Articles: Front Page Blog Layout

Description:

Front Page Blog Layout menu type creates a menu link to a page displayed in Blog Layout. Articles listed will be those that have been set as 'Front Page' articles, using the Joomla Article Manager interface.

On clicking, the Front Page Blog 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:

#Leading: This item sets the number of Articles to display as Leading (full width) Articles. Setting the value to 0 will cause no Articles to be displayed for this item. If an Article has a "Read more..." break, only the part of the text before the break (the Intro text) will display.
#Intro: This item determines the number of Articles to display after the leading Article. These Articles will display in the number of columns set in the Columns parameter. If an Article has a "Read more..." break, only the text before the break (Intro text) will display, followed by a "Read more..." link. The order in which to display the articles is determined by the Primary Order parameter in the Parameters - Advanced section.
Columns: This item sets the number of Columns for Articles displayed as Intro text.
#Links: This item sets the number of Articles to display as Links. These links allow a User to link to additional Articles, if there are more Articles than can fit on the first page of the Blog Layout.

Diagram 1

Parameter (Advanced) has various configurations as shown in Diagram 2:

Category Order: You can select to order the Items by Category, overriding the Primary Order.
Primary Order: You can select the Order of the Category Articles being displayed.
Multi Column order: You can select the order to use when more than one Column is set to display the Articles with Intro text (Basic Parameter).
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.
Pagination Results: You can select whether to 'Show' or 'Hide' the Pagination Results.
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 Save at the top right hand corner and the 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 Front Page Blog menu created as shown in Diagram 4.

Diagram 4

Click on the Front Page Blog menu item.

The link would display all the Articles that have been published to the Front Page, in a Blog Layout as shown in Diagram 5.

A Blog Layout in Joomla has 3 main areas: Leading, Intro, and Links.

Articles in the Leading Area always display in one column, using the full display width.

Articles in the Intro Area may display in one, two, or three columns, depending on the Columns setting.

The links in the Links Area will link to additional articles in one column (if any).

There are parameters that control the number of Articles in each area and the order in which they display. If an Article has a "Read more..." link, only the content before the link (called the Intro Text) will display, along with the "Read more..." link.

Diagram 5