For Reverse Auction Factory prior to VERSION 1.5.x please read first below!
Go to the upper Menu in the Joomla backend. There choose "Extensions"/"Install/Uninstall". In the field area Upload Package File click on Browse and choose from your Computer HDD the ZIP file. After you choosed the file click "Upload File & Install". When finishing the installation the following screen will appear.
You can configure your component by choosing the proper settings like main Image required (yes/no), currencies, time display, time format, etc.
On each auction the auctioneer can attach an NDA which can be enabled/disabled as a general settings, allowed file extensions, etc.
CRON or PSEUDOCRON has to be configured also. These are two different services not related to our component. The component just make usage of these services by for example in closing expired auctions, sending emails, etc. To configure the CRON services please check our documentation.
The CB Plugins will be automatically installed if the Reverse Auction Component will be installed after Community Builder. If Auction Factory will be installed before CB, then you will have to install manually by going to the Auction Component Settings, on tab Other Settings, just click on the button CB Plugins. Each user can enter in his profile the Google Map coordinates which will be displayed as a Map on the Google Map Tab. The Google map key has to be generated by the Google API.
CB Integration. Here you can create CB fields, like city, country, bidder, seller, paypal, etc. and integrate them in the component from the CB Integration menu item.
ACL. You can define an existing Joomla User Group as Bidder or Seller. Please check the checkbox "Enable ACL" available under the "Settings"/"ACL" tab.
Mail Settings. In this section you can set up the content, subject, etc. of notifies for different actions. Certain notifications can be enable or disabled by checking the checkboxes.
Paypal Settings can be configured under "Manage Payments"/"Payments Methods Config". Here the first thing is to change the Paypal adress! If you want to test it and you have a sanbox paypal adress, then on the use sandbox select choose Yes. On a live site this option should be set up to No.
In order to have access on the frontend to the component you have to publish the Reverse Auction Menu in the "Module Manager".
The winner (bidder) will be charged if the auction will have a winner with the setted percentage of the winning bid. The status (balance) of each auctioneer debts will be displayed in his personal page profile. There a link will appear for each currency to proceed with the Paypal payment. Also a notice is showed that the commissions are separately for each currency and a bigger payment for an amount will not complete the balance of another currency debt.
To customize the look in order to obtain a matching look to your site template or just to customize the look of the Reverse Auction Factory Component please continue with this documentation. Reverse Auction Factory includes a very powerfull templating engine - smarty. Making use of smarty, the auction engine will provide to this engine some pre-filled objects and arrays of objects that are relevant to the current page displayed. Also all language constants defined in Auction Factory can be accessed in the template. We advice against writing hard coded text into the Templates, since this would render the multi language concept useless. If you do not care about the ability to translate your site, then you can do as needed.
Language files are placed in the 'lang' directories of the components. For those of you who wants to alter a language file here is a small example of how to do it. All you have to do is replace the words marked in red, into a new file and changethe default language file.
define('but_back','Back');
If the component will be installed in Joomla 1.5.x, LEGACY Plugin must be enabled! Otherwise the component will not be installed.
After activating the Legacy Plugin please proceed with the standard install mode.
Revised "Reverse Auction Factory" version 1.3.x.
This tutorial covers the features added in versions 1.4.x - 2.x.x
For versions prior to 2.x.x please check out the info below!
Go to the upper Menu in the Joomla backend. There choose "Extensions"/"Install/Uninstall". In the field area Upload Package File click on Browse and choose from your Computer HDD the ZIP file. After you choosed the file click "Upload File & Install". When finishing the installation the following screen will appear.
You can configure your component by choosing the proper settings regarding images, currencies, time display, time format, etc.
CRON or PSEUDOCRON has to be configured also. These are two different services not related to our component. The component just make usage of these services by for example in closing expired auctions, sending emails, updating proxies, etc. To configure the CRON services please check our documentation .
The CB Plugins will be automatically installed if the Auction Component will be installed after Community Builder. If Auction Factory will be installed before CB, then you will have to install manually by going to the Auction Component Settings, on tab Other Settings, just click on the button CB Plugins.
CB Integration. Here you can create CB fields, like city, country, bidder, seller, paypal, etc. and integrate them in the component from the Auction Component Settings, CB Integration.
ACL. You can define an existing Joomla User Group as Bidder or Seller. Please check the checkbox "Enable ACL" available under the "Settings"/"ACL" tab. For more informations please check also this Documentation .
Paypal Settings can be configured under "Manage Payments"/"Payments Methods Config". Here the first thing is to change the Paypal adress! If you want to test it and you have a sanbox paypal adress, then on the use sandbox select choose Yes. On a live site this option should be set up to No.
