Setting up the Newstream Joomla template

K2 Joomla Template

This template provides additional styles for K2 from JoomlaWorks. This very popular extension gives you additional means to control and create content. You are free to use Newstream without K2, but we have done the extra work to style K2 to fit the whole theme. Here is an excerpt about K2 and what it can do for you.

Module Positions

The new stream template is built upon the Zend Grid framework and is incredibly flexible.  The module widths and sizes are easily controlled by the template parameters in the template administrator. Please view the screenshot below for an overview of the module positions available in this template.

Newstream Typography

This page gives you an overview of all of the typographical elements included with the template. You can apply these styles in your Joomla website easily if you use the content editor, and we recommend using JCE as the default editor. It provides the best features, at a price you can't beat, free!

Newstream Colour Themes

Newstream comes with thirteen distinct colour schemes that are big, bold and beautiful. A news or magazine site traditionally needs to set the general tone via a clean or minimal backdrop with a focus on simplicity but it can also emphasize its content with a dynamic and striking colour palette. Newstream does this by providing ample white space with a simple and striking colour hierachy that creates an elegant theme to accompany your news.

Hidden Panel Styling

The hidden panel is a core feature of the Zen grid framework. The panel is enabled when ever you have any module published to the  panel1, panel2, panel3 or panel4  module positions.

Tabbed Modules

The tabs and their triggers appear  on the page when you publish any module to the Tab1, Tab2, Tab3 or Tab4 position.

Subline menu items

 One of the striking features of the Newstream template is the two line menu that you can see at the top of the page. This menu system uses the core Joomla menu module in addition to a slightly revamped version of the YVBB bbcode plugin that was featured on the Joomla Bamboo blog. We have rewritten parts of this plug-in to make it compatible for use in Joomla menu items without the code getting rendered in the breadcrumbs on your site.

JB Slideshow3

The JB  slideshow module features a lot in our templates and as you can see from the demo site it is given center stage on the front page. The version of the slide show that has been released in conjunction with this template adds some nice little extra styling elements to the slideshow which gives some extra finesse to a slideshow dedicated to a news portal type Joomla template.

Please view the documentation page on the Newstream  template for a more in-depth analysis and screenshots of the settings that we have used for implementing this module in this template.

Recreating the demo site

It's not always possible to start building out a site with a new template by using the quickstart package. This guide will help you to see which elements we used and where we used them on the demo site for you to quickly go about rectreating the demo site for this template.

Controlling the top banner

You have probably noticed already that the Newstream  template has  a floating navigation bar that is able to be  positioned above  the banner module position.

There is a setting that controls this in the template's administrator settings and effectively allows you to control whether the navigation area and the logo is positioned either relatively or absolutely.

Installing newstream in a fresh version of joomla

Although the Newstream template is a simple design the default Joomla sample data doesnt quite do it justice and so here are a few steps to do if you are installing the Newstream template into a default Joomla installation.