Support

It is possible, by doing a layout override.

Copy the file components/com_ats/layouts/akeeba/ats/common/user.php into templates/YOURTEMPLATE/html/layouts/akeeba/ats/common/user.php. You can then edit this file to do whatever you want.

The $avatarUrl (line 60) gets the URL of the avatar picture. You'd probably have to change it to something like:

$avatarUrl = \Akeeba\Component\ATS\Administrator\Helper\Permissions::isManager(null, $user_id)
  ? 'https://www.example.com/images/manager_avatar.png'
  : 'https://www.example.com/images/regular_user.png';

Or you can disable the avatar by adding a new line after line 66 with the content

$showAvatar = false;

This completely disables avatars.

Oops, I just realised you are using Joomla 3. That old version of ATS didn't use layouts.

You will have to do a template override of components/com_ats/tmpl/Posts/threded_user.blade.php, copying it to templates/YOUR_TEMPLATE/html/com_ats/Posts/threded_user.blade.php. Change line 46.

The code I sent you above needs to change to

$avatarUrl = \Akeeba\TicketSystem\Admin\Helper\Permissions::isManager(null, $user_id)
  ? 'https://www.example.com/images/manager_avatar.png'
  : 'https://www.example.com/images/regular_user.png';

If you want to disable avatars altogether change line 30 from

$avatarURL    = Html::getAvatarURL($user, 128);

to

$avatarURL    = null;

Please note that ATS 4 and Joomla 3 itself are in security maintenance mode. Joomla 3's end of life is set for August 17th, 2023. Once Joomla 3 becomes end of life so will all of our software for Joomla 3; we will no longer be updating these old versions. You need to start migrating your site. The end (of life for Joomla 3 and its extensions) is nigh :) 

The code above will only work if the manager is a global manager (they have the Support Staff privilege for their group in the component's Options page). If it's only a per-category manager, yes, this won't work.

Sorry, it's been 2 years since I last worked on the front-end of ATS 4. All our development focused has shifted on our Joomla 4 extensions.

Let's change that line to:

$avatarUrl = $this->isManager
  ? 'https://www.example.com/images/manager_avatar.png'
  : 'https://www.example.com/images/regular_user.png';

The isManager property of the view is a flag which tells us if the current user is a manager. There's no need to go through the Permissions helper.

> I made the changes you told me: now the regular user sees everyone's avatars with the user user.png, the Super user or Angel who is Manager, see everyone's avatars with the photo manager.png

Correct! That's what we were trying to do.

> I would switch to Joomla 4 right away, but my template doesn't support it, hopefully the creators of my template will update it to Joomla 4 soon.

It's more than a year and a half since the release of Joomla 4. If an extension (including templates) doesn't support it yet you need to find an alternative, because what you have won't be updated. Don't wait until Joomla 3 becomes end of life in August. It will be too late to start working on a migration.

Remember that Joomla 5.0 will also be released in October (with very small changes to Joomla 4; it's not the end of the world!) but you can't upgrade from 3 to 5 directly. You will have to go 3 to 4 to 5. So it's best to get your site to Joomla 4.2 as soon as possible, upgrade to 4.3 in April 2023, wait a year for everyone to be fully on board with Joomla 5, then upgrade to Joomla 5.1 in April 2024 (Joomla 4.3 will be a Long Term Support release, receiving bugfixes until August 2024 and security fixes until October 2025).

For what it's worth, that's pretty much how we approach our own site. We updated to Joomla 4 after Joomla 4.1 was released. Come Joomla 4.3 in April we'll stick with it for 12 months and upgrade to Joomla 5.1 in April 2024. We'll start working on our software's Joomla 5 compatibility starting April 2023, and on our site's migration plan to Joomla 5 starting October 2023. This gives us enough time to iron out any issues before we need to go live with a new software version or a site update.

> if the developer of the template I purchased does not update my template, can another programmer update it?

Most likely yes, but is it worth the effort?

If your template is based on some third party template framework it might a couple or more versions behind. This means a big migration, a lot of work, and a really big bill (could be in the hundreds or even thousands of Euros). A new template would be a fraction of the price and effort to adapt your site to.

> I need the Super user to have a profile image that I choose and all regular users, another image that I always choose.

The way I read this statement is that all Super Users have image A, and all regular users have image B.

Which of the two groups do you want to have a different image per user?

Then the code I gave you in    Tuesday, 14 February 2023 08:07 EET   does exactly what you want, right?

Now I understand.

Let's follow a different approach.