In order to have access on the frontend to the component you have to publish the Auction Menu in the "Module Manager".
The auctioneer will be charged if the auction will have a winner with the setted percentage of the winning bid. The status (balance) of each auctioneer debts will be displayed in his personal page profile. There a link will appear for each currency to proceed with the Paypal payment. Also a notice is showed that the commissions are separately for each currency and a bigger payment for an amount will not complete the balance of another currency debt.
To customize the look in order to obtain a matching look to your site template or just to customize the look of the Auction Factory Component please continue with this documentation. Auction Factory includes a very powerfull templating engine - smarty. Making use of smarty, the auction engine will provide to this engine some pre-filled objects and arrays of objects that are relevant to the current page displayed. Also all language constants defined in Auction Factory can be accessed in the template. We advice against writing hard coded text into the Templates, since this would render the multi language concept useless. If you do not care about the ability to translate your site, then you can do as needed.
Language files are placed in the 'lang' directories of the components. For those of you who wants to alter a language file here is a small example of how to do it. All you have to do is replace the words marked in red, into a new file and changethe default language file.
define('but_back','Back');
define('but_close_window','Close this window!');
define('but_new','New');
define('but_save','Save');
define('but_search','Search');
For more information regarding the language files please check also the forum under:
http://www.thefactory.ro/component/option,com_smf/Itemid,40/topic,1218.0/
http://www.thefactory.ro/component/option,com_smf/Itemid,40/topic,921.0/
If the component will be installed in Joomla 1.5.x, LEGACY Plugin must be enabled! Otherwise the component will not be installed.
After activating the Legacy Plugin please proceed with the standard install mode.
Revised "Auction Factory" version 1.5.x.
Allows to display specific feed sources or categories of feeds. Please read the notes for options and examples.
Valid options:
Example:
{rssfactory_pro categoryId="1,2,3" sourceId="10,11,12,13" searchTerm="foo,bar" nrFeeds="10" displayMethod="slider" outputStyle="table" tableAlwaysOpen="1" orderByDate="1" displayAds="1"}
or
{rssfactory_pro categoryId="5" nrFeeds="15" orderByDate="0"}
Additional notes:
All parameters will be delimited by " !!! ( categoryId="7" or searchTerm="test1,test2,test3" )
Quick templating tutorial for Reverse Auction Factory 1.0
Reverese Auction Factory includes a very powerful templating engine - smarty. We will try to cover in this tutorial the essentials of building a template for Reverse Auction Factory using this Template Engine. By far this can not cover the extensive manual of smarty. Making use of smarty, the auction engine will provide to this engine some pre-filled objects and arrays of objects that are relevant to the current page displayed. Also all language constants defined in Reverse Auction Factory can be accessed in the template. We advice against writing hard coded text into the Templates, since this would render the multi language concept useless. If you do not care about the ability to translate your site, then you can do as needed.
This tutorial is addressed to the HTML savvy webmaster that need to change the default appearance of Joomla's Reverse Auction Factory Component. For most customers the default template should be sufficient accommodating.
First of all what is a template engine. A (web) template engine is software that is designed to process web templates and content information to produce output web documents. It runs in the context of a template system. It is practically a php script that interprets some kind of pseudo HTML pages containing placeholders for specific variable content. In our case most are auction related.
In order to update much easier, we recommend that you note all the changes made on the templates, then apply them on each update in order to avoid any issues!
1. Where are the files and what can be changed?
All template files are in the components/com_rbids/templates folder. The components/com_rbids/templates/cache folder contains the pre-processed files and normally you should not have to edit or delete something in it. We recommend that this folder has writing rights for PHP scripts, so the engine can improve the speed by caching the templates.
