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Written by Mike Noel
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Thursday, 06 April 2006 |
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Modules in Joomla! are the little blocks of functionality that usually
site around the periphery of a webpage. These little blocks are
small snippets of PHP that are executed by the Joomla! engine when
rendering a page. The result of the script is displayed as a small
block of html on the rendered webpage. Some modules simple display
data from the database. Others provide small forms that allow the
viewer to take an action. The "who's online" module is an example of
the first type and the login form is an example of the second.
Modules are typically displayed on the left and right sides of the
page. It's not uncommon to also find modules on the top or bottom of
a page. The display location for a module is controlled by the site
administrator through the Joomla administrator panel. The module
management screen provides several options as possible locations for a
published module.
The typical way to include modules on a rendered page is to put php
statements in the index.php page (the main template page) that
instruct Joomla to include all of the modules for a given position.
This method of including modules is fairly static and restricted to
all areas on the page that aren't covered by other components. In
particular this keeps modules out of the content area of a page.
Joomla provides a way to get around this limitation through the use of
a built-in plugin. The plugin allows authors to insert the "load
module" command at any point in their content. The author simple has
to include the text {mosloadposition user9} in their
content at the location where they want the modules to appear.
Including this text will instruct Joomla to load all of the modules
designated as belonging to position "user9" into the content. Of
course any position identifier can be used here.
This handy trick allows the insertion of author profiles, related
articles, or any other interesting information into the main body of
any article.
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Last Updated ( Saturday, 08 July 2006 )
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