You can display images based on the user's group and hide the avatars altogether.

To do that that, you need to know the numeric group ID the users belong to. Check the Joomla Users, Groups page to find that out; the numeric ID is displayed in the leftmost column of the Groups list.

Let's say that you have your managers in group number 100 and your regular users in group number 2.

In this case create the files media/com_ats/groups/100.png and media/com_ats/groups/2.png with the image to display for each user.

Normally, this image appears below the username. We want to move it above the user's name and username, and remove the avatar.

Do an override for components/com_ats/tmpl/Posts/threaded_post.blade.php by copying it to templates/YOUR_TEMPLATE/html/com_ats/Posts/threaded_post.blade.php. Change lines 320 to 337 to read:

@section('post-userinfo')
    <div class="ats-post-userinfo">
        @yield('post-user-badges')
        @if($this->isManager)
        <div class="ats-post-userinfo-name">
            {{{ $postUser->name }}}
        </div>
        @endif
        <div class="ats-post-userinfo-username">
            @yield('post-user-username')
            @yield('post-user-timespent')
        </div>
        @yield('post-user-subscriptions')
        @yield('post-user-groups')
        @yield('post-user-tags')
    </div>
@overwrite

By removing the line

@yield('post-user-avatar')

we no longer display they user's avatar. Moving the line

@yield('post-user-badges')

at the top we tell the view renderer to display the user group images at the top of the user information, where the avatar used to be.

You might need some custom CSS to make it look better.

Caveat: if a user belongs in multiple user groups and more than one user groups have images in the media/com_ats/groups folder, the @yield('post-user-badges') line displays all of these images. These images were originally meant to be badges, not avatars. We use something like that on our site: my account has two badges, Akeeba Staff and Manager, whereas Davide's account only has the Akeeba Staff badge.

Upgrade your site to Joomla 4 without uninstalling Akeeba Ticket System.

After upgrading Joomla to version 4 it will see that an update to Akeeba Ticket System is available. Install it.

That's it! We like making things simple 😉

DO NOT BELIEVE THE LIES OF JOOMLA UPDATE. The methodology it uses to determine what is compatible is flawed and results in outright lies. I had explained that to Tobias Zulauf, the developer who wrote this pathetic excuse of a feature, one year before Joomla 4 was released. He didn't listen to me.

Joomla will only report correct information if the latest version of the software is simultaneously compatible with the Joomla version you are currently running (3.10) and the Joomla version you want to upgrade to (4.3). This was feasible around Joomla 4.0 but not anymore. Our latest versions only support Joomla 4 because Joomla 4 introduced a new API. If we didn't rewrite our extensions with the new Joomla 4 API we could never make them compatible with the upcoming Joomla 5.0 in October 2023.

Akeeba Backup 8, Admin Tools 6, and Akeeba Ticket System 4 are compatible with Joomla 4 but not the latest versions. Instead of reporting that, Joomla idiotically claims that they are not compatible with Joomla 4 at all WHICH IS A LIE that has cost us dozens of thousands of Euros. I would have sued OpenSourceMatters Inc (the legal entity of the Joomla project) for loss of profit if it wasn't for the fact that my wife is currently the president of its board and such a thing would be a conflict of interest. Instead, I am working on a plugin which will take over the broken Joomla Update feature and report the correct information.

So, no, you do not have to uninstall our software. Just run MagicEraser before upgrading to Joomla 4 to remove obsolete extensions. After the upgrade Joomla will find updates to all of our extensions, except Akeeba Backup. Install them. For Akeeba Backup just go to Components, Akeeba Backup and follow the instructions printed on your screen.

I don't know most of these extensions in the 003 screenshot, so I will tell you about the ones I do know or have heard of :)

The Akeeba extensions are all safe for the upgrade. I started working on Joomla 4 compatibility with Joomla 4.0-Alpha 2 back in 2017. I kept working on it with every alpha, beta, and release candidate. That's why all our Joomla 3 extensions still work with Joomla 4 without breaking anything. I spent a lot (too much!) time making sure I do my due diligence — and discovered a few bugs, contributed several fixes, and even more missing features to Joomla 4. Give a mouse a cookie… But I digress.

The DJ-MegaMenu does need update. You need to disable it before the upgrade, update it afterwards, and re-enable it. At least that's what I did on the dev site which was using it about a year ago (I am no longer using it).

All of Tassos' extensions need an update. If I recall correctly, his latest versions work on both Joomla 3 and 4. However, it's been a while since I last updated a site with his extensions and even then I was just consulting (read: my wife asked me a couple of questions while she was doing the update), so it's best to ask him.

