Home page articles layout

Hi, I haven't dealt with Joomla in a few years and it's gotten a lot more complicated than I remember.

I'm trying to setup the Game Magazine template to my liking. I'd like to have something like this on the homepage, in the main content section.



But I don't know what module to make it out of. Is it possible with the News Show Pro module? Do I need to find a module somewhere? Or is it something I can create with options already in Joomla?

If it's possible with the current modules I don't know what files to edit to achieve that look. Don't care about many specifics about it except that layout...with the text beside the image and a read more button.

What is already on the template has the text underneath the image and I want to get it beside the image.

Thanks, and sorry if it's something simple.

Do you want module or k2 style as you can do this in K2 category layout, it might just need little customization in html layout.

Yeah I should have mentioned I wanted to do this with K2 articles.
So it is possible to edit some of the K2 files to get this layout on the homepage only and then different layouts in different areas of the website ie. categories page. Or would that make every category view across the entire site use the same layout?

You can use different template for category layout while creating categories or menu item type K2 categories.

How this works is as follows.
Template folder has following html style overrides for components.

Code: Select all

templates/gk_game_magazine/html/com_k2/templates/default/


We can create a new template folder by copying and renaming this default folder to lets say "newstyle"
so we end up having following.

Code: Select all

templates/gk_game_magazine/html/com_k2/templates/default/
templates/gk_game_magazine/html/com_k2/templates/newstyle/


Now this "newstyle" can be selected in when creating K2 categories and or when creating K2 menu to K2 categories.

Now all you need to do is edit below file and create the layout you require.

Code: Select all

templates/gk_game_magazine/html/com_k2/templates/newstyle/category.php
templates/gk_game_magazine/html/com_k2/templates/newstyle/category_item.php


Let me know if you need help in editing.

Thanks for that, I appreciate the quick help. I'll be working on it after this post.

Just wanted to ask, with all of this category editing, does that mean I have to display one specific category on the front page?

What I'm looking to do is just to display the newest articles published on the site. So in that main content section just have 5 or 10 of the absolute newest published articles from all categories.

As well, once finished editing the files accordingly, to actually get it on the homepage when I create a new module right? Is it a 'K2 Content' module? If so, is editing the category files still what I'd be looking for?

No, if you just want to display 5 or 10 items in homepage, then module is a better choice.

See following link for our News Template demo site and see "Latest News" module which is a News Show PRO module. Just need to add read more button, replace title with date which is a data order in module settings.

http://demo.gavick.com/joomla25/news/

That seems much easier, although I will be needing to edit the category files afterwards to display them like this in the category section too.

This is where I've got so far, I still can't seem to get everything in the right position. I've been playing around with the order but it keeps dropping the text below the image.

http://oi42.tinypic.com/ehm9vq.jpg

I do have questions about it too once it's fitting together properly like changing image size, and adding a real read more button...and putting it in a better position as this one doesn't like to go where I want it

Also it seems to keep the < > navigation icons at the bottom of the module.

Ok so this is what I've gotten it to with some fiddling.

http://oi40.tinypic.com/5pfxoy.jpg

With the circled text. Is there a way to keep all the text in the block over on the right without it spilling under the image WITHOUT limiting the words/characters?

With the red blocks on empty space. Is there a way to make that gap between title and published smaller?

Some little things I still need to figure out are adding a real read more button instead of just text, and is it possible to add the K2 rating to this section?

Thanks again, sorry to ask so much!

Some problems I didn't notice earlier, I have this module published in the mainbody position and it's breaking other modules. I've attached 2 screenshots of what I mean.

By default these 2 areas I've marked have content in them. When I publish the news modules I've been trying, it makes the content in these modules invisible....the links are still there I can mouseover them but I can't see them. If I un-publish the news module the content comes back.

http://oi42.tinypic.com/nqok90.jpg

http://oi40.tinypic.com/j6ob2t.jpg

In the 2nd image you can see the dark block footer has extended quite a bit. I think that's a product of the modules being broken.

If you can post a link to your website then I can check html structure.

See you around...

I was able to get it to work by just using the GK4 version of the module. Unless there's an easy way to upgrade everything to GK5 I think I'll probably just stick to using 4.

I still want to figure out how to put a read more button in there. Or have the Read More text have a highlighted background or something to make it seem like a button rather than just text floating there.