Obviously, the blog format can be used for… well, blogging. But think bigger than that when applying this to your website. Blog, in this case, is a functionality, not a technology. We routinely use the blog format for press releases, for example. The format works for anything where a client needs to post items regularly, in some pre-defined order. It’s also handy if the client is making new pages, because the client doesn’t need to make a menu link to the item. It will simply publish on the page.
To make category/section blog layouts, go to the Menu manger and find the menu on which you want this link to live. Click New, then Articles, then select either section or category blog layout.
You can then configure the blog format using the options below.
Parameters (Basic)
Under Parameters (Basic), you select the given section/category or section for the blog.
You can also choose to have a description show. This is the section description (section blog) or category description (category blog). These descriptions can be created/edited by going to the Section or Category Manager, selecting the section or category, and scrolling to the bottom of the screen, where there is an editor for a description. The description is extremely handy if you need to have some fixed text at the top of your blog page.
Likewise, the description image is the image associated with the section or category, which can be configured in the Section or Category manager.
Then we come to # Leading, # Intro, Columns, # Links
- # Leading is the number of “leading” blog entries. A leading entry is the first entry on the pile, which, by default, spans across the 2 default columns. If you have a single column on the page, leading doesn’t do a lot for you. So I usually set this to zero. The default is 1.
- # intro are the number of blog entries that display with title, intro text, and a read more link, in their default setting. By default this is 4.
- Columns are straightforward. Do you want your blog entries to appear in 2 columns (the default) or some other layout? I almost always set this to 1 column.
- # Links are the number of blog entries at the bottom of the page, in bulleted list format, with titles only that link to the full blog entry.
So – when I set up a blog layout, I typically set columns to 1, leading to 0, # intro to 10, and # links to 0. This gives me up to 10 intros on a page.
Parameters (Advanced)
I am not sure what makes these parameters so advanced, but anyway…
You will find some ordering options, which are slightly different if you’re in the section or category blog setting. But generally, you’ll have a choice for category order and one for primary order.
Category order refers to the categories within the section and what order those categories should appear. By default, that’s “order by primary order only”, meaning display them in the order they appear in the Category Manager. Re-order them in the category manager if you want them to appear in a different order.
Title (alphabetical) and title (reverse-alphabetical) are straightforward: display the categories in order of A-Z or Z-A.
Order means you’ve put the categories in a specific order in the category manager and that order should be maintained in the blog.
Primary order is the order of the blog entries themselves. The options are fairly straightforward. You can order by title, author, number of hits, time published (oldest or most recent first), or “ordering”, which again is the order that the articles appear in the Article Manager.
If you have a multi-column layout (see Parameters-basic), should the display of blog entries go down the column or across the column in whatever order they’re in?
Pagination refers to the links on the bottom of the page. Auto means the pagination will be generated automatically as needed. In this case, this refers to the 1, 2, 3, etc links at the bottom of the page. The Pagination Results item refers to showing “Page 1 of 4”. Show a feed link will determine whether an RSS feed should show.
Parameters (Component)
These are the same settings as those in Article Manager parameters. Use the article manager parameters as your default settings. You can then override settings for the entire blog here. Use the individual article settings (where, again, these same items appear) to override settings on an article by article basis.
Parameters (System)
These are the same types of parameters you’ve seen on other menu items. But a helpful hint: if you type something into the “page title” blank, then set “show page title” to NO, the text will still appear in the HTML title tag, even if it does not appear in the body of the web page itself.
So that wraps up category and section blog layouts. More on some of the other article possibilities in the coming days!
Special thanks for the article joomla4web.com