At the Joomla! help site, there is a great article explaining the various functions to be used in a Joomla! template. It gives an explanation of the parameters involved in the mosLoadModules function, which often cause confusion for new template developers. You can either read that article, or if you don't feel like leaving this page, you can continue reading this article, which will explain the same concepts.

When you create a menu with the Joomla! menu manager, a corresponding menu module is automatically created. In the resulting menu module, you will have 3 options for how to display your menu with the "menu style" parameter. The 3 choices offered are vertical, horizontal, and flat list. In this list, there are 2 ways to create a horizontal menu: the right way, and the not-so-right way. In this article, I will explain both ways, and try to persuade you that the right way is the right way. I'll start with the not-so-right way.

Although it can do so much more than manage content, Joomla! is, at its core, a Content Management System (CMS). It is important for aspring Joomla! site developers to have at least a basic understanding of how Joomla! is set up to organize content. Proper content organization can greatly improve the flow and usability of your website. This article is meant to provide that basic understanding, and give steps to successfully organizing your content.

If you use Community Builder (CB) and the CBAuthorBot (the one that makes the author's name linkable to their CB Profile), then you might be interested in this hack. It enables you to display the author's CB avatar at the top of an article with a link back to his or her CB profile. I originally posted it here on the CB website. You can go there for more information, and to see how other people have modified the hack.

Here's the code:

Here is a trick for making your module positions viewable only by unregistered visitors.

There are some powerful programming objects in the Joomla! API that are available to template designers. One such object is the user object, which is accessible with the php variable $my.

It is little secret that Joomla! has a thriving 3rd party developer community.  Any function you can think of is probably already available in one of the many 3rd party extensions. It is sometimes difficult to wade through all of the choices that are out there to determine what you need, so I have put together a short list of components that I feel are must-have components. So, without further adieu, here is my list: