So, far we have setup some content for this Web site the Content that
consistently shows up in the middle of the page, we've created our first module,
a Menu module, which displays a page as well.
Modules go well beyond menus though a module is any bit of functionality that
you'd like to display in some area other than the main part of the Web page.
It could be something that displays in the Header, the Footer, the left or the
right columns, across the top, or even inside an article.
There are several modules that come with
Joomla! by default and will cover those in the next few videos.
The big question is how do you get a module to display in certain parts of the Web page?
Every template comes with certain module positions, these are positions coded
by the person who created the template, which will ultimately contain
the modules for that page, if there are any modules assigned to that page.
There is an easy trick to peek at where module positions are located within our template.
If you're familiar with Joomla! 1.5
You might be familiar with something called the TP=1 trick
for displaying module positions on the Web page, that will trick happens to be
disabled by default in Joomla! 3.0.
You'll have to turn it on in order to use this particular trick.
So, let me show you how to turn on this particular trick, show you what the trick is
and now I'll show you where your module positions are located inside of a template.
So, to do this will top into the back end of Joomla!
and we're going to go to Extensions, Template, Manager and we're going to go
to the Options here inside the Template Manager, and we're going to do this
Preview Module Positions, which right now is disabled, we want to enable it,
and say Save and Close.
If you notice here these icons that are next to the names of these templates,
some of them have turned into little eyeballs, the template we are currently
using for the front end of the Web site is called Protostar.
I know that, because this is the site template rather than in ministry or template,
and there's a star by indicating that this is the default template for the Web site.
So Protostar is what we are working with right now.
If I click on this eyeball right next to the Protostar template, this will open
up a New tab and inside of this New tab is this page were I have got this
red text indicating where all of my module positions are located.
So I have a module positions sort of up here in the upper right corner called
position zero 0, I have one across the top called Position 1 that's where we put our menu.
I have a banner position here across the top, I have a position 8, which would
give me a left side of the screen where I could position elements on the left of
the screen, or position 7 on the right, a position 3 is just above my Content,
position 2 just below it and I have a footer position as well, and then finally
at the bottom there is a debug position, that would be a great place if you're a
developer, you could dump any kind of debugging code and so forth you can put
down there in that particular position.
So, that is all of the module positions that are available here to us in the
template and where they're going to go.
That's going to be really helpful to us, as we start working with modules inside
of this Web site and we need to be clear on where those modules are going to be
assigned so that we know where they appear on the front end of the Web site.