100% K2 content driven, this site is the online version of a new classic music magazine. We used multiple variations on the k2_mod_content module to achieve different styling of the magazine section links in different areas of the site.

ccemagonline.com

How did you get the links on the home page to to link to the articles directly? like you have ccmagonline.com/artists/somebody on the home page. where I have it on my site, domain.com/home/item/aritcle.

Did you guys really mod it out? or is it a plugin?

Thanks if you can let me know, I'm trying to work on a skateboard/snowboard site and I love your home page. I'm just having a terrible time getting the links and what not to work the way I want.

Before I forget to mention, your site is outstanding in layout and usability. Two thumbs up!

Thanks,
Jay

Which links? The main menu at the top or for the links in the modules down the centre columns?

The main menu links don't link directly to articles, they link to a K2 category, which is set to display up to ten articles, with read-more's, etc.

The centre column links are using multiple versions of the mod_k2_content module with varying parameters. For example, each 'category block' (such as Break on Through, Retrospective, etc) uses three mod_k2_content modules plus the MetaMod module to achieve the style on the front page. Some are set to only show a certain number of links. One module shows only one featured link, another shows up to four links from that category that are NOT featured.

I

Kelsey Brookes said:Which links? The main menu at the top or for the links in the modules down the centre columns?


I made a screen shot, since it might be a bit easier to explain.




The main menu links don't link directly to articles, they link to a K2 category, which is set to display up to ten articles, with read-more's, etc.


I am fairly new to Joomla, but have been programming for years. How did you get it to link to articles.html and have it pull the category. I tried doing that, and it just 404's me.
The centre column links are using multiple versions of the mod_k2_content module with varying parameters. For example, each 'category block' (such as Break on Through, Retrospective, etc) uses three mod_k2_content modules plus the MetaMod module to achieve the style on the front page. Some are set to only show a certain number of links. One module shows only one featured link, another shows up to four links from that category that are NOT featured.

The biggest problem I am seeing is the way I have it set up, to have articles on the home page, I set up a home category, then inside that I have a reviews category, then sub reviews. Then I go to link to it on the home page, it looks domain.com/home/reviewpage I would like it to be, domain.com/reviews/subcat/reviewpage. Maybe it's the way I have it set up. I'm not a 100% sure.

Again, thanks for even taking the time out to respond!


Jay

Gotcha, it's because the main article on the front page is using mod_k2_content also, rather than being the 'component' include.

I think you'll find that this URL presentation is as a result of the mod_k2_content presentation - check out the links on the more obvious module categories in the centre of the page.

Ok, I think I'm heading in the right way now. I did turn on the mod_K2_content module. But how did you get load the module in the home page? use a article? any mod?

Thanks again for your help! I've been searching trying to get these links to work right for a bit. And you are the only one that I have seen that has gotten it right.

J

Kelsey Brookes said:Gotcha, it's because the main article on the front page is using mod_k2_content also, rather than being the 'component' include.
I think you'll find that this URL presentation is as a result of the mod_k2_content presentation - check out the links on the more obvious module categories in the centre of the page.

My template uses conditional PHP statements to ensure the appropriate module positions are loaded on the front page and content pages.

On the front page layout, I have no 'component' position, I have a module position which loads that particular iteration of the mod_k2_content module.

Basically, I should just hack something together...

There's no hacking required.

Did you build your own template? There are two ways to achieve this.

1) Build two templates
Build one solely for the front page and assign this to the menu links for 'home' (or whatever link you have to your front page). The other becomes the 'default' template. On your front page template, rather than using the jdoc component code, just use the jdoc module code instead. Assign the mod_k2_content to that module position and you're done.

2) Build one template
This is what I did, using php to determine if the 'view' was 'frontpage' that it should display a different set of code than if the view was not frontpage. This is slightly trickier, but a bit less hassle than managing multiple css stylesheets. There's plenty of discussions on this technique on the Joomla forums and I can expand a bit further if necessary.

If you've built your own template, doing option one is a total walk in the park and option two is only slightly harder.

If you're working of someone else's template and have no idea about module positions then this is probably going to be a lot harder to achieve.

Yeah, I am using the beez template. I think I am getting closer. I tried sticking in a into the default.php, then I created that module to be in there, but that didn't work.

What you are saying is to duplicate the whole main index.php page, instead of having the

Missing code....s
put the in there.

I have the module working now on the home page. With my own template.

the only thing, is my links still point to:
domain.com/component/k2/item/4-test-test-test.html
where they should go to:
domain.com/gone-boarding/item/4-test-test-test.html

or:

domain.com/component/k2/item/3-the-lowdown-on-spitfire-bearings-burners.html
should go to:
domain.com/reviews/item/3-the-lowdown-on-spitfire-bearings-burners.html

Any idea on this?

And I'm going to give you a big fat link to your mag on my other high traffic site if you like, for giving me such a hand!

Hmmm, that's odd. Here's how I got the template working, with a simplified version of my code:

download it here

Basically this says that if the 'view' is 'frontpage' then output the code for the module position fp_article, otherwise output the code for the component.

A good little module that helps find out what variables are possible is MetaMod - assign it to a module position, make it visible and turn on debug mode. Even if you're not using some of its other totally excellent features, its debugging is really useful.

So, mod_k2_content is then assigned to that position, filtering just the category we want, showing just one item - the most recent item and only featured items.

One thought I've had as to why the SEF urls are showing up oddly for you is that you may not also have a menu item pointing to that K2 category. Now that I look closer, it's interesting to me to see what K2 has done with my SEF URLs.

