Joomla! Documentation™

Featured Article Layout

Used to show all Articles that have been tagged as Featured. Articles are shown in a Blog Layout.

A Blog Layout in Joomla! has 3 main areas: Leading, Intro, and Links. These are shown in the diagram below.

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

Layout Options

The Featured Articles Layout has the following Layout Options, as shown below.

• Select Categories. Select the categories you want to include in this layout. Use Ctrl+Click to select more than one category. Use Shift+Click to select a range of categories.

• # Leading Articles. Number of Articles to show using the full width of the main display area. "0" means that no Articles will show when using the full width. If an Article has a "Read more..." break, only the part of the text before the break (the Intro text) will display. Leave blank to use the default value from the component options.

• # Intro Articles. 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 below. 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 order in which to display the articles is determined by the Category Order and Article Order parameters below. Leave blank to use the default value from the component options.

• # Columns. The number of columns to use in the Intro Text area. This is normally between 1 and 3 (depending on the template you are using). If 1 is used, the Into Text Articles will display using the full width of the display area, just like the Leading Articles. Leave blank to use the default value from the component options.

• # Links. The number of Links to display in the 'Links' area of the page. 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. Leave blank to use the default value from the component options.

• Multi Column Order. In multi-column blog layouts, whether to order articles Down the columns or Across the columns.
  • Use Global: Use the value from the component options screen.
  • Down: Order articles going down the first column and then over to the next column, for example:

article 1	1 (continued)
article 2	article 4
article 3	article 5

• Across: Order articles going across the columns and then back to the first column, for example:

article 1	1 (continued)
article 2	article 3
article 4	article 5

• Category Order. Order of Categories in this Layout. The following options are available.
  
  • Use Global: Use the default value from the component options screen.
  • No Order: Articles are ordered only by the Article Order, without regard to Category.
  • Title Alphabetical: Categories are displayed in alphabetical order (A to Z)
  • Title Reverse Alphabetical: Categories are displayed in reverse alphabetical order (Z to A)
  • Category Manager Order: Categories are ordered according to the Order column entered in the Category Manager.

• Article Order. Order of articles in this Layout. The following options are available.
  
  • Use Global: Use the default value from the component options screen.
  • Featured Articles Order: Articles are ordered according to the Order column entered in Article Manager: Featured Article.
  • Most recent first: Articles are displayed starting with the most recent and ending with the oldest.
  • Oldest first: Articles are displayed starting with the oldest and ending with the most recent.
  • Title Alphabetical: Articles are displayed by Title in alphabetical order (A to Z)
  • Title Reverse Alphabetical: Articles are displayed by Title in reverse alphabetical order (Z to A)
  • Author Alphabetical: Articles are displayed by Author in alphabetical order (A to Z)
  • Author Reverse Alphabetical: Articles are displayed by Author in reverse alphabetical order (Z to A)
  • Most Hits: Articles are displayed by the number of hits, starting with the one with the most hits and ending with the one with the least hits
  • Least Hits: Articles are displayed by the number of hits, starting with the one with the least hits and ending with the one with the most hits
  • Article Manager Order: Articles are ordered according to the Order column entered in the Article Manager.

• Date for Ordering. The date used when articles are sorted by date. The following options are available.
  • Use Global: Use the default value from the component options screen.
  • Created: Use the article created date.
  • Modified: Use the article modified date.
  • Published: Use the article start publishing date.

• Pagination. Hide or Show Pagination support. Pagination provides page links at the bottom of the page that allow the User to navigate to additional pages. These are needed if the Articles will not fit on one page. An example is shown below.
  
  The following options are available.
  • Use Global: Use the default value from the component options screen.
  • Auto: Pagination links shown if needed.
  • Show: Pagination links shown if needed.
  • Hide: Pagination links not shown. Note: In this case, Users will not be able to navigate to additional pages.

• Pagination Results. Hide or Show the current page number and total pages (e.g., "Page 1 of 2") at the bottom of each page. Use Global will use the default value from the component options.

Article Options

The Featured Articles Layout has the following Article Options, as shown below. These options determine how the articles will show in the blog layout.

In addition to Yes/No or Hide/Show, these options allow the following settings.

• Use Global: Use the default value from Article Manager Options.
• Use Article Settings: Use the value from the Article Manager Edit. This setting allows you to have different options for different articles in the blog layout. For example, one article could show the author and other articles could hide the author.

