Pixel Point Creative : Templates and extensions for Joomla. 1.5 and 1.7 ready. Join the club or purchase individually.

First off, I am incredibly appreciative of Pixel Point Creative for producing such fine templates and offering such amazing support to those of us still learning Joomla! and such.

I thought I would share my experiences concerning the Script template along with necessary changes after setting up a default Joomla! install for the first time. I figured sharing my experience here would help drive traffic while I sing your praises :) I'm certainly not an expert and make no claims as such. I hope any improvements to my process would be highlighted and shared for the benefit of all. Just wanted to share!

First, I made sure my stock Joomla! installation is up and running. Important! At the moment, I seem to be using version 1.5.15 (available on the top right corner of any page in the backend admin panel).

I installed K2 since that was referenced in the template. You can find it here.

I installed the Script template because I thought it looked very professional! You can view the demo herehere. You can download the template here.

I changed the default logo by going to Admin Menu->Extensions->Template Manager->Script->Logo Type (Image). This will use the "logo.png" in the /templates/script/images/ folder. I'm not sure if there is a better way, but I just renamed the existing logo.png to logo-script.png and then uploaded mine to the same folder as logo.png. I then made sure that the dimensions of my new logo.png were put in the corresponding fields in the same menu where I changed the Logo Type to image.

Next, I worked on the layout! You can reference the module positions here:


I removed everything displaying in the "left" module position. I went to Admin Menu->Extensions->Module Manager and then clicked on the table header "Position" to see all the "left" modules together. I checked the box next to all the appropriate modules and then clicked "Disable". I may go back and re-enable them if I decide to use any of the modules. I guess I could just tell each module not to display on my homepage. Many ways to achieve a desired result!

So far, I have used the "right" module position for my Facebook friend feed (registration required for this specific module, but there are many others). I have appreciated the exposure from Facebook for my website. I typically write an article for my website and then post it on Facebook for increased exposure. I'll often tie in a promotion of some sort related to the article topic in order to encourage comments on the Facebook page.

I discovered that K2 is its own document publishing system. It took me a while to wrap my head around the whole concept of this Joomla! business. In the end, I deleted all the stock content auto-published by Joomla! found in the (non-K2) Article Manager, Category Manager, and Section Manager.

In order for the K2-generated homepage to show up when people visit the website, I needed to point the default "home" menu item to the K2 "home" category. First, I went to Admin Menu->Components->K2->Categories->New to create a new category and named it "home". I chose "published = yes". On the right in the "Parameters" menu under the "Category Item Layout" I changed the "columns for primary" to "1". Under the "Category View Options", I turned off the following: "Title", "Item counter (next to title)", "Description", and "Image". I also turned off "Sub-category blocks" and "Sub-category titles". In the "Item view options in category listings" section, I typed in "70" in the "Introtext word limit" field in order to automatically truncate articles at the 70 character mark and add the "..." (thanks dig814!!!)

After creating the K2 "home" category, I needed to point it at the Joomla! menu by going to Admin Backend->Menus->Main Menu*->New. Under "Select Menu Item Type" go to Internal Link->K2->Item Listings->Categories. Title is "home". Display in "Main Menu". Parent item is "Top". On the right side, choose the category "home". Under the section "Parameters (System)", click "no" to turn off page title and then click "Save" to finish. Just to be sure, make the new menu item the default by checking the box to the left of "home" and then click the yellow star "Default". Voila!

Before I could add content, I created my categories for my top menu (nice job on the Suckerfish menu!!). Go to Admin Menu->Site->Control Panel->(K2) Categories->New. The key here is the "Parent Category" drop down. This allows you to nest a category as a sub-menu item of a higher category. Once you've created one category with all the settings (Parameters) you wish, you can use the "Inherit parameter options from category" to replicate settings easily! Yay K2! I chose to replicate the "home" category for standardization and then go back and change the few I want different.

Now on to making articles (items) for my new home page! I went to the K2 admin page by clicking Admin Menu->Site->Control Panel->Add New Item. Each item is an article that will appear in whatever category you place it in when creating it. It will appear on the home page if you check the "Is It Featured?" box (My home category is set to only show featured items).

After creating a couple items, I messed with the modules in the "user 3", "user 4", and "user 5" positions by going to Admin Menu->Extensions->Module Manager->New and then assigning the custom HTML to the module position I wanted to test it in.


That's all for now! Thanks to everyone at Pixel Point Creative for being such amazing coders and designers!!!


Michael

Michael,

Thanks so much for the in depth steps/review. I hope this will be helpful to others starting out. Joomla is very powerful and coupled with K2 is an amazing way to get a monster website for free. :) K2 does take a little time to wrap your head around. It is extremely powerful and there is a boatload of settings to go through, but once it is setup, it makes adding content SO easy.

We really appreciate all that Joomla and the Joomla community has done for us so we are happy to give back. We are really excited to share our Script template with everyone as we know it will help many Joomla newbies take the plunge. After all, what do they have to lose? Nothing!

PS. If you would post a review on best of Joomla or extensions directory at joomla.org, we would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks

Dan

I posted a "comment" by searching for "pixel point creative" @ joomla.org. It produced one hit. I left my comment there. Since I had to newly register, I think they are filtering my comment through the moderators. I'm not sure how long it will take to show up. I'm not sure where Best of Joomla is or I would post there too :)

Michael

Thanks Michael! We really appreciate it! I am guessing you left a comment for us under the resources section. We also have a presence in the extensions directory and all the links to these can be found at the bottom of the Joomla page. Best of Joomla is at www.bestofjoomla.com and is a great resources for finding joomla stuff. Thanks again!