Articles: Category List Layout

Description:

Category List Layout is used to show articles belonging to a single Category, in a list layout. A list layout lists each Article's Title and allows the User to link to the Article.

On clicking, the Category List Layout Link, the control settings for this menu item opens as shown in Diagram 1.

Menu Item Details

Enter the required details in the Title, Alias, Display in, Parent item and Published for the menu item as shown in Diagram 1.

The explanation of each of the menu item details is given in Lesson 2.

Parameters

On the right hand side, Parameters – Basic has various configurations:

Category: You have to select the target Category for the Menu Item
#Links: You can select the number of Article Links to display on the page. If a Category has more than this number of Articles, only this many links will show on the first page. The User can either change the "Display #" in the drop-down list box or use the "Next" link to show the next page of Articles.
Table Headings: You can select whether to 'Show' or 'Hide' the column headings for the link table.
Date Column: You can select whether to 'Show' or 'Hide' the Date Column in the link table.
Date Format: You can set the date format, using PHPs strftime command Format, to be displayed in the link table. You may leave this blank to use the default date format from your Language file.
Filter: You can select to 'Show' or 'Hide' the Filter availability.
Filter Field: You can select which field in the link table will be used for filtering. Available options are Title, Author, and Hits.

Diagram 1

Parameters (Advanced) have various configurations as shown in Diagram 2:

Primary Order: You can select the Order of the Category Articles being displayed.
- Default: Use the default Article ordering for this Category.
- Oldest first: Order Articles from oldest to newest.
- Most recent first: Order Articles from newest to oldest.
- Title (Alphabetical): Order Articles alphabetically, from A to Z.
- Title (Reverse Alphabetical): Order Articles alphabetically, from Z to A.
- Author - Alphabetical: Order Articles by Author name, alphabetically from A to Z.
- Author - Reverse Alphabetical: Order Articles by Author name, alphabetically from Z to A.
- Most Hits: Order Articles by the number of page hits (views), from highest to lowest.
- Least Hits: Order the Articles by the number of page hits (views), from lowest to highest.
- Order: Order the Articles according to their 'Order', set in the Joomla! Administration Article Manager.
Pagination: You can select whether to 'Show' or 'Hide' Article Pagination (hyperlinks that allow users to move to the next, previous or specific article by number) links at the bottom of the page.
Display Select: You can select whether to 'Show' or 'Hide' the # of Links per page select box.
Show a Feed link: You can select whether to 'Show' or 'Hide' a link to the RSS or Atom syndication for the pages.

Diagram 2

Click on Save at the top right hand corner, this menu item would be successfully created and saved as shown in Diagram 3.

Diagram 3

Click on Preview at the top-right hand corner to view the front page of your website.

In the main menu, you would see the Category List menu item created as shown in Diagram 4.

Diagram 4

Click on the Category List menu item.

The link would display an Article Category in list format as shown in Diagram 5.

The title of the article is the link to an article is indicated below. The date column, display select and table headings can also be displayed in the Category list layout.

Diagram 5