The category filter for the module we're talking about is set to a category called 'break on through' *NOT* 'artists'.

However I have a main menu item pointing to the 'break on through' category - this menu item is called 'artists' so it *must* be pulling the name from there.

And yeah - happy to have a big fat link! ;)

Ok, so I am totally on the right track then. Yeah, so weird about the links. this is the last bit of the problem right now. On the Menu, it's going to a k2 category it looks like this:

boardersover30.com/index/item/4-test-test-test.html

where that should* be

boardersover30.com/gone-boarding/item/4-test-test-test.html (and that works because I can change it in the url box and it pulls the same link)

or

boardersover30.com/index/item/3-the-lowdown-on-spitfire-bearings-burners.html

should go to:

boardersover30.com/reviews/item/3-the-lowdown-on-spitfire-bearings-burners.html

Should I have the menu link item type point to somewhere else?

Are you just using native Joomla SEF or a plugin? I'm just using the native Joomla SEF.

If you check the cce mag site, the 'artists' link is the menu item pointing to that category. It's definitely got a different formulation of links than your site - what settings are you using for your SEF?

I have never changed it. I just have all the SEF options on in the config file. I am using the native plugin for sure. So so weird.

Yeah, me too.

SEF URLs can be weird at times. I've had plenty of issues with them resolving correctly and have had to turn everything off from time to time.

Sometimes this behaviour is also a result of the order in which menu items are created.

sh404 might be your answer. The user-definable URLs are pretty cool, tho I'm not using it for this project.

hi, realy smartly done. I was trying to do a similar structire for a magazine, but then abandoned the whole subcats hierarchy couse i could not manage to display the articles from one sub category like yours: (such as Break on Through, Retrospective, etc) following one after the other, not messing with the primary/secondary order. How did you fought that?
Then my problem was that for each issue (which i created like a mean category) i had fixed subcategories (such as Break on Through, Retrospective, etc), and with k2 that does not copy categories it meant that the editor would need to create them from scratch for each issue again and again. Would you comment on this as well!
The third issue I had with this structure was that for an archive meu there was no way to keep the items within the issue no matter what date/month they were published in the issue.
So, last comment on this would be appreciated.


Kelsey Brookes said:Which links? The main menu at the top or for the links in the modules down the centre columns?
The main menu links don't link directly to articles, they link to a K2 category, which is set to display up to ten articles, with read-more's, etc.

The centre column links are using multiple versions of the mod_k2_content module with varying parameters. For example, each 'category block' (such as Break on Through, Retrospective, etc) uses three mod_k2_content modules plus the MetaMod module to achieve the style on the front page. Some are set to only show a certain number of links. One module shows only one featured link, another shows up to four links from that category that are NOT featured.

Thanks for the compliment.

I'm not sure I understand all of your questions, but I'll do my best to answer:

1) Displaying multiple categories, but maintaining the article order per category:

I did this with multiple modules and the MetaMod module. Each category block on the front page consists of multiple modules displaying different views of the same content as per the rules in the mod_k2_content module

2 & 3) Multiple categories, reused for each issue, maintaining an issue archive
This was a point I considered carefully from the outset. I don't have each issue as a category with the magazine sections as subcategories. Each category is a parent-level category. I use K2's tagging system to tag each article with its issue. The 'Issues' menu simply aggregates all the articles tagged with the issue number.

One note on this - because the magazine is published quarterly, the exact time and date that articles are published are unimportant. Because the tag view has a fixed ordering (by date), it's important to create your articles in the right order. Or at least to be able to go back and reset the created and published dates to force the right order for the tag view.


Anyway, K2 is very flexible. There's some odd stuff that goes on, but it gives vastly more scope for complex layouts than core Joomla.

Hope that helps.

hi, thanks for all insights. i will carefuly consider your approach to multiple k2.mods and metamod to order complex display. and your answers were exaclty what i asked.
i did in fact similar structure of the magazine like yours, but reversed. the magazine is a parent category. each issue is a category under the magazine, and the sections are tags assigned to the articles.
but this way i have a problem with creating a menu for the sections using the tagged items in category, for it uses generic layout not displaying the author.

in your magazine i see you don't give focus on the authors, you see the author only in an item-view, right? in my case it is a necessity to have the authors visible in all views, so now i wonder how to deal with this issue.
10x again

Kelsey Brookes said:Thanks for the compliment.
I'm not sure I understand all of your questions, but I'll do my best to answer:

1) Displaying multiple categories, but maintaining the article order per category:

I did this with multiple modules and the MetaMod module. Each category block on the front page consists of multiple modules displaying different views of the same content as per the rules in the mod_k2_content module

2 & 3) Multiple categories, reused for each issue, maintaining an issue archive
This was a point I considered carefully from the outset. I don't have each issue as a category with the magazine sections as subcategories. Each category is a parent-level category. I use K2's tagging system to tag each article with its issue. The 'Issues' menu simply aggregates all the articles tagged with the issue number.

One note on this - because the magazine is published quarterly, the exact time and date that articles are published are unimportant. Because the tag view has a fixed ordering (by date), it's important to create your articles in the right order. Or at least to be able to go back and reset the created and published dates to force the right order for the tag view.


Anyway, K2 is very flexible. There's some odd stuff that goes on, but it gives vastly more scope for complex layouts than core Joomla.

Hope that helps.

How much author information do you want to display? Each article or extract on my front page gives an author attribution - just not a full photo, bio, etc. I'm not sure if the mod_k2_content can handle that, but the minimalist version was also my choice.