Posts Tagged ‘Component’

How to disable PC Spaker on Debian and Ubuntu Linux

Sunday, May 13th, 2012

 

How to disable pc-speaker on Linux / PC-Speaker Old Desktop Computer picture

A PC Speaker is helpful as it could be used as a tool for diagnosing system hardware failures (different systems produce different beep sequences depending on the machine BIOS type).
Using the instructions for the respective BIOS vendor and version one could determine the type of problem experienced by a machine based on the sequence and frequency of sounds produced by the SPEAKER.
Lets say a hardware component on a server is down with no need for a monitor or screen to be attached you can say precisely if it is the hard drive, memory or fan malfunctioning…

Generally speaking historically embedded PC Speaker was inseparatable part of the Personal Computers, preceding the soundblasters, now this is changing but for compitability sake many comp equipment vendors still produce machines with pc-speaker in.
Some newer machines (mostly laptops) are factory produced with no PC-SPEAKER component anymore.
For those who don't know what is PC SPEAKER, it is a hardware device capable of emitting very simple short beep sounds at certain system occasions.

Talking about PC-Speaker, it reminds me of the old computer days, where we used pc-speakers to play music in DOS quite frequently.
It was wide practice across my friends and myself to use the pc-speaker to play Axel Folly and other mod files because we couldn't afford to pay 150$ for a sound cards. Playing a song over pc-speaker is quite a nice thing and it will be a nice thing if someone writes a program to be able to play songs on Linux via the pc-speaker for the sake of experiment.

As of time of writting, I don't know of any application capable of playing music files via the pc-speaker if one knows of something like this please, drop me a comment..

As long as it is used for hardware failure diagnosis the speaker is useful, however there are too many occasions where its just creating useless annoying sounds.
For instance whether one uses a GUI terminal or console typing commands and hits multiple times backspace to delete a mistyped command. The result is just irritating beeps, which could be quite disturbing for other people in the room (for example if you use Linux as Desktop in heterogeneous OS office).
When this "unplanned" glitchering beeps are experienced 100+ times a day you really want to break the computer, as well as your collegues are starting to get mad (if not using their headphones) 🙂

Hence you need sometimes to turn off the pc-speaker to save some nerves.

Here is how this is done on major Linux distros.

On Debian and most other distros, the PC SPEAKER is controlled by a kernel module, so to disable communication with the speaker you have to remove the kernel module.

On Debian and Fedora disabling pcspeaker is done with:

# modprobe -r pcspkr

Then to permanently disable load of the pcspkr module on system boot:

debian:~# echo 'blacklist pcspkr' >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

On Ubuntu to disable load on boot /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist, file should be used:

ubuntu:~# echo 'blacklist pcspkr' >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist
Well that's all folks …

How to set custom page titles in Joomla 1.5 manually for better SEO

Thursday, June 2nd, 2011

he Joomla CMS default behaviour is that Page titles of the Joomla Articles created are always set to the page Title assigned to each of the articles.

This is not very good behaviour in terms of SEO, as the page title of each link on the main page is different and there is no continuous repeating pattern in all of the joomla pages.
Everyone that has even basic idea of SEO knows that page titles are very important weight factor to make indexing inside Search Engines succesful.

There is a well know SEO rule which is the more reoccuring pattern one has in his page titles, more is stressed on the keywords contained in the title.
As I said for some weird reason Joomla has no common page Title for all my the created Article pages linked via the Main Menu*

Thus in order to improve this bad default Joomla SEO behaviour one has to change the default auto assigned titles for created pages, manually.

Two things are necessery to change each of the joomla already existing TITLES.

1. Go to each of the pages (.e.g. Home etc.) and change the Parameters System Page Title settings

After logging in with administrator in Joomla, navigate to Menus -> Main Menu*

Further on choose a menu item from all your existing items, let’s say Home and click on it.

On the left side below the Save, Apply, Close and Help buttons you will notice the menus:

Parameters (Basic), Parameters (Component), Parameters (System)

When clicked on Parameters (System) a submenu will appear:
Joomla Main Menu Parameters System Page Title better SEO

Above is a screenshot of the up-described Parameters (System) [Page Title] location

You need to change where it reads on the screenshot CHANGE THE TITLE HERE !!!!!! 😉

After entering your own desired page title go and save the article via the Apply or Save button (also visible in the screenshot).

Now as the custom Page Title is set, next step is to enable the custom Page Title for the respective Article in Article Manager

2. Enable custom Page Title for created pages in Joomla

Go to the Article Manager by following the menus:

Content -> Article Manager

Select the Article of which you want to change the Page Title to some custom text and click over it.

As the article opens for edit in an html editor, navigate to Parameters (Advanced) tab and therein change the Show Title from default setting value:
Use Global
to
Yes

Once again use the Save or Apply button to confirm the new settings and open your website in a new tab, try to browse and check the title of the articles parameters just edited. It should show up in the Title (page heading) the custom input Title.

Now repeat the same procedure for all pages (Articles), existing in Joomla to attune the Page Titles to some Google friendly strings and enjoy the better Search engine indexing which should likely follow.

How to add multi-lingual (multi language) support in Joomla 1.5

Friday, June 3rd, 2011

Joomfish MultiLanguage Support enable plugin

If you are facing the task to build a multi-language enabled Joomla website like me then I think my experience on building a multi-language website with Joomla CMS might be beneficial to you.

