Installation & Configuration

Before you start with the installation, you need to check the following:

• Make sure the maximum file upload size of your server is greater than the size of the component zipped kit. If not, contact your hosting provider.
• Check directory write/read permissions and adjust them accordingly. chmod for UNIX, Windows ACL for Windows. Or contact your hosting provider.
• If you intend to use the Community Builder integration, install Community Builder before Wall Factory to avoid manual installation of the Wall Posts Tab and Plugins for the Community Builder user profile.
• Always backup your website before installing, updating or uninstalling extensions.

To install Wall Factory, go to Extensions/Extension Manager in the upper menu of Joomla's backend.

Then, in the "Upload Package File" area click on the "Browse…" button and choose the ZIP file from your computer. After doing so, click on the "Upload & Install" button and wait for the installation to finish.

When the installation is finished the following message should appear.

In case you wish to uninstall the component, simply go to Manage, check the Wallfactory Package checkbox and click on Uninstall.

While being free to download and free to use, Wall Factory comes with a variety of features and settings, all these having no restrictions whatsoever.
Go to Components/Wall Factory/Settings to view all the settings and to configure your component.

With Wall Factory users can attach a variety of types of media to their walls:

• Image files (".gif", ".jpg", ".jpeg", ".png")
• Embedded Video
• Mp3 files
• URLs
• Regular files (".doc", ".txt", ".pdf")

This section allows you to enable/disable each available type of media. In case image files are enabled, you can set the maximum width and height of them, keeping a pleasant aspect of your website.

From the Miscellaneous section you can allow guests to view wall posts and even to add posts on those respective walls.
You can Enable bookmarks, this will allow users to share wall posts on various community websites such as Facebook, Twitter or Reddit. To manage these websites go to the Bookmarking page.

With Enable Gravatar users can set as avatar their globally unique one from Gravatar.com.

Enable Router Plugin will change the URLs for walls or posts into short versions such as "wallfactory.com/wall-post" or "wallfactory.com/my-first-post". As the tooltip says, other SEF components/plugins must be disabled in order for the plugin to work correctly and Search Engine Friendly URLs must be enabled.

Select which user title to be displayed on walls, you can choose between Username or Alias.

You can enable or disable Avatars for users and set a maximum size of width and height for them. If enabled, users will be able to access the Avatar tab from Account Settings page and upload an image as their avatar or, to display a Gravatar or CB avatar, if these are integrated and enabled.

Comments section allows you to enable or disable this feature on your website.
In case guests have access to view wall posts you can also choose from here to let them post comments as well. As a better protection against bot spam it is recommended to enable ReCaptcha for guest comments, for this feature to work properly you will need to set up ReCaptcha.

Set up how many Comments per post will be shown, this will not limit the maximum number of comments per posts but will require users to click on View all comments to see the expanded list which contains all the comments on the respective post.

From the Allowed Bloggers tab you can manage which groups of users will be able to create their own walls and with the permission to post content on them.
In case you don't want any restriction on this feature you can toggle Allow all users to Yes.
If set to No, you will need to check the checkboxes for which user groups to be considered as bloggers or to add specific users on the Allowed users field.

Note that disabling this option from a user after he created his wall won't delete it.

In case you have CB installed on your website, Community Builder Integration page allows you to install a plugin for it which will display a Wall Posts Tab within its interface.

Another feature regarding the Community Builder integration is that you can enable Community Builder Avatars. With this enabled, users will also have the option to use the CB avatar on our component, besides the standard avatar upload option and the Gravatar option, if enabled.

With ReCaptcha enabled for guest comments on walls you will protect your website against unwanted bot spam.
To activate it, first you will need to obtain and add the Public and Private keys for it. To obtain them, simply click on the provided link, follow the instructions found on their website and copy & paste the keys on the available fields.

To keep your website civilized and without curses and other inappropriate words, Banned words list page allows you to ban the respective words by adding them on the available text field. When someone uses any of them, the respective word will become censored.

Wall Factory comes with a Notification system which will alert users on various actions:

• New post
• New report post
• New comment
• New report comment

Notifications tab allows you to enable or disable and to change the message layouts for each of them.
While editing the messages or the subject of notifications, you can use shortcuts from the Legend area to add various information such as the username, walltitle, postlink and more, depending on the notification.
In case of new post or new comment you can also enable the notifications for followers and even admin.

The Backup and Restore tab allows you to safely make a backup of all the data found in the database except users' avatars and folders which will require manual backup.
To make a backup, first choose if you wish that the settings and bookmarks' logos to be included in it and then click on Create Backup.
(!) Remember to always test your backups, a broken backup is no good later on.

To restore a backup file click on the Browse.. button and choose the .zip file from your computer, then select if you wish to Append data from the archive to the existing one or to simply erase and replace it.
Click on Restore Backup to begin the process.

On Users page you will find a list of all the active users from your website with specific information such as the amount of posts, how many media files were shared for each type, their status and more.
Clicking on a digit of a media file type will pop-up a window displaying a list of all those files of that respective user.

In case there are many users listed, a Filter is available where you can search for a specific user by adding keywords.
Other filter options found here are to display only the Banned/Not banned users or by the state of their walls, Published/Unpublished.
Sorting can also be applied by clicking on the row of the columns.

In order to see a more detailed view regarding the activity of an user, click on his name to get redirected to a dashboard page containing listings of his latest posts, comments, links, etc.
Clicking on the posted media files allows you to edit their details.

Clicking on an username allows you to edit his wall by changing the title, status or even the owner of it.

Reports page displays lists with the posts and messages that have been reported by users for being offensive.
As an administrator, you can see the reported items and take the appropriate measures by either deleting the posts/comments or the reports.

With our component users are able to share the posts made with all the media files attached to them to various well-known community websites such as Facebook and Twitter or on bookmarking-dedicated websites such as Digg or Delicio.us.
For this feature to be displayed on frontend you will need to enable it first from the General tab.

Bookmarking page is where you can manage the list containing these websites by enabling/disabling them, editing, or adding new ones.

Wall Factory comes with various menu items that can be managed from Joomla's Menu Manager:

• Wall - Shows the public wall, all posts can be found here.
• My Posts - Shows the wall of the logged in user with all the posts made by him.
• New Post - Shows a form where the user can add a wall message along with various types of media files.
• My Friends - Shows a list containing followed blogs and their latest posts.
• My Followers - Shows a list with the ones following the logged in user' wall.
• Account Settings - Shows all the configurable account settings that are available for users.

(!) Documentation based on Wall Factory version 3.0.0