Unfortunately there aren’t much informations about this subject, and from what I’ve read there is a lot of people with the same doubts I had.

Because I haven’t found any documentation on this subject I’ve decided to write the my own tutorial, hope it helps you.

Assuming that you already know how to create a Joomla! component setup XML file, I’ll write here how you can translate your administrator menu items using language packages. That way I will not talk about website front-end since I’m only focusing on administration menus.

I will also assume that you have a directory structure similar to the one below:

com_mycomponent
com_mycomponent/mycomponent.xml
com_mycomponent/admin
com_mycomponent/admin/index.html
com_mycomponent/admin/language
com_mycomponent/admin/language/index.html
com_mycomponent/admin/language/en-GB.com_mycomponent.ini
com_mycomponent/admin/language/en-GB.com_mycomponent.menu.ini
com_mycomponent/admin/language/pt-PT.com_mycomponent.ini
com_mycomponent/admin/language/pt-PT.com_mycomponent.menu.ini

1. Open XML setup file.

$ geany com_mycomponent/mycompoment.xml

2. Open administration tag and start to write component administration menu, our component’s menu will be composed by a title (COM_MYCOMPONENT) and two child links (LINK-1 and LINK-2). Note that all & must be escaped to & for the file to be valid XML and be parsed by the installer.

<administration>
<menu>COM_MYCOMPONENT</menu>
<submenu>
<menu link=”option=com_mycomponent&amp;controller=c1“>LINK-1</menu>
<menu link=”option=com_mycomponent&amp;controller=c2“>LINK-2</menu>
</submenu>

Now that we’ve finished the component administration menu, we will load language package files that will translate your component administration menu itens.
For this example we will have two different translations, English and Portuguese.
Although we are writing four files, two pairs for each language, the *.menu.ini are the ones that matter for this tutorial, the other ones are used to translate other texts that you will use in your component.

<languages folder=”admin/language”>
<language tag=”en-GB”>en-GB.com_mycomponent.ini</language>
<language tag=”en-GB”>en-GB.com_mycomponent.menu.ini</language>
<language tag=”pt-PT”>pt-PT.com_mycomponent.ini</language>
<language tag=”pt-PT”>pt-PT.com_mycomponent.menu.ini</language>
</languages>
</administration>

End of component administration supported languages and close administration tag.

3. Edit the English package file and write the translations for the items you’ve just created.

$ geany com_mycomponent/admin/language/en-GB.com_mycomponent.menu.ini

COM_MYCOMPONENT=My Component
COM_MYCOMPONENT.LINK-1=Link number one
COM_MYCOMPONENT.LINK-2=Link number two

4. Repeat the step #3 for the Portuguese package file.

$ geany com_mycomponent/admin/language/pt-PT.com_mycomponent.menu.ini

COM_MYCOMPONENT=O meu Componente
COM_MYCOMPONENT.LINK-1=Ligação número 1
COM_MYCOMPONENT.LINK-2=Ligação número 2

Note : All ini files need to be saved as UTF-8.

With this four steps you are able to translate your component administrator menu items, although it is a simple process, unfortunately there isn’t much documentation on this subject, and the one that exists is a bit poor and doesn’t explain all the steps.

To complete what I’ve wrote in here you can also take a look at this tutorial that talks about this subject, and you may also take a look at this one that covers the steps needed to follow while developing a component.

This new release is a security release made to solve a high level security issue, then it’s recommended to upgrade immediately.

Some websites are already being owned because of this security flaw, do not risk to get owned too and update your website software as soon as possible.

If you need help read the migration/upgrade instructions in here.

At the moment I’m running Joomla! 1.5.5 stable.

Yesterday after I installed the software I’ve looked for some tutorials that would guide me through the process of developing a component for this version of Joomla!.

It would be expectable to have some great tutorials in Joomla! Developer Network but to be honest I’ve got to say that the ones that are available are a bit poor, and most of Documentation is written for the older versions.

After a lot of searches I’ve found these tutorials and they are great, at least for helping me out in these first steps.

Another thing that I’ve noticed was that there are a lot of people with problems related with the installation of extensions and a lot of discussions about this in Joomla! forums, it seems that there isn’t a final solution for this kind of problem.

One popular solution (and from what I’ve read it does not solve this problem for everyone) is to change directory permissions to 777. In my opinion that’s not the best way to solve this problem, because if you have a shared host, you’ll probably get into troubles soon or later since other users will have permissions to mess with your files.

Another thing you can do, if you have enough privileges, is to change the user/group in your httpd.conf that way when your script creates any files/directories, they are created with the same user/group as your account.

I’ve used the second option, because at the moment I’m working locally, then I have root privileges. In the future I hope to find a better solution otherwise I’ll stick to this one, since I’ll also have root privileges in the production server too.

Although the site above has a lot of informations it’s really hard to find a CMS that fits your needs, most of the people who use this kind of tools are regular users and their main goal is to install and manage the CMS with success.

That way most of the reviews that I’ve found are written without a developers perspective.

At the moment I need to find a CMS that is Open Source, written in PHP under a Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern, that has some good support/documentation and a big community behind it.

Till now, the only one that I found that fulfills the specs above is Joomla! Unfortunately I’ve already read some bad reviews on it, saying that it’s too complex and it’s code is a bit messy.

I’ll keep on searching, but in the next few days I’ll have to make a decision so that I can start working.

If you have any useful informations on this subject please tell me something.