Understanding Joomla! template positions

Positions within Joomla! templates let you customize where you can place modules and content in your Joomla!-powered website.

Getting ready

While you're reading this, we'll need the rhuk_milkyway template enabled, as this has quite a large number of options for positions within its template.

How to do it...

1. View your Joomla! template in a web browser:
   
2. Edit the address of the page you're currently on, adding ?tp=1 to the end of it:
   
3. If you now refresh the page, you'll see the template positions of the various content blocks on your website:
   

You can see the template positions in boxes at the top-left of each of the blocks of content within the website (for example, top[none outline], user3[none outline]).

How it works...

The ?tp=1 addition to the end of the address in your browser tells Joomla! to display information about the template positions, which makes it easy for us to see what Joomla! is doing. The extra information that Joomla! includes in brackets after that gives us additional information on what's happening in the template, which we don't need for now.

Does your URL already contain parameters?

If the end of the address of your Joomla! website already contains parameters (also known as query strings), for example, it looks like http://example.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=25&Itemid=28, then all you need to do is append&tp=1 to the end, like so: http://example.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=25&Itemid=28&tp=1.

There's more...

Sometimes, template positions can be misleading. Something assigned to the left template position can appear in an area of the template you don't expect, depending on where Joomla! is told to insert it within the template.

See also

• Understanding the templateDetails.xml file
• Installing a Joomla! template