t_auctiondetails.tpl | Contains the template for displaying the Auction Item details page |
t_categories.tpl | Display of Categories page (Category Directory) |
t_editauction.tpl | is used to display the page for "New Auction" and "Edit Auction". The $task smarty variable contains the current task (newauction or editauction) |
t_header_filter.tpl | Displays a message div with the current active filters |
t_javascript_language.tpl | Javascript birdge for language strings. Should not be modified in most cases and should be included in most templates |
t_listauctions.tpl | The base template for auction listing. Here are the listing elements being rendered. Most of the output is done in the corresponding *_cell.tpl |
t_listauctions_cell.tpl | The Auction listing cell. this is the cell for one auction. The cycling is done in t_listauctions.tpl |
t_listfooter.tpl | Listing footer (pagination links). |
t_myauctions.tpl | similar to listauctions, only for "My auctions" |
t_myauctions_cell.tpl | similar to listauctions_cell, only for "My auctions" |
t_mybids.tpl | similar to listauctions, only for "My Bids" |
t_mybids_cell.tpl | similar to listauctions_cell, only for "My Bids" |
t_mywatchlist.tpl | similar to listauctions, only for "My watchlist" |
t_mywatchlist_cell.tpl | similar to listauctions_cell, only for "My watchlist" |
t_mywonbids.tpl | similar to listauctions, only for "My won bids" |
t_mywonbids_cell.tpl | similar to listauctions_cell, only for "My won bids" |
t_overlib.tpl | JS for overlib. Should be included if overlib is used |
t_payment_cancel.tpl | Returning page from Paypal if the payment was canceled |
t_payment_return.tpl | Returning page from Paypal on successful payment (can be overridden in the payment plugin) |
t_search.tpl | Template for the search page |
t_showSearchResults.tpl | Template for the Search Results |
t_searchUsers.tpl | Template for the user search page |
t_showSearchUsersResults.tpl | Template for the user Search Results |
t_reportauction.tpl | Template for reporting an Auction form |
2. Basic smarty knowledge.
All smarty templates are pure HTML. What the template engine needs to interpret must be put in accolades { }, a so called smarty tag. If the smarty contains a variable or a constant, then smarty just replaces it with its value. for instance this tag {$task} will be replaced with the current joomla task (for instance with "newauctions" - without the quotation marks).
Smarty also allows IF clauses, so you an branch out two different displays depending on a condition. So for example {if $task=='newauctions'}You are creating a new auctions{else}You are editing an existing auction{/if} will display one of the two texts depending on the current task. Another useful smarty command is {include file='xxxxx'} - this includes another smarty template file. For instance it it useful for us in the matter of including the necessary javascript for the auctions. Since most pages use the same javascript codebase we can have just a single page containing these statements. For assigning a value to a variable (if the variable does not exist, it will be created) you have to use {assign var=variablename value='VALUE'} in this way you may use smarty for advanced templating techniques that resembles more with programming.
3. Custom defined smarty functions for AUCTIONS FACTORY.
Since Smarty is a very powerful tool for templating, we can create custom functions that can be called out from templates. Functions that are not in the standard distribution of smarty. We created following functions that can be used especially for our purpose (Auctions).
4. Variables that are ALWAYS initialized by the auction system.
All Language constants and configuration constants are accessible in the template; all are in the form {$smarty.const.xxxx} where xxxx is the constant name. For instance for the constant string defined as "bid_auction_number" you have to use {$smarty.const.bid_auction_number}. All saved options are the following:
5. Auction Variables initialized in specific pages.
5.1. Variables initialized in Auction Details and Auction listings.
For auction detail the main object is called $auction, in auction listings the cell templates will hold a similar object called $current_row The properties of $auction and $current_row are similar. We will present them for $current_row. If you need them in Auction details or in Auction Edit/New you must replace "$current_row" with "$auction"
6. Final advices and considerations.
Before starting to work on the templates take a look at the provided ones, and try to understand how they are done. Leave all hidden inputs as they are. If unsure better ask in our forums. Remove the inputs from the template only if sure what you do. you can put them where you like on the page, but if you what to remove one better ask.
Test if your changes generate JS errors. These could alter the behavior of the pages.
There are virtually no security issues in changing the templates. The data that should not appear is also not initialized (lets say for a private auction). But caution is always a good approach, so test first what kind of auction or what kind of rights are currently active.
MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL: do not hesitate to search and to ask! The forums are a great place to share information.
This Tutorial is compliant with Reverse Auction Factory 1.0
The Auction Factory platform has built-in support for different access rights between sellers and buyers. Here are described the 3 options how can this be achieved.
1. Joomla User Groups (with JACL or similar)
Then all users that are in the BIDDER GROUP may only bid.2. Community Builder Fields
All users that are in the SELLER group may only post auctions.
All users that are in BOTH the seller and the BIDDER group (JACL can do that) can post and bid.
Next go to Components/Auction/CB Integration and choose the corresponding fields for:
Then you can edit the users according to your needs (users that have isSeller checked can post auctions and users that have isBidder checked can bid.)3. Profile Driven ACL provided native by Auctions Factory (if you do not use CB).
Go to ACL tab in "General settings" (Auctions):
Then go to Components/Auctions/Users. Here you can click then the corresponding icons for sellers and buyers and toggle them on/off.
Revised "Auction Factory" version 1.4.0.