Monthly Archives: January 2011

Favourite Extensions for Joomla

The exentension I always make sure to install on my Joomla websites are:

Kunena (Best forum extension)
uddeIM (Best private message extension)
Extended menu module (Best menu module)

Then something for google webmaster tools and google analytics. I will get back to you on this.

How to add a style sheet property to a sub element

Sometimes, for reasons that elude me, you can not use a class or an id for an element placed within another element that already uses a class or an id. To get around this you must define the element you want to style in your style sheet as a sub element of the principal class or id.

For example, if you want to have an image within a div and you want both the div and the image to use style sheet defined properties, then your style sheet should look like this:

.div {
define properties for the div
}

.div img {
define properties for the image within the div
}

You could also use id instead of class and it would then look like:

#div {
define properties for the div
}

#div img {
define properties for the image within the div
}

PayPals dispute system is disputable

A customer recently lodged a PayPal dispute wanting a refund. The funds associated with the transaction were locked and my paypal balance turned negative as a result. I topped up my balance to slightly above zero in order to avoid any problems. Then it was the matter of resolving the dispute.

This should have been straight forward but when I tried to refund the transaction via the disputes screen, PayPal stated that it could not be refunded because I did not have enough funds on my PayPal account. So here is how it works: PayPal locks all funds associated with a disputed transaction and unless you have additional funds on your paypal account, you can’t refund the disputed transaction. A totally ludicrous system.

What I had to do was ask the customer to cancel the dispute so that I, in turn, could refund the transaction. The customer would have been better off not starting the dispute in the first place for it certainly did not help him get his money back. PayPal’s dispute system clearly has the principal purpose of endowing PayPal themselves with more liquidity for the time being. The idea is not to help buyers and sellers resolve anything.