JCE does work on Joomla 4, but you need to update it before the upgrade. I just did an upgrade (I am working on the plugin I told you about) and the site does have JCE. Once I updated JCE, Joomla stopped complaining and my update did work indeed.

The T3 framework was discontinued about 2 years ago. JoomlArt now has a new framework, T4, which is compatible with Joomla 4. So, at the very least, you will need to uninstall your old template, and the T3 framework. After upgrading to Joomla 4 you can install the new template. This is a truthism for all site upgrades: uninstall your old template before upgrading to Joomla 4. You can't really make a template which is compatible with both Joomla 3 and 4 at the same time. To begin with, the whole CSS and JavaScript system got a massive upgrade on Joomla 4.

Regarding your 005 screenshot, this is a tell-tale sign that a plugin (most likely a system plugin) is incompatible with Joomla 4. In fact, the isAdmin() method it's trying to call was deprecated sometime around Joomla 3.6, about 7 years ago. When I see error messages like that I'm wondering if the developer never paid any attention to the deprecation notices. I guess not.

You can find out which plugin causes the problem by editing your configuration.php file and set public $error_reporting = 'maximum';. Then reload the upgraded site, it will tell you which plugin caused the problem. Go to the database, the #__extensions table, and disable that plugin by setting its enabled column to 0. Reload the site. If you see another error, disable that plugin as well. Rinse and repeat until the backend of the site loads. You can then remove / upgrade / do whatever needs to be done with these plugins.

You have to use PHP 7.4 or later. Our software fully supports PHP 7.4, 8.0, 8.1, and 8.2. Starting this September we will add support for the upcoming PHP 8.3.

You can see that in the Compatibility page on our site.

A white page or a page with a 500 Internal Server Error is, in fact, either a .htaccess issue to a PHP fatal error in disguise.

First, let's see if it is a .htaccess issue. Try renaming the .htaccess file in your site's root to htaccess.bak If there is a .htaccess file in the site's administrator directory, try renaming it as well. If that solves the problem, the issue was with a directive in your .htaccess file. We'd like to recommend you to try removing directives from your .htaccess until you find the one which causes the problem.

If that doesn't help, the error you are receiving is in fact a PHP error in disguise. First, check your server's error logs (not the access logs) immediately after visiting the page which throws the error. There should be an exact description of the PHP fatal error which occurred. Sometimes you can find the error messages in files called error_log or error.log inside the site's root and/or administrator directories. If unsure about the error log location, please consult your host. Most likely the error logs are available in your site's hosting control panel.

If your host does not give you access to the error logs and you have access to the Joomla! administrator area, please log in to your site's back-end, go to Global Configuration, click on the Server tab and set the Error Reporting to Development. Try visiting the problem page again.

If you still get a blank page, edit your configuration.php file and put the following code right after the final closing curly brace ( this is what a curly brace looks like --> } ) but before the closing PHP tag (it looks like ?> that is a question mark and a greater-than sign):

ini_set( 'display_errors', true );
error_reporting( E_ALL ); 

Try visiting the problem page again.

If you still get a white page, please remove the two lines from your configuration.php file. Edit the .htaccess file in your site's root. If you don't have a file named .htaccess create a new one. Beware that htaccess.txt is a DIFFERENT FILE and will NOT work! Add the following to the end of the file:

php_flag display_errors On
php_value error_reporting 32767

and retry loading the problem page.

If you still get a white page, remove the two lines from your .htaccess file. Now, create a file called php.ini with the following content:

display_errors=on
error_reporting=E_ALL

and upload it into your site's root and your site's administrator directory. Retry loading the problem page.

If that fails again, remove the php.ini file and create a file named .user.ini (note that it's dot user dot ini, the leading dot is important) with the contents:

display_errors=on
error_reporting=E_ALL

and upload it into your site's root and your site's administrator directory. Wait for 10 minutes. Waiting is important, .user.ini files do not apply immediately. Retry loading the problem page.

IMPORTANT: Sometimes the error won't show. Edit your configuration.php and find the line starting with public $error_reporting and set it to:

public $error_reporting = 'development';

This instructs Joomla! to enable maximum error, warnings and notices verbosity. In 99.9% of cases it will result in the error messages being shown on the browser.

If you still get a white page, delete the php.ini or .user.ini file your created and consult your host. They have to provide you the PHP error message, file and line it occurs (along with the error's backtrace) themselves.

Please note that if you can not understand what the PHP error message means, just copy and paste it here verbatim so that we can take a look and point you to the right direction.

