New Joomla! Template....
TY2U.com News
But this time it is just for my site :) I thought it was about time I did something so I cleaned the site up and gave it a nicer design that hopefully will help people find what they need easier.
I am going to add some new free Joomla! templates in the near future but for now if you need any help with anything or find any bugs with this site please use the Contact form to contact me and I will do the best I can to help out.
Soon to come... a Joomla template store with top quality Joomla! templates!
Professional Joomla! Template Released
Template Releases
Comproleen is a very versatile Joomla! template which supports many collapsing module positions and menus.
This adaptable Joomla! template will stretch out to the full width of the template (780 pixels) when there are no modules published into the left, right, user5 or user6 module positions. These positions make up the left side column.
This is the first Open Source release of Comproleen. This version is purple. There will be several other colors in the very near future so stay tuned!
This Joomla! template is licensed under the GNU/GPL license.
Top Authors Module 2
TY2U.com News
That's right... Another version of the Top Authors Module for Joomla!
This version includes brand new features and is slimmed down and completely rewritten.
Features include:
- Displays how many articles users have posted.
- Choose how many authors to display.
- Show their real name or their username.
- Sort by the author name, or the number of articles they have published.
- Sort the list in ascending or descending order.
- You also can change the "Articles" text which shows.
- There is the ability to set a class suffix.
- Choose whether to show users who have no articles published.
You can download this module in the downloads section of this website.
Joomla Template SEO
Joomla Template Tutorials
Joomla Template SEO Techniques
I am seeing many people mention that SEO is in the hands of the Joomla template designer. Well being a Joomla template designer I can definitely see what you are talking about and it is true to an extent. However it still has very much to do with the core of Joomla itself, the components and modules and how they are all coded since they will be displayed through the template. It is a group effort and that is what Joomla is all about.
When creating a Joomla template I like to make a simple as possible of a skeleton for all those other things which will be displayed through the template and keep it as sleek and steady as possible.
To do this there are a few things to take into consideration. One of these things is the module load styles you can use to call the Joomla module into the template. Joomla also uses the patTemplate system but I like to do it the old fashioned way still.
To learn more about the patTemplate system for Joomla see this page:
http://help.joomla.org/content/section/21/182/
To learn more about module load styles and other aspects of Joomla site creation, be sure to visit the following URL's:
The Joomla Developer Manual
http://help.joomla.org/content/section/12/125/
This is very useful for anyone who is looking to design templates or may already be doing so. There is also other information here for developers. It will be updated as Joomla evolves and things are changed or added as I have witnessed so far.
Note the mosLoadModule $style loading parameters.
http://help.joomla.org/content/view/33/125/
Here are the template standards which will be added to and modified in time.
http://help.joomla.org/content/view/493/125/
Also, from my experience, a search engine may not scan and rank your full page if it is simply too long. So if you put all the links at the bottom and the user decides to put too much text on it, the search engine doesn't seem to give those sites any ranking based on your sites ranking and they are not associated as heavily. This is where you must decide on the template arrangement.
If you decide to use tables, they can sometimes be useful when used properly, as discussed in the template standards section link above, but they are not usually required due to so many different tags and being hard to debug. They just don't seem very search-engine-friendly.
You can sometimes put an extra <td></td> in at the start of the <tr> like this:
<table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" align="center">
<tr>
<td></td>
<td width="50%" rowspan="2" valign="top">
<?php mosMainBody(); ?>
</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="25%" valign="top">
<?php mosLoadModules ( 'right', -3 ); ?>
</td>
<td width="25%" valign="top">Some ads can go here</td>
</tr>
</table>
That is just an example of a table that moves the main body of the site closer to the top of the page so search engines are more likely to crawl it.
Otherwise, if you want a tableless design in your Joomla template, you would just use div tags in the right order and float them appropriately with css like this:
index.php
<div class="outer">
<div class="inner">
<div class="main_outer">
<div class="main_inner">
<?php mosMainBody(); ?>
</div>
</div>
<div class="col_outer">
<div class="col_inner">
<?php mosLoadModules ( 'right', -3 ); ?>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
template_css.css
.outer {
width:700px;
margin:auto;
}
.inner {
padding:10px;
width:680px;
}
.main_outer {
float:left;
width:500px;
}
.main_inner {
padding:10px;
width:480px;
}
.col_outer {
float:right;
width:200px;
}
.col_inner {
padding:10px;
width:180px;
}
Take a look at the code above.
See how there is an inner and an outer for each unit in the template? This allows for padding to keep things away from the edges without breaking other parts of the template.
If you add in a <div class="col_top"></div> just below <div class="col_outer"> you will be able to insert a top area where you can have a heading or a graphic image. I like to use that for a rounded corners graphic at the top of the table in some Joomla templates that I design. It seems like the best way for me to get it to show properly in both FX and IE. There are some different ways of achieving this effect but this is the one I find the most stable for me. It is also a way to add a top or bottom graphic to the full template itself as well, and can be used to round its corners off too.
Do you understand the concept I am showing you here with this very simple template outline? It allows for several things.
- Your template is serving the main body first before the side column. This way, if you have a lot of things in the side column or a long article in the body, the search engine can still get a hold of the content on the page first and that is a good thing because it will eat more words and spit out more traffic.
- The outer-inner concept allows for a method of padding the content away from the outer edges of the boxes. If done properly this can protect your template from a whole lot of breaking due to padding, border and margin issues for cross browser compatibility.
- No tables! The absence of tables for the main layout is a very good thing for the newer standards being implemented within Joomla template design.
Once you create a Joomla template that meets the Joomla standards, validates (http://www.w3.org), loads quickly, uses tables properly or not at all, puts the relevant content first, and looks good in at least FireFox and Internet Explorer you just might have something great on your hands. Sounds easy, right?
For more about Joomla SEO you may want to upload this patch to Joomla.
Read up on it at their site and learn the benefits of getting it on your Joomla install and watch your site rise in the ranks!
More to come soonâ?¦ Enjoy!
Learn what you need to do what you want.
Ryan
Date Module for Joomla
TY2U.com News
I wrote this tiny module becuase I couldn't find one that showed the date where I wanted it. It simply shows the date using mosCurrentDate() which is a PHP function in Joomla to display the current date. Many Joomla templates use this to display the date.
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