Chapter 7 [ 177 ] Time for action – create a facebook using the Blog Layout Let's use the Blog Layout to create a small facebook, a few pages presenng the SRUP team: 1. For this purpose, create a few more content pages, each for every one of the SRUP founders. Navigate to Content | Arcle Manager and click on New. Create three arcles in the Who are SRUP? category in the About SRUP secon. In this example, we've used these tles: Ms. Daiping Suraba, Dr. T. Phaedratski, and Dr. A. Fienstein. Create arcles with an intro text, a Read more link, and a main arcle text (you've seen this before in Chapter 4). Download at Wow! eBook WWW.WOWEBOOK.COM Welcoming Your Visitors: Creang Aracve Home Pages and Overview Pages [ 178 ] 2. Create a new menu link to the category page. Navigate to Menus | Main Menu and click on New. In the Select Menu Item Type list, choose Arcle | Category Blog Layout. 3. In the next screen, give the new link a Title (Who are SRUP?). In the Parameters (Basic) secon, select the appropriate category: About SRUP/Who are SRUP?. 4. Click on Apply and click on Preview. So far so good! There's a new link, showing a new category page: 5. As you can see, the default layout is unbalanced. There's a big gap to the right-hand side of the second and third intro text. That's because we have to tell Joomla! how to spread items on the page. In Parameters (Advanced), set Mul Column Order to Across. Download at Wow! eBook WWW.WOWEBOOK.COM Chapter 7 [ 179 ] 6. Click on Apply and then on Preview. The outcome is much beer: 7. The page looks OK, but there's room for improvement. Why should the rst founding member have a wide column and the others a narrow one? Let's divide them evenly over the page. Change the Parameters (Basic) of the Who are SRUP? menu link as follows:  # Leading: 0  # Intro: 3  Columns: 3  # Links: 0 Download at Wow! eBook WWW.WOWEBOOK.COM Welcoming Your Visitors: Creang Aracve Home Pages and Overview Pages [ 180 ] 8. Click on Apply and click on Preview. The following is the new outcome: 9. Looks alright, but the three column layout doesn't t with the overall site design. Let's try one last alternave. Set # Leading to 3, # Intro to 0, Columns to 0, and # Links to 0. Click on Apply and click on Preview. Voila! A simple and clean one column layout: Download at Wow! eBook WWW.WOWEBOOK.COM Chapter 7 [ 181 ] Let's keep it this way. The page looks much more balanced now. What just happened? You've seen some dierent ways in which category pages can show arcle content. You've added a facebook to the Who are SRUP? category by displaying the intro text of these arcles in a category overview page; visitors can click on it to read the full arcle. Have a go hero – add a category description Category content doesn't always speak for itself so you might want to give your visitors a short introducon to a category page. Remember the Category Descripon in Chapter 5? It allows you to show a few descripve lines at the top of any category page. Why not add one to the Who are SRUP? category page? 1. Navigate to Menus | Main Menu and open the Who are SRUP? menu link for eding. In the Menu Item Edit screen, navigate to the Parameters (Basic) secon and make sure Descripon is set to Show. 2. There's no category descripon to display, so let's add a few lines. Navigate to Content | Category Manager and click on the Who are SRUP? category tle to edit the category properes. In the Descripon eld, add some intro text: 3. Click on Save and click on Preview. A short category descripon is displayed: Download at Wow! eBook WWW.WOWEBOOK.COM Welcoming Your Visitors: Creang Aracve Home Pages and Overview Pages [ 182 ] The more menu items you create, the longer and messier the main menu gets. You'll probably want to change the order of menu links—or create submenus to beer arrange the long list of menu links. Don't worry, we'll get to building and customizing menus in Chapter 8. Showing full articles on a category overview page So far, you've seen how you can show intro texts and links to arcles on a category page. However, you can also use category pages to show a list of full arcles. In fact, this is probably why this layout is called a Blog Layout. A typical page on a weblog site consists of a number of short arcles ordered by subject or by date. Here's an example of a category page showing three full arcle texts: Download at Wow! eBook WWW.WOWEBOOK.COM Chapter 7 [ 183 ] To ac hi eve th is i n Jo om la!, you use a category pa ge like th e on e you created j ust before. To sh ow f ul l arcle s instead of intro texts, ch an ge the ar c le texts t he ms el ves. N avigate to Content | Arcle Manager and select the arcle you need to edit. In the editor screen, delete the red doed line indicang the separaon between intro text (with a Read more … link) and the rest of the text. This will tell Joomla! not to split the arcle in two parts, and thus, on any overview page it will show the full thing instead of just its intro text. Have a go hero – experiment with Blog Layout settings Just like the Front Page Blog Layout, the Secon and Category Blog Layout oers a litany of sengs that allow you to adjust the target page. You can set them trough Menus | Main Menu | [name of link to secon or category page]. The Component and System Parameters are for the most part the same as the ones you've seen when seng the Front Page Blog Layout preferences. See the secon Have a go hero – Try out the Front Page sengs