it and make modifications to my sites.

I found an excellent Introduction Video Tutorial on How to Use Firebug to Learn/Edit CSS code that I want to Share with Others.

How to use firebug - easy tutorial! Subscribe to Lisa Irby's blog for more tips http://blog.2CreateAWebSite.com The creator of this Video Tutorial is Lisa Irby and I she is the owner of 2 Create a Website that has excellent teaching guide and video. Lisa is also the author of the book, Niche Website Success.

Antonio Simmons wrote:

I think this great I'll check for the lessons everyday There was a guy that started something like this in the JomSocial community and it became their most poplar group. I have a webmaster so I'm not very knowledgeable about some of this stuff but your directions were very clear cut and made it very easy. Please continue I'm tuned in

Thank you Antonio,

This week's Video Lesson Guides proved to be a success, and the feedback was really posiitve, and I am on to planning next week's Lesson Guides. Appreciate you feedback.

Randall

Danovan Thorpe wrote:

Thank you Randall for these tutorials they are a great help.

You are welcome Danovan. I am pleased they have been of great help to you. We can all learn from each other and I am creating the lesson guides based on what I have learned in the forums and from my own investigation. Next week's Lesson Guides being planned right now. I plan to expand the lesson guides to EasyBlog, EasyDiscuss, and how to make them integrate seamlessly with EasySocial, and in another few weeks (April 2014) I will be creating a full lesson guide with multiple parts on how to plan and create a online community using EasySocial, EasyBlog and EasyDiscuss.

Randall

Hi Randal

I am sorry for crashing into this thread like this. But in one of your screencasts you had a menu item called Connect with sub menu such as Share your Voice, Groups, Share Photo etc. Is that standard EasySocial stuff. If so would you mind telling me where it is? I have attached a screen shot for clarification.

thanks

Paul

Paul,

The parent menu on my site is Connect and it is all standard EasySocial. There is nothing hacked, just all standard easysocial menu items

Here is a screencast of the site menu layout for Connect: http://screencast.com/t/UPtzAjaAAl

Menu structure for Connect in Joomla administrator - http://screencast.com/t/AbM72xdqhmY

hope this answers your question.

Randall

Hi Randall,

Can you please create a tutorial showing me how to change some colors on ES like the tool bar and some buttons? Then show me how to save the changes in my template override folder so i won't have to do it again when ES has an update. I have extplorer already and made a change to the email logos thanks to your tutorial. I know this will take up your time but i would greatly appreciate it!!!! PLEASE HELP ME!!!!!

Antonio Simmons wrote:

Hi Randall,

Can you please create a tutorial showing me how to change some colors on ES like the tool bar and some buttons? Then show me how to save the changes in my template override folder so i won't have to do it again when ES has an update. I have extplorer already and made a change to the email logos thanks to your tutorial. I know this will take up your time but i would greatly appreciate it!!!! PLEASE HELP ME!!!!!

Antonio,

Of course I will do my best to create the lesson guide on EasySocial for changing the toolbar color and the buttons. I will have to research previous discussions and find the answers then I will post the lesson this week, perhaps on Monday if I get it completed in time, otherwise it will be Tuesday or Wednesday next week.

Thank you for your lesson request and suggestion. I am always happy to help people learn EasySocial.

Randall

Thank You very much Randall.... Here's a link to a forum where they talk about saving the changes to your template override folder so you don't have to keep doing it when ES comes out with a update. http://stackideas.com/forums/how-save-my-changes-at-css#reply-129830 Hope it's helps:)

Hi Randal

Apologies, I have been meaning to get back to you and thank you for a couple of days now. I really appreciate you taking the time to post those video tutorial. I was buried deep in the depths of Easy Social groups and so missed the Eagle eye view of getting Easy Social Stuff up in the menu. Have been EasySocialing for what seems like 24/7 for going on 3 weeks now!!! This is the great thing about forums, how people can share different perspectives. I have set things up on my site in a kind of similar way to how you did it.

