Clear Skys

Archive for September, 2009

Tip - Test out the compression of your JPEG images on your web pages using this free online JPEG compressor tool at www. Chami.com.

Even pictures that I thought were pretty well down to there lowest possible size before they lose their clarity - were compressed another 10-20% using this tool.

I reduced the size of a customers slow loading Home page recently by 60% using this tool, adobe photoshop was managing about 40%.

All you do is enter a URL of a JPEG, and it produces 5 images of varying compression ratios, reductions of 30% were still looking good for some of the images I tested.

Its easy to use - so give it a try.

How do you add a virtuemart product to a regular Joomla article or module ? I have seen sites where they try and add the HTML code created by virtuemart for a product into an article, there is a simplier way of doing this.

Use the vmproductsnapshots plugin in the Joomla Plugin Manager. Ensure the plugin is enabled, the plugin has options to configure how the product is displayed - you can set product name to display, thumbnails, a short description and whether to show the proce and an add to cart button.

So to display a product in an article enter the following tag format into the body of the article

{product_snapshot:id=10}

This would display Product with id equal to 10 in the article where you positioned this code, and it would display the product in relation to the options that are set on the product plugin.

Showing multiple products try :

{product_snapshot:id=24|25|26}

or you can even set your own options that will override the plugin paramaters, use this format

{product_snapshot:id=xx,showname=y|n,showimage=y|n,

showprice=y|n,showdesc=y|n,showaddtocart=y|n,

displayeach=h|v,displaylist=v|h,width=90%,

border=0,style=color:black;align:left}

Virtuemart Product Plugin Options