Beginner's Guide

CREATE A NEW TEMPLATE USING ATOMIC
The Atomic template is a skeleton for your own template. It consists of:
•
/htdocs/templates/atomic
component.php - the print view template
error.php - the error page template
favicon.ico - the website icon (Favicon [5])
index.html - a security file displaying a blank page when the directory is entered directly (also has to be
configured by the webserver but usually is)
index.php - the templete main page
templateDetails.xml - The configuration file containing all information about files, options and positions is
necessary to show the template in the template manager and to later create an installable zip package.
template_preview.png - the template preview image, displayed in template manager
template_thumbnail.png - the template thumbnail image, displayed in template manager
•
/htdocs/templates/atomic/css
the folder for CSS files
•
/htdocs/templates/atomic/html
the folder for Override files - Atomic provides a few Overrides for modules.
•
/htdocs/templates/atomic/images
the folder for images
•
/htdocs/templates/atomic/js
the folder for Java script files
•
/htdocs/templates/atomic/languages
the folder for language files - Atomic comes with English base language files.
Main template file index.php
The file name of this layout file has to be index.php since Joomla searches for embedded <jdoc> and
PHP commands. All necessary HTML markup is already built-in and commented. You can change the
content of the file according to your needs.
To get an idea, let's do a quick walkthrough:
In line 24 you can choose whether you want to use the blueprint CSS framework or not.
In line 50, 56, 62 and more you see that the template provides positions with special names (atomic-
search, atomic-topmenu, ...). If you want to use these names you have to assign your modules to these
positions. If you want to change the names, you may do that in the templatedetails.xml file.
In line 24 you will see:
echo $this->baseurl ?>/templates/<?php echo $this->template ?>/js/template.js
Joomla! 2.5 - Beginner’s Guide
Monday, 30 January 2012! Page 198