Create a custom template for Joomla
Page 1 of 4
One of the reasons that encouraged the spread of CMS (Joomla, but not only) in the world of the Internet is undoubtedly the separation between the management of content (articles, post) and the management of the graphic layout of the site.
A user may decide to completely change your look site at any time and this can be accomplished with a few clicks by simply installing a new template (a set of HTML files, CSS and images that make up the look of the site) without, that is, , any changes to the application and its contents.
Currently there are thousands of sites that allow free download of new templates for Joomla, Wordpress, Drupal and other CMS and many are developers who make layouts for every need.
In this article we will see how to make a simple template for Joomla 1.6 (and higher) and how to install it on your site.
A template, as already said, is nothing but a set of files used by CMS to "draw" the contents of the site.
All these files must be stored in a folder with the same name as the template with a well defined structure that we will see.
When you are finished and installed the template, this folder will be automatically copied to the directory:
/ Templates /
present in the root of all Joomla sites and that in fact contains all the installed templates.
Structure of files and folders
Mytemplate call the template that we will create. We create the folder inside mytemplate and create the following structure:
The various files are all text files that can be created and edited with a simple editor such as Notepad. This is the basic structure for a Joomla template you can have in reality much more complex structures.
The file templateDetails.xml
It contains all the information in the template: the date and version, the author's data, data relating to copyright and licensing, list of all files and folders that make up the template and a list of all the "positions "(ie, all modules and components to placeholders) in the template. And 'an XML file and is used during installation and configuration of the template.
The file index.php
And 'the engine of your template.
Inside it defines the structure of the web page, you define how and where the various modules will be used, loading the CSS files and JavaScript required.
The index.php file can also be modified through the administration panel of Joomla.
The CSS directory
It contains all the style sheets of the site. For our simple template just a single file template.css. In general, you can create several different targets css file, for example, the file editor.css is generally used to define classes used in TinyMCE, the default Joomla WYSIWYG editor.
Files template_thumbnail.png
This image is a preview of the template is displayed in the Management styles and templates of the site. Used are generally the size 200x150px.
The index.html file in the various directories are simple HTML pages with no content are inserted to prevent a user can see the list of files in the directory itself.
These files are present in every directory of a Joomla site.
The content can be the following:
<html> <body BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF"> </ body> </ html>
 |
HTML Course
The markup language for the Web Discount -15% until 06/01/2012. |
 |
Course MySQL
Management of open-source database. -15% Discount until 06/01/2012. |
 |
PHP Course
Full course for creating dynamic Web sites. Discount -5% until 06/01/2012. |