There is now a “Interact” menu point that functions differently depending on whether you are logged in or not.

When not logged in you get taken to EasySocial>Profile which takes you to a login page because you are not logged in.

When logged in options turn up under the “Interact” Menu, such as Profile, Edit Profile, Friends Community, Groups and Log Out! I am controling these options by publishing there respective menu points for "Registered" users.

Just this one menu helps to tie the whole Site together. Amazing what a difference it makes :-) And how easy it is to miss really obvious stuff some times

thanks once again

Paul

Antonio Simmons wrote:

Hi Randall,

Can you please create a tutorial showing me how to change some colors on ES like the tool bar and some buttons? Then show me how to save the changes in my template override folder so i won't have to do it again when ES has an update. I have extplorer already and made a change to the email logos thanks to your tutorial. I know this will take up your time but i would greatly appreciate it!!!! PLEASE HELP ME!!!!!

Antonio,

I have been working on this tutorial for some time and it is important to create the best correct method lesson tutorial for you and others, so you don't make any mistakes in the css code and mess your site up. This Lesson Guide is more involved than I thought:

2 other discussions on changing EasySocial colors for the toolbar:

http://stackideas.com/forums/color-change-easysocial#reply-101697
http://stackideas.com/forums/color-change#reply-129586

I have found some information on the Tutorials and I will be asking for some help from other more knowledgeable EasySocial administrators such as Josh Lewis, as he has done this color change before. When I get the tutorial completed I will post it. At this time it will most likely be Wednesday, March 19, 2014 and I will notify you in this forum discussion.

I am adding the Monday tutorial within a few hours. It is 2:22 pm MST in Canada and I want to make sure to add a new Lesson Guide each day so I will get back to the Monday lesson to finish it and then I will be back to researching and finishing up the How to Change the Color of the EasySocial Toolbar and buttons?

Randall

Thank You Randall, take your time in patiently waiting I knew it wouldn't be an easy task. I greatly appreciate it:D

Perhaps we could setup a "learning" site for you guys so all of you could collaborate there Would be cool

Mark wrote:

Perhaps we could setup a "learning" site for you guys so all of you could collaborate there Would be cool

Excellent Idea Mark. You have many things to do, and a learning site would be real good. When you have time, I suggest using EasySocial 1.2 with Groups and EasyDiscuss. Heck, why not add EasyBlog so we can post Blogs to promote the site to new people.

Randall

Fantastic work Randall, genuinely appreciate the work you have put into this!

Yep, thanks for the heads up on this Randall

Hi Randall,

Maybe you should create a separate thread for each lesson, it will be better organized that way.

Agreed!

At least until Mark creates a site.

Yep, there are so many things in our hands right now that we want to do I hope to get everything out as soon as we can.

EASYSOCIAL LESSON GUIDES - LINKS to GUIDES

March 10 to March 14, 2014 - Lesson Guides #001, #002, #003, #004, #005
http://stackideas.com/forums/what-did-you-learn-about-easysocial-today-learn-share-repeat

March 17 to March 21, 2014 - Lesson Guides #006, #007 Pt 1, #007 Pt 2, #No GUIDE, #009
http://stackideas.com/forums/what-did-you-learn-about-easysocial-today-lesson-guides-for-march-17-21-2014


NEW LESSON GUIDE FORMAT STARTING MARCH 23, 2014
Look for new Lesson Guides Each Week - Starting the Week of March 24, 2014, there will be 3 guides per week instead of 5 per week, to make it easier for me to plan and create the Guides. And I do have to work on my own community and find time to start hiking and biking soon. Winter is almost over here!

I will also be adding the Lesson Guides into the EASYOCIAL > Tips and Tricks and Tutorials sub-sections as Individual Guides (One Discussion per lesson Guide) rather than including the 3 Guides in one Discussion. This will make it easier to find the Lesson Guide and easier to load the guide, without having to load all the other guides.

I appreciate the kudos and the feedback on the lessons and format.

Randall

Thank you Randall I so need to setup a site for you so that these information wouldn't be lost