A new Joomla Blog Template that stands out

Joomlart.com released a new template called JA Uvite and it is really one of the greatest templates I have seen that you can use on a Joomla based Weblog.

The templates features some module’s in its footer that you could use for Related items, Recent posts and even for recent comments if you have a Joomla comment component and modules installed.

A great homepage setup like in their example makes this template one of a kind. I really like te colors and the way the modules are placed though out the page.

Joomla Blog Template

You can download the template if you are a member of the Joomlart template club, membership includes not only this template, but at the moment you have access to 60 others and more to come!

Which I think is a great deal for the great looking templates the put out every month.

Giving your Joomla Blog section a different Template

Did you know you can assign different templates to different sections that are called on by your Joomla menu?

Let’s say you want your Joomla Blog categories to have a different Template then the rest of your website, how would you do  this?

First you have to create a menu item that holds your section, or the categories like you did in Creating your Blog Menu 

Now go to “Site” -> “Template manager” -> ” Site Templates” and there select the template you want to use.
Then click the “Assign” button in the upper right menu of the screen.

Now you can select the menu item(s) that should show the different layout.

After that, you should see something linke the screen below.

Go to the Frontpage of your website, and try the link yourself, look if it works…it does…!
If you want to reverse the process, simply push assign again and choose the top choice “None”.

So, where could you run into trouble and how to fix it…. for this to work, you should select two (or more) templates that have the same modules like ” left”, “right” end other positions you want to use, since you can only assign a module to one position.

If you have a template that works the wrong way, you could try to chance position calls in the index.php of the template (via the HTML editor in your template manager) .
For example, your want your menu to appear in “left”, but your new Blog template only has a ” right” column.
Go into the Blog template HTML and simply change “right” into “left” and see how that works out.

I know, it is so simple, you just don’t think about it this way… 

Putting your Joomla Blog set up on the Frontpage

I have set up an example Blog to let you see some of the nice components you can read about at the Joomla Blog Components page

Especially with the mojoBlog component as the frontpage of the website.

To get the mojoBlog, or any other component, to load on the frontpage instead of the Joomla frontpage you have to do two things.

First, create a menu item linking to the component.
Second place this menu link in the main menu above the Frontpage item!

The first menu item of the mainmenu is always the one that shows up on your website.

So, here is the example (in Dutch) with the Red Evolution Scrapbook template. De Joomla Blog

Building a Better RSS Feed for you Joomla Blog

If you have worked with Joomla, you know about its syndication function, right?

If not, go publish the module called “Syndication” but most likely you hae seen it on the Frontpage after a new installation of Joomla!

Click on the RSS 2.0 icon and look how it turns out…. o, and the articles you see there are ONLY from the frontpage!
Here are some screen shots of you standard Joomla Syndication option.

 

As you can see, there are no layout options, no images, just text..
Why, becouse the standard Joomla syndication components strips all html coding from your articles… so you beautifully crafted pages from you Joomla blog gets scrabeld to just text.
And it takes only articles that are on the frontpage.

Improving your Joomla Blog Feeds

But there is help, via a great component called DS-Syndication!

DS-Syndication is installed like a normal component and comes with some great features, like a button maker for your RSS Icons, but there is a lot more that this component does.

Like giving you the oppertunity to create feeds for each section or categorie, or bundeling more sections or categories end even create a feed for a section and than exclude a categorie… oké this might be a little overwhelming I guess.

So lets take a look at some screen shots of this component:

Like there is the Button maker, which is Fun, but not why you should use this component:

Are there is also a Ping manager and a Ping functionality build in, Ping is just ping…

Setting up the good stuff for your Joomla Blog

Creating Your own Blog category Menu

To separate your Blog form the rest of your Joomla based website, you should give it his, of her, own Menu module.

To do this you simply create a new Menu Module.
You can do this by going into your Administrator panel and choose Menu -> Menu Manager, you now see als the menu’s that are already in the system.

Click new, and Fill the two fields with the text of your choice, but please don’t use just Blog ! because this could get you into problems with some Sef components…

If you think your done, think again… the module is created, but not active yet.
You need to publish the module via the Module menu, Site Modules that is also where you decide to give it a place on your Site front-end.

As you can see, there are several options for you menu, just like all the other menu options.

From here on it is your choice on how to put the categories in from you Blogging section.
You did create a Blog section and categories? Otherwise read the beginning of the Blog categorie post again.

Create tables, or Blog layouts, within the menu as you see fit, but please be consistent enough for you site visitors!

Starting with you Blog section on the Frontpage

What if you really just want to use Joomla for Blogging… you don’t want to start with the standard Frontpage!

No, you want to show your your Blogging section and the latest Blog content from different categories, wouldn’t that be great?

And it is possible, with just one menu item, in the main menu…

Create a new menu item in the Main menu and link it to a Blog section choice, select all the Blogging categories to show and set the layout values you want to use.

Now move the just created menu item up the menu ladder until it is in first position , above Home!

Check the preview of your site and see how Joomla uses the First item in the main menu to start your site with…
You Blog section just as you wanted it.

For your menu, you get something like the menu below, where your visitors can directly go to their Blog category of intrest.

Technorati Tags: Blog, blogging, Joomla, layout