Based on the interface in your screenshot, it looks like you are using ATS 2.x which was using Bootstrap 2 and which was discontinued in 2018. It does not support Joomla 4. In fact, it does not even support Joomla 3.10.

Well, this is news to me. You said you were using ATS 4.0.8 and I gave instructions based on that.

It now looks like you were using a version at least two major versions behind what you said. No, it cannot be upgraded directly to Joomla 4. We only support upgrades from one major version of our software to the next. We don't support skipping two major versions. Like all software out there, we only support going from one major version to its immediate next.

If you really had ATS 2 on that old site of yours the update process should have been:

• Update ATS to 3.3.1
• Update ATS to 4.0.9
• Update Joomla to 3.10
• Update PHP
• Update Joomla to Joomla 4.3.1
• Update ATS to 5.1.1

All these versions can be downloaded from https://www.akeeba.com/compatibility.html.

You will need to redo the site upgrade from scratch.

I don't understand how you can make so much hard work out of a simple task.

The backend interface you showed me in your earlier screenshot had a top menu with Bootstrap 2 dropdowns. This is an interface style which was only present in ATS 1 and 2. We abandoned that style in 2018 when we released ATS 3 using Akeeba FEF, our front-end framework.

ATS 2 predates Joomla 3.10 and Joomla 4. It is not compatible with either of these.

We released ATS 3 in October 2018. This was the first version of ATS to use our backend (PHP) framework FOF and our then-new frontend (CSS and JavaScript) framework FEF. It was compatible with Joomla 3.8 and 3.9 only.

ATS 4 was released in March 2021. It still uses Akeeba FEF and is compatible with Joomla 3.9, 3.10, and Joomla 4 for the purposes of upgrading your site.

So, to upgrade your site to Joomla 4 you need a. Joomla 3.10 and b. ATS 4.

As I said, you cannot skip major versions. You cannot go directly from ATS 2 to ATS 4. You need to go from ATS 2 to ATS 3 and then from ATS 3 to ATS 4. That's why we have the first two bullets point in my instructions:

• Update ATS to 3.3.1
• Update ATS to 4.0.9

At this point, you still have Joomla 3.9 — which is what you claimed to have. We need to get you to Joomla 4. You cannot go from Joomla 3.9 to 4.x directly. You have to first go to Joomla 3.10.

However, you also have an old version of PHP. So, after upgrading to Joomla 3.10 and before upgrading to Joomla 4 you need to upgrade PHP as well. Hence the next three steps in my instructions, in this order:

• Update Joomla to 3.10
• Update PHP
• Update Joomla to Joomla 4.3.1

At this point you are on Joomla 4.3.1 with PHP 8 and ATS 4.

However, as I said, ATS 4 is not the latest version for Joomla 4. After we released ATS 4 I rewrote ATS from scratch. I used Joomla 4's brand new MVC backend framework (instead of Akeeba FOF) and Joomla's built-in Bootstrap 5 CSS framework (instead of Akeeba FEF). We released ATS 5 in February 2022.

ATS 5 does not use FOF. ATS 5 does not ask you to install FOF.

ATS 5 does not use FEF. ATS 5 does not ask you to use FEF. So, by telling me that you were asked to install FEF I knew immediately that you were NOT on ATS 5.

ATS 5 only works on Joomla 4. ATS 5 cannot be installed on Joomla 3. By telling me that you cannot upgrade to ATS 5 you are telling me that you are NOT on Joomla 4.

Remember that updating ATS to 5.1.1 was literally the last point of my instructions:

• Update ATS to 5.1.1

This was intentional. When I give you people instructions I don't just put things in random order. I tell you which order to do things because I know things you don't have to know.

ATS 5 is only compatible with Joomla 4. It won't install on Joomla 3. That's why my point about updating to ATS 5 is after upgrading Joomla 4.

This is really trivial. Are you on Joomla 3.10? Do you have ATS 4.0.9 installed? Great! You can upgrade to Joomla 4. After upgrading to Joomla 4 DON'T DO ANY RANDOM STUFF (LIKE INSTALLING FEF, SOMETHING I NEVER ASKED YOU TO DO!) — JUST UPDATE ATS TO VERSION 5.1.1.

Okay, this is problematic:

If I now uninstall Akeeba backup 8 (old extension that from the message that appears advise to uninstall), the control panel of ATS is no longer shown but that FEF screen that I attached above appears.

I don't know why all this happens, I just report the facts.

