Hi,

I'm an aspiring author, new to K2 and relatively new to (or inexperienced in) Joomla but I do have a fair bit of experience in website management and used to build sites old school, in HTML. I am trying to build a site which I hope the readers of my books will find reasonably attractive which is why I chose Joomla. My web site is at www.jc-rocks.com and is based on the free version of JoomlaShine's "JSN Pixel" template with Kunena forum and a wiki (WikiMedia). I "chose" that template because it was the one used by the Build-A-Joomla-Website tutorials and because I rapidly discovered that half my stuff didn't work with templates from YooTheme. However I have hacked the default colours in the JSN Pixel template so it more closely matched the colours of my forum but my ultimate plan is to buy the full template or perhaps another one that is largely compatible from JSN.

I only heard about K2 a week or so ago but it seemed like something that would improve my website so I installed it ... I subsequently had to uninstall it and reinstall because I got so confused by it. I've been going through some tutorials on YouTube and had some difficulties getting the changes to work but I think (I think) I vaguely understand that now. I was able to import my categories and current articles (about 20 at present).

So now I am engaged in an exercise of changing my menus and stuff over to K2 and I've hit my first big problem. I can make a blog list feature articles from two or more categories but I can't seem to make a featured page work ... under Joomla (without K2) I would select a Menu Item type of Articles --> Featured Articles but I can't find an equivalent under K2.

Anyone any ideas?

Thx

Keke

Hello James,
These videos will help you getting started with K2,
getk2.org/documentation/k2class2012

As for the menu item, these options (Show only featured items) are included in the K2 Categories menu item.

Thx Krikor,

Do you know if any of them deal with featured pages (that being one of the things holding me back right now)?

James

Hi again Krikor,

Turns out I had already found those videos on YouTube and I didn't really get on with them ... I found her presentation style too fast and the subject material (the actual website itself) something of a distraction. Just one of those things I guess ... I am reviewing the K2 site's other documentation though.

I am attempting to more-or-less duplicate Joomla's "featured article" capability but using K2 items as source ... under "normal" Joomla I can have several featured articles on my front page effectively giving a history of featured articles.

From what I can tell featured pages are pretty much impossible within K2 itself and I can find no way to include K2 articles on a "normal" Joomla featured article page. I checked that last by deleting my primary featured article in Joomla and checking that the K2 imported version was still in the K2 item list and that it was still classed as featured. I then checked my website to find that the article had gone which means the "normal" Joomla featured article page does not source from K2 items. Therefore K2 must have its own method of displaying featured articles or it can't do it at all and the latter seems odd because K2 items have a "featured" checkbox.

There doesn't appear to be a K2 menu system, you simply attach a K2 category or whatever to a Joomla item so the next step was to check what kinds of K2 "Menu Item Type" I could have, these are K2 item

• Categories: This could work if I was willing to have one of my categories only as my featured items for instance my "News & Progress" category.
• Item: This would work if I had only one featured article at any one time (this was pretty much how I had originally envisaged featured articles)
• Item edit form: Wouldn't work at all.
• Latest items from (one or more) users or categories: Might work but doesn't seem to offer what I'd need.
• Tag: This has potential if I was willing to create a "featured" tag and use that tag as the filter for this page.
• User page (blog): Wouldn't really work at all.

My limited research indicates that K2 doesn't have a true featured article page and that, if I want to stick with K2 (which I do), my best bet would be to use the tag version. I have tested that and it does work.

I would probably still prefer a proper featured page system though.

James

As I already stated in my previous post,
The options to show only featured items, are located in the K2 Categories menu item.

Select the categories you want to show posts from and select the "Show only featured items" settings.

Krikor wrote: As I already stated in my previous post,
The options to show only featured items, are located in the K2 Categories menu item.

Select the categories you want to show posts from and select the "Show only featured items" settings.

B******! I missed that, sorry.

Thanks, that worked however there is a problem I can't figure but I'll start a new thread for that :)

James

Nice to hear that you got it working James :)