PDA-version of Joomla’s site
Tags: joomla, pda, mambot, template
This project and information is deprecated. Please visit Mobile Joomla! project at mobilejoomla.com for the latest and best way of mobilize Joomla! web sites. Thank you very much for your support.
It is now fashionable to have the PDA-version of the site so that users could visit a site through a pocket computer. And many people are asking: “Is it possible to realize this on Joomla!?” Yes, it is.
What is necessary for this purpose?
1. To install PDA-template which will be used for an output of the information in the simplified kind. The template contains “header” and “footer” module positions. If these positions already exist in the “main” template of a site - edit this template so that there were no overlays (or on the contrary, that the menu was produced in the same position in both templates). Then set up in the Backend, what modules will be in these positions.
2. To install (and activate!) a PDA-mambot which will choose this template in the case of a pocket computer.
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May 31st, 2007 at 4:05 am
Hi. I think this solution seems really interesting. Have a question though, will it work with mobile phone browsers as well?
May 31st, 2007 at 5:28 am
This is pretty cool.
Another reason why Joomla rocks.
May 31st, 2007 at 8:40 am
It is cool. How do you get your header to show?
Per, take a look here - http://emulator.mtld.mobi/ you need Java installed.
May 31st, 2007 at 8:52 am
This sounds great!!
What’s the risk just trying this out with the downloaded original files (template & mambot)??
May 31st, 2007 at 10:01 am
2Per:
Yes, it will work. But not all phones (PDA-version is not a WAP-version!).
2Nico:
There is no risk. You can always deactivate/uninstall the PDA-mambot (and PDA-template).
May 31st, 2007 at 11:37 am
I was wondering if it would be easy to remove pics from the mobile versions. They seem to blow up the site on PDA emulators. (I don’t actually own my own PDA with Internet for testing.)
May 31st, 2007 at 11:38 am
Sorry, also wanted to say that this is excellent work and much appreciated. Thanks!
May 31st, 2007 at 12:40 pm
My error! Emulators and phones seem to puke when your site is in debug mode. This works great!
May 31st, 2007 at 1:06 pm
Can I use this PDA version besides the original template I am using on my website?
May 31st, 2007 at 1:16 pm
2Paul:
Yes. It is the main idea of this mambot (and template) that you can use it besides original template. So, pda-template will be used for pda (and some mobiles) only.
May 31st, 2007 at 1:38 pm
Thanks for the help Physicist. I installed the mambot and template. So simple, and so frigging awesome =) I have a humble suggestion to make the mambot a tiny bit more versatile though; What if you could set the value for which module position to use before and after the main content? Then you would be able to avoid possible conflicts with “ordinary” templates using the header and footer module positions for other content parts intended for the PDA-version.
May 31st, 2007 at 1:56 pm
2Per:
Such “improvement” is already in my “ToDo” list.
June 1st, 2007 at 9:24 am
Great idea, great implementation. Thanks a lot!
June 2nd, 2007 at 11:23 am
Well, I am sad about it. It works nicely and is a solution and long awaited, BUT:
It won’t work together with Page Cache (http://www.ircmaxell.com/). Any way to make it compatible so it does not show you the cached version when the user agent changed?
June 5th, 2007 at 5:17 am
It won’t work together with almost any cache system which bases on URL only. The way to avoid this is to hack these components.
June 6th, 2007 at 8:44 pm
Great job and thanks for sharing!
June 7th, 2007 at 7:21 pm
How do I set it up to goto that tempalte when a pda is used?
June 8th, 2007 at 2:24 am
In this version the template called ‘pda’ is used.
In the next version it will be customizable.
June 8th, 2007 at 10:36 am
Downloaded the template and bot files, installed, published the bot and Voila!!
Great little bot, Many thanks for your work on this.
June 9th, 2007 at 6:30 am
What are the requirements to proper displaying national characters, please? I use UTF-8 and get no success.
June 9th, 2007 at 7:39 am
emil:
1. Check in /language/<your_lang>.php that _ISO variable has a value of ‘charset=utf-8′ [DEFINE(’_ISO’,'charset=utf-8′);].
2. Check that your result page really in utf-8 encoding.
June 9th, 2007 at 7:54 am
Both above I have.
This I have in templetaDetails.xml and pdabot.xml:
encoding=”utf-8″
Result in emulator: http://emulator.mtld.mobi/emulator.php?webaddress=joomla.mambodrom.cz&emulator=sonyK750&Submit=Submit
testing web: http://joomla.mambodrom.cz/
June 9th, 2007 at 8:16 am
May be it is a problem of emulator…
June 9th, 2007 at 9:17 am
On real device (K750) it displays national characters even worse
June 9th, 2007 at 9:41 am
Frankly, I don’t know. Try to add
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
at the beginning of the pda template.
