Articles: Section Layout

Description:

Section Layout menu type creates a menu link to a list of Categories in a Section.

On clicking, the Section Layout Link, the configuration (control the settings) of the 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:

Section: You have to select the target Section for the Menu Item
Description: You can set whether or not the Section Description will be displayed. The Section Description is entered on the Category edit screen.
Description Image: Set whether or not the Section Description Image will be displayed.
Category List - Section: You can select whether to 'Show' or 'Hide' the list of Section Categories in the list page view. Normally, you will want this set to 'Show'. If this is set to 'Hide', no Categories will display and users will be unable to navigate to the Articles in a Category.
Empty Categories in Section: You can select whether to 'Show' or 'Hide' empty (no Articles set) Categories in the Section view.
# Category Items: You can select to 'Show' or 'Hide' the display of the number of items in each Category.
Category Description: You can select to 'Show' or 'Hide' the Category descriptions.

Diagram 1

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

Order: You can select to order the Items by Category, overriding the Primary Order.
- Default: Selecting this item will cause the Default ordering to be used.
- Title (Alphabetical): Selecting this will cause the Articles to be ordered by Title, Alphabetically (From A to Z) for this Category.
- Title (Reverse Alphabetical): Selecting this will cause the Articles to be ordered by Title, Alphabetically (From Z to A) for this Category.
- Order: Selecting this will cause the Articles to be ordered by the 'Order' set in the Article Manager in the Joomla! Administration interface.
Article 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
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

On click of 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 Section menu item created as shown in Diagram 4.

Diagram 4

Click on the Section main menu item.

The link would display Articles by Category in one Section, in a list layout. This layout shows a list Categories in the Section as shown in Diagram 5.

Diagram 5