Joomla’s Jomsocial component includes some messaging and invite functions which can be easily misunderstood by novices.  With that in mind I wrote this supplementary FAQ to help understand how it works.

When you install Jomsocial to set up access from your Joomla website you use the menu manager and add a menu button.  Regardless what you call it, the following FAQ is based upon the fact that you have signed up as a member and have access the Jomsocial component of the website. Having logged into the Jomsocial interface:

To write a message to a ‘member’:

1. Select the member’s picture or avatar as it is called
2. Click on “Write Message” underneath the member’s picture
3. In the Compose window that opens enter a subject, some text and click Send
4. The recipient will receive an email notice in their regular email of message.
5. The recipient should log into the social website and select to enter the social componenet, Get Social or The Family Network”, whatever it has been named
6. To the right on the Inbox button of the main menu will be an indicator, probably in red, of a new message.
7. The recipient should click the indicator to access the message and take action on the message.

To add or invite  a ‘member’ to be a friend:

1. Select Social component’s entry link, “The Family Matrix”
2. Select a member’s picture
3. Click on “Add as a Friend”
4. Edit the message and click “send”
5. The recipient will receive an email notification and instructions in the regular email.
6. The recipient should log into the website, click on the red message indicator icon and act upon the friend request – the Approve button will be on the far right.
7. The Friends button/list will now show your new friend.

To invite a ‘non-member’ to be a friend:

1. Select Friends –> Invite Friends
2. Your email will display in the From line and cannot be edited.
3. Enter the email address of your friend choice in the To: input area; to send multiple invites, you separate the email addresses with a comma (carriage returns are optional here).
4. Enter an optional message in the Message area
5. Click “Send Invite”

Success or not? If the message was successfully sent the page will refresh and the form will clear; if not, the form will refresh but the page will not clear. It does not display a system message indicating success or failure.

Comment: This method of inviting friends is “only” intended to be used to invite friends who are not already members. If you attempt to send a message to someone whose email address is linked to a member it unfortunately does not display a failure message telling you that you can’t do this. It will simply refresh the page and not clear the form.

Messaging system requires a cronjob:

The messaging system uses a batch method for sending emails.  It is easy to miss setting up the cronjob that activates the batch.  On your webserver you will need to set up a cronjob which will resemeble the following on a Linux/UNIX operating system:

*/1 * * * * wget -O /dev/null "http://www.$your_webserver.com/index.php?option=com_community&task=cron" > /dev/null

*/1 tells it to run every minute. You can use */5 or perhaps */10, whatever seems reasonable for your needs.

Administrator can monitor the queue:

As an administrator you can monitor the mail queue by selecting: Components –> Jomsocial –> Mail queue

Tags: CMS, invite, Jomsocial 1.6.x, Joomla 1.5, messaging

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 8th, 2010 at 11:40 am by bobmeetin and is filed under CMS (Content Management Systems), CMS - Joomla, Operating system - Linux, Social Media, Website Design & Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.