Understanding Joomla Template Positions

thanks for this

jansie — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 02:37:44 +0100

this seems to be the best description of joomla module positioning yet.

Wonderfulllllllll :)

Deepak Bhakoo — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 02:25:57 +0100

Yes i agree with Jansie. This is simply cool. And i understood so easily. I have learnt how to work with readymade things with Joomla :D but this has taught me really well that how i can extend my knowledge with it. Currently working on my site todaysfunda.com and this tutotial really has helped me figure out things with it. Thanks again :)

bad example

bilal — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 06:21:55 +0100

pay attention to your site!, i cant read the article because the modules on the right are overlapping onto the content..... please advise/ sort out Thanx

Problem Fixed

DART Creations — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 07:34:10 +0100

We have a wide layout resolution, so we tend to forget that other people have lower resolutions. Please excuse the oversight.

GOOD

luo — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 02:50:03 +0100

I think,that this is really good instructions to add some new module to the joomla CMS. Thank you..

Thanks

Kristie — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 09:45:25 +0100

This is a great explanation. I\'ve been wondering about this, and I\'m off to go try it!

I\'m still missing some fundam

Dan — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 03:11:19 +0100

I guess I just don\'t understand what part of that code \"positions\" the module. For example. What if you want to create a bottom module, or move a module? That\'s what I\'m looking for and I can\'t seem to understand it.

Mdoule positions - response to

DART Creations — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 04:52:09 +0100

Dan, when creating / modifying a template position, you need to change the index.php of the template (template//inde.php. This php file is the file which is used to create the "look" of the page, i.e. where a position will be loaded. This is determined by normal HTML / CSS positioning rules. E.g. if you want to create a bottom module, you need to change the HTML of the index.php such that you create a new placeholder (using divs or otherwise) in the page. This would then be replaced by the such that the modules assigned to positionxx are loaded in place of the modLoadModules statement.

Gr8

nirav — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 06:21:24 +0100

The best article i found in this context !!!!!!!

dimensions

sing1ejack — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 07:48:41 +0100

So what defines the dimensions of the space that a module occupies? The module itself? Or is it specified a template file?

dimensions

DART Creations — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 11:13:11 +0100

sing1ejack, the space occupied by the modules should be defined the CSS styles which the modules is using. This means that, the template will not be \"hard-coding\" the size and ensure that either the module, or the CSS styles of the template determine the size that is occupied.

for 1.5?

mike — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 12:50:19 +0100

Hello, I\'m curious, has this format changed in any way for 1.5? I notice the presence of alot of these types of entries now: where jdoc seems to have replaced the mosloadmodules and the position seems to be defined by \'name=\"right\"\' Is this accurate? Thank you for this overview... I, too, was confused as to the usage of positions.

for 1.5 - continued

mike — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 13:48:02 +0100

Oops.. looks like the code was parsed out in my last comment... here\'s the code without the brackets... jdoc:include type=\"modules\" name=\"right\" style=\"xhtml\" Hopefully this will work.

For 1.5

DART Creations — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 00:39:56 +0100

Mike, The article above is for 1.0.x, hopefully I will update for 1.5 in the near future.

Removing position?

Bryce — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 09:54:01 +0100

What if you would like to remove a position altogether, without shifting the other positions. For example on the site I\'m working on (www.sounddrywall.com) there is a \"Top\" position to the right of my logo that is just an empty box. How would I remove/resize that so that the logo spans the whole top instead of just the left side? When I try to delete or resize, it ends up pulling my Main Menu section up to the \"Top\" position.

Removing position

Bryce — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 10:03:35 +0100

Edit: looks like my post was deleted, maybe because of URL? I\'ve removed, if so... What if you would like to remove a position altogether, without shifting the other positions. For example on the site I\'m working on there is a \"Top\" position to the right of my logo that is just an empty box. How would I remove/resize that so that the logo spans the whole top instead of just the left side? When I try to delete or resize, it ends up pulling my Main Menu section up to the \"Top\" position.