Now I have restored everything and left the Akeeba backup 8 version still installed to avoid the problems described above.

Yes, when you uninstall Akeeba Backup 8 it uninstalls FOF and FEF as they are no longer needed in Joomla 4. Yes, I am aware that ATS 4 will tell you to install them because ATS 4 was written for Joomla 3 and its only compatibility target for Joomla 4 was "don't break the site so that people can upgrade to ATS 5".

That's why I told you the very next step is to upgrade to ATS 5 which DOES NOT use FOF and FEF. This is the third time I have to write this.

When you upgrade to ATS 5.1.1 it will not be asking you to install our deprecated stuff.

If I now update ATS to the latest version, it works but I lose the style given to the component because it changes totally.

You are talking about a new major version of ATS which was rewritten from scratch, on a new major version of Joomla which uses a completely different CSS framework for its templates.

We made sure that it looks the same as long as you had made no customisations. As per our documentation, if your frontend template does not use Bootstrap 5 you have to go to ATS' Options (administrator, Components, Akeeba Ticket System, Options) and enable the option to load Custom CSS. The default custom CSS file we ship with ATS 5 makes ATS 5 look as close to ATS 4 as possible under Joomla 4.

If you had made customisations, you need to redo them. That's the idea of a major version. Major versions break stuff. We don't break stuff for fun and giggles. We do that for a good reason. As I explained, that's because we moved to a completely different backend and frontend framework. These frameworks are those maintained by Joomla, not us. If we didn't do that, come Joomla 5 this October we would have been unable to release any software for it and you'd be left with an obsolete site.

I don't want this so my question is simple: can I update ATS to the latest version without losing the changes to the css file of the FEF folder that I have made in recent months?

Absolutely not. For two reasons.

First, you were never supposed to change FEF itself. By doing that, even if we kept our software stuck at ATS 4 it would eventually break your layout, i.e. as soon as we made any small change to FEF itself and released a new version. Core hacks are always a bad idea.

Second, as I mentioned a multitude of times throughout our conversation, ATS 5 does not use FEF anymore. It does not use FOF anymore either. Therefore both the CSS it uses and the way the HTML is produced (view templates) is completely different.

The site with the component update must not change in style..

Going from Joomla 3 to 4 is not an update, it's an upgrade. Going from ATS 4 to 5 is not an update, it's an upgrade.

An update keeps everything working the same way.

An upgrade introduces breaking changes.

When you go from a major version to the next in any kind of software it's an upgrade. You need to plan the upgrades and work through the changes yourself.

Upgrading from ATS 4 to 5 will not lose any of your data BUT it requires work for customising the interface afresh.

Salve,

dal momento che siamo entrambi italiani ho preso in carico io il ticket, in modo da poter parlare più semplicemente.

Vedo che il ticket ha subito diversi step di lavorazione, qual è l'ultimo problema? E' possibile avere il link al sito in modo da controllare quali siano gli errori presenti?

Salve,

grazie mille per gli esempi. Il passaggio dalla versione 3 alla versione 4 di Joomla, così come il passaggio dalla versione 4 alla versione 5 di ATS comportano diversi cambiamenti, sia per quanto riguarda la struttura vera e proprio del codice HTML così come per gli stili CSS.

Raggiungere un risultato esattamente identico è quasi impossibile, però vediamo di avvicinarci il più possibile. Il consiglio che diamo sempre è quello di utilizzare i media e template override. Questo vuol dire copiare i file del componente all'interno del template in uso di Joomla, in modo da non perdere le modifiche effettuate con l'aggiornamento dell'estensione. In Joomla 4 questo è diventato molto più semplice, in quanto all'interno del backend di Joomla è possibile creare gli override iniziali e poi procedere con la personalizzazione del codice.

Personalmente consiglio di procedere a step: per prima cosa rendere il tutto gradevole alla vista (ad esempio riducendo la dimensione dei bottoni e delle label che adesso sono completamente sballati), per poi andare a rifinire il tutto.

Abbiamo un'intera sezione della documentazione dedicata all'argomento, le consiglio di darci un'occhiata: https://www.akeeba.com/documentation/ats-for-joomla/customising-frontend-layout.html

Si esatto.

Salve,

1) Dipende dalle regole di notifica, deve controllare se ci sono degli amministratori esclusi dalle notifiche o solo alcuni manager sono inseriti nella lista di utenti che devono essere notificati

2) Le classi sono responsive, per cui non ci sono classi aggiuntive. Dovrebbe controllare con la console developer per vedere come è possibile arginare il problema.