Joomla! Template: Module Positions in Front End

Joomla's front end is what your visitors see when they access your Joomla website. It is where your content, components, modules will be displayed to be viewed by your visitors.

Understanding module location/position in your template will give you the liberty on where to place your Joomla! modules to be displayed in your front end.

You can easily view where your module positions are displayed in your template by adding "?tp=1" code (without the quotes) at the end of the URL of your website.

Hence, if your URL is "http://www.yourdomain.com/" just add "?tp=1" in its end, as shown below,

"http://www.yourdomain.com/?tp=1" (without the quotes)

You will see the label of your module position in your template. You can then easily decide on where you will place your modules that would best fit your template. The common modules positions of templates are "left," "right," "top," and "bottom." Other templates have extra module positions available like "user1," "user2," and "banner."

Enjoy tinkering on where you will place the modules in your template.

Joomla Templates: How Your Website Looks

Joomla! gives you the option on selecting the design, layout, color, module position of the template that you can use. In short, you are free to use whatever templates you chose.

As of this writing, there are about 15,200,000 sites offering Joomla! templates when I searched at google, that is using the keyword "joomla templates" (with the quotes).

Being an open source, there are a lot of third party providers that offers free Joomla! templates. However, you must test the templates before putting it online. Some templates will not work well with other internet browsers and sometimes the layout would break when you add other components into your Joomla! website. So be sure to check and test before launching your website.

Premium (paid) Joomla! templates may answer the issue mentioned above since the developer may have tested the template in different internet browsers and installed several modules and components that are available for Joomla!.

To start browsing for Joomla! templates, just do a google search or you may opt to visit the following websites:

• http://www.siteground.com
• http://www.joomla24.com
  

The two websites above will give you numerous Joomla! templates to choose from. Just select the design that fits your website's concept, niche, industry, as well as help your visitors identify your website as "yours" or what they call branding.

Enjoy lookimg for Joomla! templates that fits you site's needs

A membership site for an Airsoft Team

One of the main advantage of using Joomla is its interactivity.

We used Joomla to build a website for an airsoft team in our locality. When we were planning on how to set-up the site, we decided first on what functionality will we add to the website. What we've consider was the forum, membership manager, photo gallery and events.

We used the team's name as the domain and selected a reliable web host (Joomla ready) to house our site.

We then selected a template, luckily a free joomla template is available that would fit perfectly for the teams agreed color. The template that we used is capable of displaying 3 columns (only 2 if there are no entry in the 'right' module container). However its module containers is only limited to the 'left' and 'right' hence we could not add modules on the 'top' and 'bottom' position hence we will add our custom html codes for display at the bottom at the template html.

We then replaced the decorative part of the template and replaced it with the teams logo and name to personalize the site.

The site know has several articles and installed components.

The team members use the forum to discuss issues and to communicate with each other. The calendar is used to remind the team of their upcoming activities.

The site is currently being used to market the upcoming Airsoft Tournament that the team is co-sponsoring. They posted the game rules, game updates and other information that are relevant to the event.

Hopefully the site would grow as the airsoft team grows. Also the team would use the site for communication and updates.

Local Online Community Portal

It's been a year since I've launched my very first website.

I intended to make it a local community portal for our city. With the capability of Joomla!, I was able to integrate several components that I think would be beneficial on a community website.

Aside from the basic articles, city info, and news articles; I also installed several components such as Events, Forum, Site Map, Classified Ads, Real Estate, City Map (Google), Jobs, Search Engine Friendly URL, Membership Manager, and Business Directory. All the components are available for free at the extensions.joomla.org website.

Although I have not implemented any marketing strategy to promote my website, (not even in my email sig), I enjoy a significant number of visitors per day from the search engines.

I am hoping to promote the site, or maybe formally launch it someday, through the business community of our town and the local residents.