Hello all,

 

I am currently designing a site for a friends company. I have just about come out with a layout we are both happy with. I now want to transfer this layout into Joomla as a template.

 

Can anyone give me some advice\useful links as to how the best way of doing this would be?

 

I am particularly confused with regards to including dynamic content such as menus, headers, footers etc. How do I get a menu I have created in Joomla to show in a specific area of my template? And like wise with headers\footers etc?

 

Any advice or useful sites to read up on would be great.

 

Thank you in advanced.

http://docs.joomla.org/Beginners would be a good start

 

Saying that, Joomla's main template is basic HTML and CSS with a few PHP tags for where content goes, so you need to integrate your code into it.

Thanks bluedreamer, daft question, but how do you decipher which php tag is for which module?

 

I'm struggling to understand the syntax of the php tags being used to include the dynamic content.

 

Thanks again

I think I'm starting to get the hang of this, but could someone please explain to me where these are called in Joomla, I cant see any reference to "user"s what so every;

 

			<jdoc:include type="modules" name="user3" />
		<jdoc:include type="modules" name="user4" />

 

They seem to be referring to menu's but I cant work out where "user3" or "user4" is called in Joomla.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thank you in advanced

Ok I think its something o do with user menus but i may be wrong.

Ask ThomaHardy hes an expert on CMS templates.

Hi,

 

user3, user4 etc is the name of the menu you have created. (or in this case has been created default by joomla).

 

when you go into the joomla back end you can view the menus and what their names are. or, you can create your own menus and name them what you like (eg "navigation"). Then simply use the line of code you copy/pasted above and substitute "userX" for "navigation" and hey presto - your menu appears. (you will then need to style it).

 

hope this helps

download a few readymade templates for JOOMLA and u will get an idea of how to code the templates.

 

it is a bit complicated in the beginning and u try to stick to html tables for now.........

The:

 

<jdoc:include type="modules" name="user3" />

 

Are modules that can also be defined in a template. I use several "non-standard" modules that are defined through the template. In the admin area you can assign which modules go where through the drop downs.

 

Your best source for further info would be the Joomla forums and Joomla docs and like prateek suggested, download some templates to get a feel for how they work. Siteground has a bunch of free ones you can tinker with. Just install them through the admin side and then look through the files that get installed on the server. Especially look at the xml files, they define a lot about the templates.

 

It also helps (a lot) to know how Joomla uses templates and how those code pieces are filled at render time. It's really very interesting.

 

I use xampp also, great to be able to do develop on the local system.

 

Don't forget to use firebug as well. A wealth of information will be at your fingertips.

 

Best of luck.

good templates are those from joomlart.com ....try those...