Ruth Cheesley

Copyright © 2011 Virya Technologies

Getting started with K2

Hello, I’m Ruth Cheesleyfrom Virya Technologies

Find my social media stuff here! @RCheesley

What is K2

• Content Construction Kit (CCK)

• Extends what Joomla! articles can do

• Allows cool features

• Tags

• Per-category styling

• Close control of layout

• Template overrides

What version to use

Stable release

Lots of extensions

Lots of plugins

Lots of template overrides

OK Support

SVN release

Not many modules

Even fewer plugins!

Overrides need tweaks

Not much support!

Joomla! 1.5 Joomla! 1.6/7

Key concepts

• As many or few categories as you need (including unlimited nesting)

• You can use tags to link related items

• Images added via K2 are automagically resized to the required dimensions

• You can use extensions to create per-category styling

Getting your head around the settings

How to show stuff!

• Category Item Layout

• Category View Options

• Item Image Options

• Item View Options in Category Listings

• Item View Options

Should be other way round (in my opinion)

Configuring K2

• Some of the settings are not logically ordered

• Once you understand what each group of settings control, it’s easy!

• Some settings must be set in global parameters, others in category

• Same idea as Joomla! articles in terms of inheritance of settings

Take a deep breath!

Global Parameters

Easier to show you in K2 itself

We’ll look at 1.5.x and 1.7.x (SVN) on a localhost installation

Title (Category)

Show subcategory blocks displays this area, columns

determines number of columns for the icons, ordering

determines how to show the subcategories

This is controlled by the language file

Category View Options

Item counter (Category)

Description (Category)

Image (Category)

RSS Feed icon/link

Sub-Category

Title

Sub-Category

Item Counter

Sub-Category Description

Sub-Category

Image

1 COLUMN 2 ARTICLESLeading StoryLeading Story

2 COLUMNS 4 ARTICLESPrimary StoryPrimary Story

1 COLUMN 4 ARTICLESSecondary StorySecondary StorySecondary StorySecondary Story

2 COLUMNS 4 ARTICLESPrimary StoryPrimary Story

2 COLUMNS 8 LINKSLinksLinksLinksLinks

2 COLUMNS 8 ARTICLESLinksLinksLinksLinks

Category Item Layout

Image options

Generally set these in global parameters UNLESS you have a category which needs to

have different sizes to the rest of your site

(e.g. a portfolio where you want different size thumbnails)

Set in pixels, this controls the image WIDTH only (proportional resizing)

Item view options in category listings

Item view options

Creating K2 templates

• Copy the default template folder from the K2 directory

• Copy the default template and rename it to something relevant

• Upload it to your template override folder

Explaining the template files

Category blog layout

Individual items in category blog layout

Links in category blog layout

Individual article layout

Comments form

Create an article form (front end submission)

Latest items category blog layout

Individual items in latest items category layout

Items by tag layout

Items by user layout

What can you do with templates?

• Move stuff around

• Change CSS classes (e.g. to left align images in category view and flow text around them)

• Tweak how dates are displayed

• Add images (e.g. for comment, media & video anchor links)

IMPORTANT NOTE

• Template overrides are NOT UPDATED when you update the extension

• Hurrah, this is great! – avoids core hacks

• Boo! This is not great! – if there are patches for files which are overridden, or variables change.

You MUST update your overrides (it doesn’t happen often, devs usually clearly warn about this, but important to remember).

Some cool plugins and modules

• Css4k2 (http://www.jiliko.net)

• K2 Dynamap (http://nick.texidor.com)

• K2 Multi Notifier (http://k2joom.com)

• Land of Coder (http://www.landofcoder.com)

• DM Digital (http://joomlaextensions.dmdigital.it)

Example sites

www.able2uk.com

www.rsnonline.org.uk

www.suffolkdofe.co.uk

www.viryatechnologies.com

www.prhengland.co.uk

Thank you!

Find my social media stuff here! @RCheesley

Ruth Cheesley