In order to build a multi-language website in Joomla you will have to use Joom!Fish multilanguage Joomla support plugin.

The plugin is a bit buggy, but in overall it will allow you to build a multi language website and consequently add the page different languate translations.

To install the plugin on your 1.5 Joomla based install;

1. Download the JoomFish plugin

Install it the usual joomla way joomla plugins are installed, via;

Extensions -> Install/Uninstall

2. Enable the Joom!Fish plugin

To do so navigate to;

Extensions -> Module Manager

Enable the module by ticking under the Enabled column on the line where you read Language Selection

3. Install Language packs for all languages which should be supported by JoomFish

Now as the JoomFish Language selection module is enabled, one needs to install the necessery Joomla Language Packs for all the languages which the Joomla based website is planned to support.

In my case I neede a three lingual website, which will support only the Languages:
 

  • Bulgarian
  • Russian
  • and

  • English

Thus I went on Joomla! Extensions Directory – extensions.joomla.org and downloaded the the three language packs I needed (English, Russian and Bulgarian).

Again the Installation of the language packs is trivial and is done through the Joomla’s:

Extensions -> Install/Uninstall

After installation to find out all the languages your Joomla installation will support you can navigate inside Joomla admin to:

Extensions -> Install/Uninstall -> Languages

Screenshot of my installed list of Joomla Language packs Screenshot of my installed list of Joomla Language Packs (Multi-Language setup)

Another way to check the list of enabled installed languages supported in your Joomla is via the menu:

Site -> Control Panel -> Language Manager

Something important here is to a default language is set in the Language Manager

4. Create translations from default installed language to the rest of the installed ones

Go to the JoomFish component through the menus:

Components -> Joom!Fish -> Control Panel

If all your language packs are correctly installed and enabled so far you should notice them listed while clicking on Content Languages

If all the Joomla Languages which your website is supposed to support are not there, this means something is generally wrong with installed lanaguage packs and you need to go back few steps and check what might be wrong, hopefully that’s not the case 😉

To immediately start translating your Joomla website to another from one language to another one, use the control menus:

Components -> Joom!Fish -> Translation

Here is screenshot on how this menu would look like:

Joomla JoomFish Plugin Translate Menu Screenshot

Notice in the above screenshot the Languages: and Content Elements dropdown menus, this ones are actually the two menus used for all language translations.

One needs to select under Languages: menu the Language to which will be translated to, while in Content Elements: has to be choseen the exact site elements which are about to be translated.

The Content Elements: necessery to be translated in most of the cases would be just Menus and Contents

Translating that will have your website user frontend be completely translated info the foreign language choosen in the Languages: dialog.

After finalizing the translations of all Articles available in Menus and Contents make sure the translation is Published, by selecting the Published tick, below I show you an example language translation edit of an article, on the left side you see the Published tick which need to be enabled, for translation to appear officially in Joomla.

Joomla Joomfish published tick enabled screenshot

After completing all the translations of elements offered by the translation window, save the translation by pressing the Apply buttonFurther on you can check the website in a new tab, if everything is okay with translations, on the down left corner of the website footer you should notice the flags of enabled languages to appear.
Clicking on each of the languages should show you the website in the language choosen (if you have previously done the translation to the respective menus).

5. Solving a minor bug in JoomlaFish which prevents translated language text to display on webpages

During translation of my website from Bulgarian to English, I have noticed a bug of JoomFish, even though I did the translation of all my Menus and website Content elements and saved the translations, refreshing the website in a new tab and choosing the desired translation was constantly displaying the error message:

“There are no translations available”

I was not able to find a good explanation on the Internet on why exactly and how this bug occurs, but by some experiments I come up with a workaround.

If you get the “There are no translations available” after properly configuring Joom!Fish Multilang support, in order to solve the error you will have to select temporary a different default website language from the one currently specified by your website.

(E.g.) go to jooma admin panel location:

Site -> Control Panel -> Language Manager

and trigger the default language configured to some of the other available ones. After reverting back in a couple of seconds this setting to your desired default language the annoying: “There are no translations available” message will disappear and your translated content will appear on the website.

6. Changing the location of language flags (language links) in Joomla’s JoomFish

I have seen plenty of people online looking for a solution on how they can change the default image flags location, which by default is placed a place which is not that intuitive and visible by the user.

Maybe I did not searched enough but from my quick research it appears there is no information available on how the placement of language flags switching menu can be changed.

Even though I couldn’t find a solution to change the langage flags in JoomFish , after a bunch of experiments I find a way to do it! 🙂

The placement of Language selector buttons can be easily adjusted through following the Joomla Admin menu:

Extensions -> Module Mamager -> Language Selection

After opening the Language Selection , you will notice the Position: dropdown menu setting. The setting has a bunch of optionsand allows you to choose the best preferred placement of the language selector flag buttons, just take few minutes to experiment which settingfits you best and choose the one most suitable to you and you’re done! 😉

Honestly I never imagined that building a multi-lingual website with Joomla will be such a piece of cake.

The only drawback with JoomFish, is the way language translation is implemented as it is not enough user friendly, anyways having the option to build multi language website for free using open source CMS solution is great. Ain’t it? 🙂