Since Mart 2012 when we published Hot Blankie, all following Joomla templates are developed using Sparky Framework. This is a piece of software that we are making and tweaking since then. All our experience in development of Joomla templates is embedded in this framework.
You have probably already heard about the responsive web design or about the responsive web sites and the responsive templates. Many people don't make any difference between the regular and the responsive web design. This is a new approach in web design, not because it uses some new or super modern techniques, but because it's needed today much more than it was needed in the past. On this page, we will explain why the responsive web sites are so popular these days.
Joomla modules are designed to work in module positions. However, many users requested to have ability to use Joomla modules inside Joomla articles. For this purpose, Joomla comes with functionality to display module in content.
Whenever you have too long pages, for better user experience, it's recommended to separate it to the several subpages. This feature exists in Joomla from the early days. It's performed by the Pagebreak plugin that comes with default Joomla installation. However, in the later Joomla versions it's enhanced and has more power. The options are "hidden" in the Plugin Manager and many Joomla users don't even know they exist.
Google Web Fonts is a collection of fonts that you can use on your websites for free. There are several standard fonts that we use in web design that we all have installed on our computers. Those fonts are Arial, Verdana, Times New Roman and few more. You probably know that you can select any font in your CSS stylesheets just by entering it's name. But beware, if your visitor doesn't have this font installed on his operating system, his browser will show one of the default fonts. As a result of this, your design may look broken on the visitors browser.
Joomla 1.6 and later versions (like current 1.7) brought many improvement in Joomla's templating system. One of them is ability to have several styles (variants) of one template. For templates that comes without parameters or with just few of them, it's not important. However, for Joomla templates that count many parameters, it could be a nice feature.
We have upgraded all our Joomla 1.5 and Joomla 1.7 templates and added a new feature - RTL (Right-to-Left) text support. If writing starts from the right side of the page, and continues to the left, then we can call this language RTL language. Languages that use this system are based on Arabic alphabet (Arabic, Persian...), Hebrew alphabet (Hebrew, Yiddish...), and many more.
Usually, the first step in adjusting your Joomla template is to change default template's logo image with logo of you company or your site.
This menu system allows you to show first, second and third menu levels at once and to show Joomla modules in drop-down panes.
This tutorial will show you how to install Joomla template on your existing Joomla 1.5 or 1.6 website. If you follow this method of template installation, it would not copy demo data. It will setup only template files on your site.