June 24th, 2007 at 1:55 pm
Is it possible to remove pictures from the template?
June 25th, 2007 at 6:21 pm
this post written using a pda,.. thanks for your work any chance of creating an article in joomla from a pda?
June 29th, 2007 at 3:03 pm
is there a way to add the login module and user modules to post articles from our phones. I have a blackberry and didn’t need to install it, but it was taking forever to load. So I like that it just shows the content, but I would like to add articles on the fly
June 30th, 2007 at 5:45 am
Try to make copies of LoginForm and UserMenu modules and publish them in some position of pda-template (e.g. footer).
July 25th, 2007 at 6:23 pm
I just installed joomla because of your template.
I am looking for a plattform to publish receipes to be looked up
via pda ( don’t want a pc in the kitchen )
It is very nice to have 2 versions, one with pictures to be looked at from a desktop pc and then one for the kitchen where plain instructions are needed.
BUT it is a real pain in the youknowwhatImean that the text does not fit the pda screen and I have to scroll to the right.
I tried joomla about 20min ago, so I basicly have no real clue,but I looked at your webpage using a pda and your site also is not “scroll-free”.
Is there a way to get the job done?
July 25th, 2007 at 10:00 pm
This site is powered by Wordpress rather than Joomla. You can see mambot at work on pda.sanrsu.org.ru (my site on Joomla but in russian language) or pda.sword-of-truth.com (one of comments to post about pda-subdomain-mambot contains link to this site).
What PDA have you used? What modules have you published? You can send me link to your site (but I will check my mailbox on Sunday only).
August 14th, 2007 at 5:53 pm
Hello - I installed both the pda-bot and pda-subdomain-bot (2.0), but I am first trying to see what the pda-bot version looks like (have just reconfigured the dns, but that will take several hours before the dns.mydomain alias will replicate).
SO my question is (surely I have missed something somewhere) what link should I type into my PDA to see my PDa-version site?
thanks,
marcin
August 15th, 2007 at 5:34 am
I have uploaded the Mambot via Joomla’s install but how do i upload the ‘pda.zip’ folder?
August 17th, 2007 at 2:12 am
I installed and its great only i have no idea how to add my menu to the pda template …. Please help
August 18th, 2007 at 2:29 pm
marcin:
If you correctly installed pda-bot and pda-template and browser agent string is listed in php source of pda-bot, you see pda version of your site as soon as you publish pda-bot.
As well, if you correctly installed pda-subdomain-bot and pda-template and pda.*** subdomain point to your joomla directory (i.e. you can see original site typing pda.*** when pda-subdomain-bot is unpublished), then you see pda version of your site typing pda.*** as soon as you publish pda-subdomain-bot.
Nigel:
pda.zip - pda template for your site. You have only to install it (but not to assign it to any menu item and not to set it as default template).
jarno:
By default, pda-template contains ‘header’ and ‘footer’ module positions. So, you have to make a copy of your menu module and place it to ‘header’ or ‘footer’ positions. In the pda-bot-2.0 you can to change the names of the default module positions, so it is possible to use same module positions in original and pda version of site.
As a conclusion - I’m going to publish a guide on pda-mambot-and-template in September. Please, wait a little.
August 19th, 2007 at 11:33 am
Tnx for the fast reply… i like that same as the mambot…. Template is running smooth keep up the good work …
January 21st, 2008 at 9:03 am
Awesome, must try this one!
January 29th, 2008 at 11:02 pm
Hi and thanks for this excellent mambot! I wanted to share an issue with you. When using the mxcomment system (javascript based) I cannot display page content unless I set - use script to yes - option. With mxcomment disabled page displays with - use script to no - option. It appears the mxcomment component and bot is interfering with the pdabot working with scripts disabled. btw/ both these bots are installed in the /system folder - thanks. for now I need my comments more than the pda version of site but I would love a workaround.
February 4th, 2008 at 11:30 pm
Mobile Joomla gives problem with loging in as opposed to PDA Mambot 2.1. When trying to login, we see "… You are not authorized to view this resource". However, with PDA mambot 2.1 this does not happen. Any ideas anyone?
February 5th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
Works well, except when I use Mobile Joomla 3.0, the home page is not accessible (not authorized) on the regular Joomla site (from PC).
February 7th, 2008 at 2:37 am
Brent J:
May be you set non-existing homepage for pda in mambot settings? If no, I don't know the reason of this problem.
March 18th, 2008 at 9:59 am
Hi
Thanks for a tremendous piece of kit. However, I am having a slight problem, I have created a subdomain for my (localhost) test site and when I tried to apply the patch, I get the following error message.
"The requested URL /mambots/system/pda/installpatch.php was not found on this server."
The odd thing is that I checked ant the installpatch.php was present. I would be quite grateful for a solution
Cheers