earlier in this chapter for a full lisng. Just the two rst Parameters are specic for Secon or Category Blog Layouts. Under Parameters - Basic you select the Secon or Category you want to show, and you have the opon to add show a secon or category Descripon and a Descripon Image at the top of the secon or category overview page. The second type of overview page: Lists Compared to the Blog Layout, the List Layout provides a simpler view of secon or category contents. Instead of a series of intros and links, the visitor is shown only a number of links to categories and/or arcles. The following is an example of a Secon List page in the default Joomla! installaon, a lisng of four categories in the FAQs secon: Download at Wow! eBook WWW.WOWEBOOK.COM Welcoming Your Visitors: Creang Aracve Home Pages and Overview Pages [ 184 ] Creating Section Lists If you've already created links poinng to Blog Layouts, creang a link to List Layout will seem very familiar. Navigate to Menus | Main Menu, click on New and select the appropriate Menu Item Type: Category List Layout or Secon (List) Layout. Provide the necessary details (select the target category or secon and type a link tle) and you're done. Time for action – change a Blog Layout to a List Layout To se e the capabilies of the List Layout, let's convert a Blog Layout link you created previously to a List Layout, both targeng the Acvies secon. 1. Navigate to Menus | Main Menu. Click on Acvies to edit the menu item. 2. In the Menu Item [Edit] screen, click on the Change Type buon: 3. In the Change Menu Item screen, select Internal Link | Secon | Secon Layout. A Secon List shows no arcle contents; it just presents a list of categories as hyperlinks. 4. Click on Save. Done! Click on Preview to view the home page of your site; click on the Acvies link. What just happened? With just a few clicks you have created a secon page that displays a list of hyperlinks to categories instead of a series of teaser texts. Clicking on a category tle reveals another intermediate page, a list of arcle tles. Download at Wow! eBook WWW.WOWEBOOK.COM Chapter 7 [ 185 ] In this example, the Acvies menu link shows a Secon List of two categories. When the visitor clicks on the Lectures link, the Lectures category contents are shown as a list of arcles. The visitor can even use the Filter eld (a search box) to nd the desired arcle. The List Layout is useful for secons or categories that are crammed with arcles. It provides a quick overview, allowing visitors to scan or search for arcle tles. You might consider using List Layouts on a site with many arcles on related subjects, such as elaborate FAQ secons or large numbers of arcles in a secon with product reviews. Lists enable visitors to nd informaon they search for fast. It's not really suited to aract casual surfers to explore the site's content. For that purpose you can use the Blog Layout. Have a go hero – undo! In a site with much content, the List Layout can help your visitors search category and arcle tles. However, in this case, this layout doesn't really do the trick. It doesn't look very inving—your site visitors are not likely to click through on an empty page with just a few links to another page with again just a few links. Luckily, you can easily revert your acons. Just navigate back to the Main Menu, click on Acvies again and change the Menu Item Type back to Secon Blog Layout. In Joomla!, choosing and changing the layout of content overview pages is very easy; it's always possible to reconsider or adapt the layout to the changing contents of your site. Download at Wow! eBook WWW.WOWEBOOK.COM Welcoming Your Visitors: Creang Aracve Home Pages and Overview Pages [ 186 ] Customizing lists: Exploring Section List Layout parameters List Layout pages have less parameters than Blog Layouts. To change the sengs, navigate to Main Menu | [name of menu link to the secon]. Parameters (Basic) Under Parameters (Basic) you can set how you want the items to be arranged on the secon page. Secon Select the secon you want to show. Descripon, Descripon Image Do you want to show a secon descripon and an image at the top of the secon overview page? The following example shows an introductory text on the Acvies secon: To add the Descripon (or its image) itself, navigate to Content | Secon and edit the appropriate secon. Secon Select the secon you want to show. Category List - Secon Select Show to display the Categories in the secon list. Empty Categories in Secon Choose Hide if you don't want to display empty categories (which are dead- end roads for your visitor). # Category Items Select Show to display the number of category items (arcles). Category Descripon Select Show to display a descripon below each category tle. To add a Category Descripon, navigate to Content | Category Manager | [category name]. Download at Wow! eBook WWW.WOWEBOOK.COM . intro text (with a Read more … link) and the rest of the text. This will tell Joomla! not to split the arcle in two parts, and thus, on any overview page it will show the full thing instead of. default Joomla! installaon, a lisng of four categories in the FAQs secon: Download at Wow! eBook WWW.WOWEBOOK.COM Welcoming Your Visitors: Creang Aracve Home Pages and Overview Pages [ 184 . Menu, click on Acvies again and change the Menu Item Type back to Secon Blog Layout. In Joomla! , choosing and changing the layout of content overview pages is very easy; it's always possible