Abqjoomla Blog

Written by Jason Saturday, 23 May 2009 17:40

Joomla, as we know, has a huge community of developers, designers, and users. With so many extensions out there, it's easy to mistake an extremely powerful component for a small and simple one. Furthermore, extensions that aren't published on Joomla.org certainly don't get the visibility they deserve.

I've been a RocketTheme subscriber for years now. They continue to deliver awesome products that set the bar too high for any other template house to compete. The latest templates have included a component called RokCandy. Here's RocketTheme's description for RokCandy:

RokCandy is a new component from RocketTheme which provides BBcode type functionality into Joomla. Therefore, you do not need to worry about the WYSIWYG editor stripping out your custom code, or worry about your HTML abilities in order to use the various Typography and other styled elements.

Sounds cool, right? What they don't mention is what else this extension can do and how powerful it really is...

RokCandy opens the door for creativity and provides a way to substantially reduce your work time and workload. Here's just a couple of uses ... just to get you thinking...

1. Quickly build a demo site specifically for each of your clients. RokCandy allows you to FIND/REPLACE text. Let's say you've installed a template with included demo content... RokCandy can replace all instances of the word "Joomla" or "Rockettheme" or whatever, and replace it with: "Vandalay Industries," or "MyClientsSite"... or whatever.  If you really wanted, you can replace the word "joomla" site-wide, branding the entire CMS as your own. (Not that I would do that... but just to make a point)

2. Turn module headers into links. Modules allow for dynamic display of 'Latest News," "Popular Articles," etc...  Sometimes you'd like to make the header linkable... In fact, I've found myself in this situation several times. Instead of hacking the module, or creating one that includes a linkable header, just use RokCandy. Turn any string of text/code into another... So what use to read:

The code below is simply the name of the module you want to be linkable.

<h3>My Module Header</h3>


can now read:


<a href="/">My New Module Header</a>


3. Easily create "globalized" links: I had a client who needed to create a directory of conference speakers. Each speaker would have their own page which included a bio, links to the their seminar, etc. Additionally, each time the name appeared in the entire website, it needed to link to the speaker's bio. What normally would take hours upon hours of data entry and "busy work," took only about an hour... I used RokCandy to find the names of each speaker and automatically link the name to the speaker bio. This was great because the schedule of seminars had already been posted, which included the speakers... So, after this implementation, everything linked accordingly - easily and seemlessly.

The sky's the limit with RokCandy. All it takes is a bit of creativity and initiative.