The Article Options are as follows. Chunk25:Show Title Chunk25:Linked Titles Chunk25:Show Intro Text Chunk25:Show Category Chunk25:Link Category Chunk25:Show Parent Chunk25:Link Parent Chunk25:Show Author Chunk25:Link Author Chunk25:Show Create Date Chunk25:Show Modify Date Chunk25:Show Publish Date Chunk25:Show Navigation Chunk25:Show Voting Chunk25:Show Read More Chunk25:Show Show Title with Read More Chunk25:Show Icons Chunk25:Show Print Icon Chunk25:Show Email Icon Chunk25:Show Hits Chunk25:Show Unauthorised Links

Integration Options

The Featured Articles layout has the following Integration Options.

These determine whether a news feed will be available for the page and what information it will show.

Link Type Options

This layout has the following Link Type Options.

These let you control attributes of the link for this menu item in the Joomla menu.

• Link Title Attribute. An optional custom description for the title attribute of the menu hyperlink.
• Link CSS Style. An optional custom CSS style to apply to the menu hyperlink.
• Link Image. An optional image to be used with the menu hyperlink.
• Add Menu Title. (No/Yes) If an optional image is added, whether to add the menu title next to the image.

Page Display Options

This layout has the following Page Display Options.

• Browser Page Title. Optional text for the "Browser page title" element. If blank, the Menu Item Title is used.
• Show Page Heading. Whether or not to show the Browser Page Title in the heading of the page. The page heading is normally displayed inside an h1 HTML element.
• Page Heading. Optional alternative text for the Page Heading.
• Page Class. Optional CSS class to add to elements in this page. This allows CSS styling specific to this page.

Metadata Options

This layout has the following Metadata Options.

• Meta Description. An optional paragraph to be used as the description of the page in the HTML output. This will generally display in the results of search engines. If entered, this creates an HTML meta element with a name attribute of "description" and a content attribute equal to the entered text.

• Meta Keywords. Optional entry for keywords. Must be entered separated by commas (for example, "cats, dogs, pets") and may be entered in upper or lower case. (For example, "CATS" will match "cats" or "Cats"). Keywords can be used in several ways:

1. To help Search Engines and other systems classify the content of the Article.
2. In combination with Banner tags, to display specific Banners based on the Article content. For example, say you have one Banner with an ad for dog products and another Banner for cat products. You can have your dog Banner display when a User is viewing a dog-related Article and your cat Banner display for a cat-related Article. To do this, you would:
   1. Add the keywords 'dog' and 'cat' to the appropriate Articles.
   2. Add the Tags 'dog' and 'cat' to the appropriate Banners in the Banner Manager New/Edit screen.
   3. Set the Banner module Parameter 'Search By Tags' to 'Yes in the Banner Module Edit screen.
3. For articles only, in combination with the Related Articles module, to display Articles that share at least one keyword in common. For example, if the current Article displayed has the keywords "cats, dogs, monkeys", any other Articles with at least one of these keywords will show in the Related Articles module.

• Robots. The instructions for web "robots" that browse to this page.
  • Use Global: Use the value set in the Component→Options for this component.
  • Index, Follow: Index this page and follow the links on this page.
  • No index, Follow: Do not index this page, but still follow the links on the page. For example, you might do this for a site map page where you want the links to be indexed but you don't want this page to show in search engines.
  • Index, No follow: Index this page, but do not follow any links on the page. For example, you might want to do this for an events calendar, where you want the page to show in search engines but you do not want to index each event.
  • No index, no follow: Do not index this page or follow any links on the page.

• Secure. Whether or not to use SSL and the Secure Site URL for this page.
  • Off: Do not use SSL.
  • On: Use SSL.
  • Ignore: Ignore this setting and use the global setting for the site.

Module Assignment for this Menu Item

This part of the screen gives you access to a list of the site's modules as shown below.

If you click on a module name, a modal window is opened with the same format as when you add or edit a module in Module Manager. For example, clicking on Archived Articles opens a modal window as shown below.

Using this modal window, you can assign the module to this or any other menu item and also enter the module's position and other options.

The Display column indicates whether this module will display on this menu item. Note that this column is not updated until you save the menu item.