5.1.0 Overview
Edit the hit counter of your Joomla articles.
Installation
- Download System - Article Hits from the RicheyWeb download page.
- This page will remain unlinked, as the link may change in the future. Visit http://www.richeyweb.com and use the search feature - search for "System - Article Hits".
- In Joomla /administrator, go to the "Extensions" menu, the "Manage" sub-menu, and the "Install" sub-menu.
- Select the "Upload Package File" tab
- Press the "Choose File" button to browse your system and locate the plugin file you downloaded
- Press the "Upload & Install" button
At this point, the extension is installed but not enabled. You can find the plugin by going to the Extensions menu and selecting "Plugins". When in the plugin manager, search for "System - Article Hits".
Configuration
Pre 5.1.0
There is no configuration necessary. Enable the plugin and the article hits field within the content editor becomes available to edit. Save your article with the altered hits value.
5.1.0 and Higher
Seasoned administrators/webmasters will already know how to obtain the context and field name from the form they're interested in unlocking. For everyone else, it's not difficult.
Let's say you're interested in unlocking the hits field in the Contact component. The information you need to enable the hits field can be easily found in the source code of the contact edit page. Simply navigate to any existing contact edit page (Components > Contacts > {Pick Any Contact}). View the source of the page and have a close look at the <body> tag. I will highlight the information you're looking for in my examples.
Context com_contact.contact
<body class="admin com_contact view-contact layout-edit task-display" data-richeyweb="irrelevant attributes removed">
Field Name hits
<input type="text" name="jform[hits]" id="jform_hits" value="215" class="form-control readonly" readonly="">
YMMV
Not all forms are created equally. If the form is not created with Joomla's Form and Field classes, this plugin cannot change it. Fortunately, the Joomla Form classes are used a lot, I would say in most extensions. The contexts and even field names will be different component-to-component, but as long as you can find the info to enable the fields (and it's a Joomla Form) this plugin can do it.
Security
I recommend setting the access level to something sane for your environment. Personally, I set it to Special when it's enabled. I only enable it to make specific changes. It's usually not necessary to keep this plugin enabled unless you're using it. The changes you make are stored in the element you're editing - the plugin does not need to be enabled for your changes to become permanent.
