A little while ago I posted mention of the contest joomla.org is running to find a great new template to ship J1.5 with when it hits the next RC/stable release.

I hadn't checked in on the status of the competition since that post until Peter Russell pointed me to the forum for it this morning and I tell you the stuff people are coming up with is bloody exciting!

There are a couple of new developments in 1.5 underlying my excitement;  namely; you can now assign parameters to templates and then override the formatting extensions are coded with per extension!  Yay! 

Right, so what does this mean? Well, parameters are settings for templates - such as column width and other things usually set in the CSS for the template.  The new system allows a template designer to give the site administrator options pre-coded in CSS that can be chosen from *without* editing the CSS!!!!  Finally, Joomla users with basic knowledge of their site's backend can have control over aesthetic/layout tweaks without jumping in the deep end and risking mucking up their site. Nice.

Okay, so I just explained the parameters (an example is shown in the image above), now for the 'overrides' :

A lot of extensions are coded with formatting/HTML, which lets their output have some visual structure and style - and in most cases you can use a site template to override the styles using CSS... Often cases though CSS isn't enough - sometimes an extension may have fixed-width tabled hard-coded into it or something... until now you'd have to delve into the code and suss out how to change that formatting... well, in J1.5! the template system actually lets you maintain seperate php files to control the output of extensions!  No worries re: messing up code needed for the extension to run; these overrides can be included in the template as additional files, independant of the extensions themselves!!

This isn't all - it gets cooler -  in addition to overriding extension formatting,
you can also override the output of modules!  That's right kids, this is an unprecedented level of control for templating with Joomla and guess what?  One of the submissions for the template contest perfectly uses this power to make managing a template a breeze, with the aim of putting power into the hands of the people who use and manage sites, rather than the people they hire to build/develop them.

You can already download a copy of FreakOut's Freedomblocks to install on your 1.5 dev server and poke around with the, wait for it, 350 parameters it has pre-programmed!  Wow. This is an amazing template and in the next couple of weeks I'll be playing with it to show you how it can really be an exceedingly good framework for creating flexible site aesthetics using all the goodies packed into Joomla 1.5.  Stay tuned.

Comments (9) >>

Joomla is a fucking nightmare
written by Uri, October 03, 2007

It's free, so that's great. I don't mean to complain. But, Joomla is a nightmare. After watching video tuturials and a walkthrough tutorial from compass designs, which of course the author fucked up more ways than I care to recount, as is always the case with "helpful" opensource tutorials (my guess is the people who got the answers don't want to make it TOO easy for anyone else), I finally realized that in order to make a decent site, you need to spend about 100 hours dicking around with premade templates, hacking your own and throwing all this work away and start over from scratch with your trial-and-error obtained knowledge. Every site you make will be custom-built from scratch in order to tailor it to your completely ignorant clients. Joomla has too many options for its own good, really. It's a fucking mess.

Whoa, slow down there Uri!
written by designguru, October 04, 2007

Interesting to hear that people are so frustrated with getting started on their Joomla path (I mean hey, that last comment has so many f-words in it, he must be pissed off! ) ... Its true; the documentation isn't as user-friendly as possible, though a CMS isn't yet as simple as, say, signing up for a wordpress account and blogging in 5 minutes... building a site with *any* cms takes planning and knowledge of the tools you're using. The more time you spend familiarizing yourself with Joomla, I think, the more you'll be able to do with it and the more intuitive the process of making sites with it will become. But hey, that's why I blog and hopefully if you read whyjoomla often enough you'll find a wealth of info to help you get started...

Joomla templates
written by Custom Web Development, October 04, 2007

I was recently given a coupon to unlimited downloads of Joomla Templates & Ajax Producs for only $10. I was told that the coupon is valid until 10/12/07 and the purchase is a membership good for a year. The coupon is "Unlimited". To redeem go to www.joomlacmssolutions.com and register for membership. When you get to the shopping cart submit the coupon and pay only $10. Their templates are really good and they launch one new template a month.

Lots of great templates to come...
written by designguru, October 12, 2007

I just caught mention of a new Joomlashack template that's been released which really makes decent use of the new template parameter functionalities of J1.5: check out the demo - http://demotemplates.joomlashack.com/weblogic/ . I can't wait to see what new templates people come up with in the next few months...

you must be stupid..
written by Mani, February 18, 2008

Joomla is developed for easy use, If cant use Joomla then you can not use any CMS in the world. I guess you must be stupid, not Joomla. Someone will come with some stupid CMS, It will be suitable for you. then wait for that, till it comes.

...
written by whitenight639, May 04, 2008

I've been using joomla for over a year and it was hard to get your head round at first but its second nature now and hacking a free template to meet your requirements isnt too difficult, (easier than making one from scratch). Anyway now ive just started with joomla 1.5 and its a pile of shit its got lots of new features but its not right for example when you set a menu item that is for registered users then when someone that isnt registered clicks on it they now get a 404 where as in previous joomla they would get a log-in or register page! it also does funny things with not displaying menu items for no apparent reason, I guess its not the software its me but now ive got another steep learning curve all over again!

Stupid Joomla
written by bad joomla, May 09, 2008

damn stupid joomla, lack of support! bad instalation procedure!!!! fcuk! wasted 6 stupid hours on stupid installation! DONT waste ur time on this stupid joomla!

css parameters
written by xxcemil, June 02, 2008

about css parameters http://css-lessons.ucoz.com/css-parameters.htm

help me
written by html dersi, June 12, 2008

HI i need your help i really want to create my own website/web page but i dont know how to go about doing it so can you please help me out

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