Removing position from rhuk so

DART Creations — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 16:14:43 +0100

Hi Bryce, I just researched your problem and wrote a quick article about it: http://www.dart-creations.com/joomla/tutorials/ removing-the-top-position-from-the-rhuk-solarflare-ii-template.html Please note that your post wasn\'t deleted. However posts are cached, so sometimes the comments don\'t show up immediately. Hope that helps.

Thanks

Adem — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 14:48:11 +0100

This worked brilliantly with my template. Cheers

Create the Module Position

dosdawg — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 23:33:51 +0100

ok, good explaination, no doubt, however, when you get to the part of: \"We then need to create the Module Position in Site > Template Manager > Module Positions by creating a new adlinks entry\" and you place your modules name in what would appear to me to be a position of where a module once resided, since there is an assignment between position 26 and 30, thus giving your module the position of 28. so you dont necessarily need to find a position that is not assigned? this is where i lost it at. i am looking in Site --> Template Manager --> Module Positions on the current theme i am running. I see what appears to be 34 module positions listed. none have a description but there are 34 module names listed. so does this logistically infer that i can have 34 different modules, plus xx number of additional modules if set by the module order in the parameters? cuz i have searched around, and have seen what is a freshly released theme boasting 26 modules. so i am just trying to find out what are the limitations on how many modules you can actually have?

Module Positions - clarificati

DART Creations — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 03:40:17 +0100

dosdawg, The module positions is a place to create \"logical\" positions. This means that they are module placeholders which CAN exists. What actually determines whether they are used or not, is the template you are currently using. This means, that I can create my adlinks position logically, however, if my template\'s HTML does not cater for it, nothing will appear in this position (because there is nothing which converts the logical position to the physical positon in the template). This is why the article follows by creating the position in the template\'s html. Typically, Joomla comes with about 30 logical positions created, however rhuk_solar_flare_ii, has much less positions than this. So if you assign a module to a position which does not exist, you won\'t see it rendered. Therefore, what determines the number of positions you may have, is your template. The Module Positions create a logical placeholder, the template \"actuates\" this position, by adding the necessary HTML to render the modules assigned to this position. Hope this helps.

Still no way to do it in 1.5

atslash — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 16:52:15 +0100

Still doesnt seem to be a way to create a new module position in joomla 1.5 rc4 or am i missing something?

Module Position size and align

Bolkin — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 11:18:08 +0100

I followed your guide and I made a bottom module position for my site\'s template but the module is not aligned with the template, it is going out of the template\'s design. How do I change the position size and alignment so it doesn\'t mess up the template design? Do I have add another code to the template\'s CSS file to do this? If so, could you please guide me through it. Thanks.

Bolkin

DART Creations — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 15:29:57 +0100

Bolkin, in this article I guide you through the concept of what is needed to create a new position. The tutorial however assumes knowledge of CSS and HTML concepts, because ultimately your module will create HTML and if this is not planned, it will break your template. Unfortunately, teaching CSS and HTML is out of the scope of the tutorials provided here, however there are thousands of pages out there which can help you with this.

thank you

bob — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 17:18:39 +0100

Until recently I\'ve been using wordpress and I considered myself pretty good at it. But joomla is completely different and the documentation is so horrible. It leaves out the basics while elaborating on unimportant things... This short article helped me a lot.

-1 ?

David K — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 19:06:09 +0100

This was an excellent tutorial. Completely explained what I haven\'t understood for months. BUT what does the \"-1\" mean? In my template that I am using - there are -2\'s and -3\'s... Thanks. - DK

the -1s and 2-s

Tiger — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 05:53:48 +0100

The -2 and -1 in the template tells joomla what format to display a given module i.e 0 i believe means the table will be displayed in tables -2 means it will be displayed using divs

Thank you - it helps me a lot

Ariel — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 23:21:10 +0100

I just successfully added a user defined module using the code above and play around a little bit and there ya goes! Thanks a lot

By the way..

