Joomla™ Template Change -
A quick guide to effectively change the template of Joomla 1.5
Understanding Joomla 1.5 TM Template Implementation:
Joomla is among the most popular and robust Content Management System (CMS). It comes with lot of features to manage and publish content on the World Wide Web (www).
This tutorial is an in-depth guide of how to implement new templates in Joomla, an overview of the technical architecture of the templates, and some of the resources for downloading Joomla 1.5 TM templates.
Technology Used:
• Joomla 1.5 TM
• Mozilla FireFox 3.0 TM
We assume that both the applications are installed on your system and working fine.
This document is divided into two sections covering process of implementing i.e., functional part, and understanding the basic difference between normal template and Joomla template i.e., technical architecture.
To keep the interest on in this document we begin with the functional part of Joomla template implementation.
Functional Understanding:
This section is divided into four parts which covers the complete life cycle of the template installation and implementation.
• Download & Install
We begin with the installation of new template into Joomla.
Download the desired Joomla 1.5 template from the site. Name of some of the sites are mentioned in the “Joomla Template Resource” section of this document or you can use any of the web search engine and look for sites with “Free Joomla 1.5 templates” keywords. Downloaded template file is a .zip file. Once you have downloaded the template, place it in the desired folder. Now, run browser and type the URL for the Joomla Administrator. Enter the administrator user name and password (Screen 1) . 
Screen 1
On successful login you will see Screen 2. On menu bar click on the Extensions > Install/Uninstall. 
Screen 2
You will be positioned on Install tab. In the Upload Package File section click the Browser button to select the zip file of the Joomla 1.5 Template (Screen 3) . Once selected click the Upload File & Install button to install desired template. 
Screen 3
Joomla will prompt a success message once the template has been installed successfully (Screen 4). 
Screen 4
• Template Validation
Joomla has a very strong inbuilt template validation process. It accepts template setup files which satisfies it's internal structure.
We would display some of the error messages generated by Joomla when trying to install invalid Joomla templates. This is additional information and if you wish you can skip this section.
- Template other than Joomla Template
Screen 5
- Any other file except zip file
Screen 6
- Template already exists
Screen 7
• Checking Installed Template
Let's now examine weather the template has been installed successfully or not.
On menu bar click on the Extensions > Template Manager . You will see the name of all templates installed with a star mark in front of one of the template signifying it as a current layout.
If you take the mouse over the name of newly installed template then you will see thumbnail image of the template (Screen 8) .
Screen 8
• Implementing Template
Joomla has made it very simple to manage implementation of template. Let us now see how this can be done.
i. On menu bar click on the Extensions > Template Manager. You will see the name of all the templates installed.
ii. Click on the radio button of the desired template and press Default button on the upper-right hand side of the screen (Screen 9) .
Screen 9
iii. You will notice that the position of star icon in the Default column has been set to the selected template (Screen 10) .
Screen 10
iv. Now click on the Preview link on the top-right hand corner of the screen to view the effect of the newly implemented template (Screen 9) .
Some of the templates come with customization options. You can view these options by clicking on the name of the template. A new screen will open which allows you to edit the HTML code of the template, customize the color schema of the template, and edit the Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) code.
• Uninstalling Template
Like installation, uninstallation is also a simple process. Joomla does not allow you to uninstall template which has been set as a default template (as explained in “Implementing Template”) and will always show the name in disabled form. To uninstall a template you need to set other template as a default template and then can proceed with the process of uninstall.
On menu bar click on the Extensions > Install/Uninstall. Now go to Templates tab ( as shown in Screen 11 ). You will see the name of all the templates installed. You will notice that some of the names are disabled, this is because they have been set as default (as explained above). There is a column named Client with values as Site and Admin . This identifies that the respective template is implemented for the site (which the end user sees) or for the Admin console (the same through which you are working and managing contents). In this tutorial you have learnt to install and implement Site template, so we will be focusing on templates which have Site as a value in Client column.
Check the check box of the templates that you want to uninstall and press Uninstall button located on the upper-right hand corner of the screen (refer Screen 11) . 
Screen 11
You will get the message of successful uninstallation (Screen 12) . 
Screen 12
• Issues Encountered
It has been observed that some times after uninstalling templates they do not get completely removed and leave their traces in different folders of Joomla installation in the form of files. One such instance had been explained below.
Issue 1 – A file named en-GB.tpl_siteground-j15-56.ini has been left in <Joomla-home>/language/en-GB/ after uninstallation. Remove the said file manually. /en-GB/ folder is specific to the language selection you did while installing Joomla. It may be different for different language installation. In this case it is English-Great Britain .
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* You have to be completely sure that the files you are removing belong to the uninstalled template. We recommend you to delete the files and put it in the Recycle Bin rather than deleting it completely. In future if Joomla starts giving trouble then you have the option to roll it back.
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Technical Understanding:
While playing with Joomla Template installation I kept wondering what makes a template meant for Joomla gets installed and other gets rejected (as shown in Template Validation section).
There must be a basic architecture that every template has to follow along with add-ons. To satisfy my urge I decompressed some of the Joomla Template zip file and started looking into the directory structure. Although, I didn't work out completely but tried to find out some similarities between them.
• Common Files and Purpose
File / Folder Name |
Purpose |
templateDetails.xml |
It is the core of Joomla Template. It consists of details of all the files template holds, along with the author, date of publishing, version of the template. Joomla looks for this file while installing template and gives error (Screen 5) if not found. |
template_thumbnail.png |
Thumbnail impression of the template. Used as shown in Screen 8 |
index.php |
It is the root file of the template. |
css |
Folder to hold style sheets. |
images |
Folder to hold all images used in template. |
There are few more folders that were found like html, js , and admin along with some file. All these vary on the choice of the template author. I hope to publish a detailed document on this soon.
Conclusion:
I am sure this document will help beginner Joomla users to successfully change the desired template of their site without facing any trouble. If, you still have any queries then please contact me at the below given email.
Joomla Template Resource:
Other Resources:
To find more about Joomla kindly visit http://www.joomla.org/
Feedback:
We would appreciate any constructive feedback on this document. Please let us have your Suggestions, Corrections, or Modification at the given email.
Manu Gupta
contact@growthtechnosoft.com
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