Introduction

In this video we will take a look at how Better Trash will improve your workflow when dealing with trashing items, accessing the trash and emptying the trash.

To show you what it does, we'll first look at how Joomla currently deals with trash.

  • Let's take the articles list as an example. However, this applies to all the different list views we find in Joomla that can be trashed - such as categories, menu items and modules. We'll just trash these 2 articles. This is pretty easy. Just select them and click on Trash.
  • Ok, let's say we want to permanently delete these items. We want to empty the trash. How do we get there? For people new to Joomla this can be a head scratcher. Also if you don't work with the Joomla administrator every day, this doesn't come naturally. Do we click on the Trashed button again? No, that just throws an alert. So, here is what we need to do: Click on the Search Tools button. Then click here on the status selection and choose Trashed from this list. That takes some thinking power and multiple clicks every time we want to get here.
  • Ok, what next? We want to permanently remove these trashed items. Let's click this 'Empty trash' button, since that's what we want to do. No, we first need to select items. We'll select all items and click the button again. Yes, that works.
  • And now we can exit the trashed items list. But how do we do that? We can click this select status field again and select 'All' or select the top "select status" option OR we can click on the 'Clear' button. Clicking the clear button will do.

Well, as you can see this workflow is a bit awkward at best. Joomla makes us think about stuff we shouldn't have to think about and makes us search and click way too many times.

Now let's take a look at how this workflow changes when we have Better Trash installed.

You can view the Better Trash installation video to see how to install it.

We now have the latest version of Better Trash installed, which at the moment is version 1.0.0. And what you see here is a Joomla 3.7.3 setup. If you are using newer versions, things might look a bit different.

Full description / showcase

Let's get back to the workflow.

  • Here we see the articles list again. Let's trash a few items. This process doesn't change with the Better Trash plugin installed. Just select the items and click on the Trash button.
  • But now, when we want to view those trashed items and recover or delete them permanently, with Better Trash installed, we can simply hit the Trash button again, without having any items selected.
  • It's as easy as that. Now we're in the trashed items list.
  • To delete all these trashed items, we no longer need to select any of them first. We simply click on the 'Empty trash' button.
  • And there you have it, all items trashed and deleted permanently with just a few clicks!
  • There are also a few little extra gems Better Trash provides. First off, this red alert box makes it clear we are in the trash view. It also has this 'Exit trash' button so we don't need to think about what to do to get back to the normal list.
  • Another little "extra" Better Trash does is this: Now that we have no items left in the trashed list, this 'Empty trash' button gets disabled. So no useless alerts about having to select items when there is nothing to select!
  • And thirdly, we also have that extra 'Exit trash' button up here. We just hit this button, or the one down here (= in the alert box). And look, we are back to the normal article list.

Recap

As you can see, Better Trash greatly improves your workflow when working with deleted items.
No more searching for hidden fields and extra useless clicks.

Let's head over to the installation video to see how easy it is to get Better Trash installed.