Adding a splash page for Joomla

On a Joomla based web site design project I was recently working on for a client, He had asked me to have a “splash page” which has his company logo and a enter link that first shows before the main Joomla site loads up for the visitor.

Normally this would be as simple as making a new html file, and adding a DirectoryIndex line in the .htaccess to have the server load this new spash page as the default page, and then this splash page links to the main site. Easy to do for Joomla right?… Wrong LOL

It seems with how Joomla 1.5x works, the main menu default item “home” if you have Joomla’s SEF turned on, will point the home link simply to “http://www.domainname.com/” (your root url) for the site, and not to a specific link such as index.php. What this meant was after I did the .htaccess change for the DirectoryIndex to be the splash page, when you called the site up, the splash page works, then you go into joomla and then click on the home link on the main menu, it jumps you back to your splash page, and not the main page of your joomla site.

After a little playing around, I found a simple enough solution…

(remember this solution only works with Joomla SEF and .htaccess turned on in the Joomla configuration)

1. Make your splash page as needed, call it whatever you wish (in my case splash.html). Have the link from the splash page goto http://yoursite.com/home.html (make sure you have your home link actually names and aliased as “home” in Joomla so the sef uses this as your home page link).
2. Edit the .htaccess in the root Joomla directory, at the top do your DirectoryIndex line for the new spash (in my case: DirectoryIndex splash.html).
3. Go into your Joomla Admin, edit your main menu, now edit the “Home” item, make sure it’s set as the front page blog style layout (or however you have set up your front page as).
4. Now create a new menu item on the main menu, call it “Dummy” and choose anything you want for the type of link.
5. Now on the menu item list, check the box beside your new dummy item, make it your default menu item.
6. Now edit this dummy item again, and change status to disabled.. (you can only do this via actually editing the menu item, it will not work if you just click on the check mark in the menu item list to disable it).

Now you should be able to use your splash screen and Joomla will behave!

Essential FREE Joomla Extensions

For anyone who has ever used or is considering to use Joomla for a web site, you will quickly realize there are thousands of extensions (plug-in’s that extend the functionality of Joomla). Because I myself often use Joomla for projects for my clients, I have decided to post a list of some of the more useful FREE extensions that I have found myself using often with my Joomla Based Projects…

Display PDF files inside Joomla Content/Article

I was recently working on a Joomla based web site design for a client, and he had requested that the site display PDF files he provided me inside articles for his portfolio pages on his web site.

My first thought was there would be some kind of a plugin/module to extend Joomla to display a PDF file in joomla, but was not able to find any that worked for me. Then I had a brainstorm.