Joomla! How-To's: Templates

How to add a JomComment comment counter to your Joomla!-powered blog

Written by Cory | January 20, 2009 | (13)

As promised, here is an article about one of the things I learned while upgrading How To Joomla to Joomla! 1.5. I have been using JomComment on How To Joomla for quite a while. You may have noticed that besides having the usual "Add Comment (2)" link at the end of each article introduction, I have also added a comment counter and link along with the "Written by...," date, section, and category, as shown in this image:

With the ability to override Joomla!'s core content output in a Joomla! 1.5 template, you can do virtually anything within your template. This tutorial demonstrates how to use template overrides to insert a JomComment comment counter anywhere you want to add it in your articles.

How to change the administrator template in Joomla! 1.5

Written by Cory | October 13, 2008 | (6)

One of the greatest things about Joomla! is the ability to customize anything you want. It even enables you to change the template that you use for the administrator back end of your site, just as easily as you can change the template for the front end of your site. The default template for the Joomla! 1.5 administrator is the culmination of countless hours of design work by Andy Miller, and it provides a great interface for managing your site. However, the brilliant minds behind Joomla! recognized that there would be possible reasons for modifying the look of the administrator interface, so they used the same template system for the back end as they use for the front end. Read on to see how to change the administrator template.

How to Display Your Page Title in Your Template - Joomla! 1.5

Written by Cory | June 05, 2008 | (92)

In October 2006, I wrote a how-to for displaying your page title within your Joomla! 1.0 template. Since the release of Joomla! 1.5, I have gotten many requests for an article explaining how to do this in Joomla! 1.5. Here is how you do it...

How to determine which page you are on from within a Joomla! 1.5 template

Written by Cory | April 17, 2008 | (22)

One thing I often need to do while developing a template is change certain parts of the template depending on which page I am on. For example, let's say I am developing a template for a site that runs Virtuemart, and I want to have 3 columns on every non-Virtuemart page, and 2 columns on every Virteumart page. A solution that I often like to use is to make the column "collapsable" when the value of "option" is "com_virtuemart". When "option" is equal to "com_virtuemart", that simply means that the Virtuemart component is loaded.

Blank Joomla! 1.5 Template

Written by Cory | April 03, 2008 | (13)

Today I created a blank template for Joomla! 1.5. My main purpose for creating the template was to give myself a basis for creating future templates, since it contains the basic necessary files for creating a template. This template loads the component and the "debug" module position. There are no CSS styles in the template.css file, but the file is referenced in the index.php file. The template is released under the GPL, so feel free to use it however you want in accordance with the GPL.

Click here to download the template.