Ariel — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 23:22:24 +0100

By the way, I use a few rocket theme templates and it works :)

collapsible module positions2

Juice — Tue, 13 May 2008 14:37:45 +0100

Seems my code was deleted in my last post. So... if you know of the PHP code to insert to make a module position [div] collapse/dissappear on a page where it is not in use... and where to put this code in the index.php that would be most helpful.

Collapsible module positions

DART Creations — Tue, 13 May 2008 23:36:06 +0100

The best is to check whether there are modules assigned to the position, and using PHP only render that position if there are positions assigned to it: if (mosCountModules(\'right\') (Not sure about the 1.5 equivalent) Make sure you are using the correct php syntax.

ellyz — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 11:07:49 +0100

thanks!

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 04:57:35 +0100

this is very useful. thanks a lot

Sathya — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 01:50:32 +0100

This is wonderful explanation.. it was really useful.. all i had to do it just follow it and it works beautifully well :-D Thanks

THANKS

PorteBEE — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 07:58:02 +0100

yah your right

how to delete module position

newfor joomla — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 01:30:29 +0100

Hi , really very good explanations , but i think in joomla 1.0 adding positions easer than ver 1.5 . but where exactly should i add the code in which files and how to delete positions if we have not useful ones?? Thanks

klack21 — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 02:37:38 +0100

Excellent tutorial, thank you so much. but I still am having a problem that now i\'ve added a adlinks module position but it has broken my template and i\'m lost to fix it. I\'m using joomla 1.5, and if anyone has any ideas please share.

Joomla 1.5

DART — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 03:31:30 +0100

Did you check out the tutorial for Joomla 1.5? It is linked at the top of this article.

Dawn — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 20:46:37 +0100

Thanks for this site. I am new at Joomla, having done only about 10 sites. I am having trouble with a site I created. I did not install the sample data but I wanted a top menu so I tried to create my own top menu module. I got it to work but the position of the menu is not the same in IE as it is in Firefox. I am not sure if this is a template problem or a browser problem. Using User4, the menu is in the upper right hand corner of Firefox and does not show in IE. Using \"Top\", the menu is in the upper left hand corner in IE and the middle of the header in Firefox. I am not sure what information I need to provide the forum and I don\'t want to start posting a bunch of code. Also, my site is currently down b/c that is what the client wants so I can\'t really show you. I am not sure if maybe I should just reinstall Joomla using the sample data but then I would lose all the changes I\'ve made and data I have entered and that seems like an extreme thing to do. Any help anyone can offer would be great!

Dawn

DART — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 01:13:25 +0100

The problem you are describing probably has nothing to do with the sample data. Its typically an HTML / CSS problem. You\'ll have to analyse for problems in the template your are using. I suggest you get a good template from the Joomla Templates linked on the side in this page.

Dawn — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 05:03:32 +0100

Dart - thanks for the quick reply. I think you are right. I don\'t actually have any code in the css for \"top\" or \"user4\" so I am not sure what that means - I don\'t know if you need to have css for each module or if the Joomla program will put the modules in a specific place unless your css tells it otherwise? I am so glad that Lynda.com just came out with some advanced Joomla tutorials b/c clearly I need to watch them!

Dawn — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 23:39:37 +0100

I just wanted to update you and let you know I switched out my template to a template made by siteground and my top menu works exactly as it should. Thanks again for the info on this site - it always amazes me how many people are wiling to share their knowledge about the web.

Schnell Abnehmen — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 07:21:07 +0100

In my opinion, Joomla 1.x templates were a bit of a mess. Joomla 1.5 came to solve that. Good article. Thank you

alex — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 18:42:54 +0100

I have tried to add a new position on a joomla site. I have done all the steps needed for that but the problem when i choose the module position to my new position it doesn\'t appear after that. Notice i have the search position on the same level height does it interfer together ? thanks for help ?