Recreating the frontpage layout

The front page layout of the Powerplay template is reasonably straightforward. The main focus is the use of our JB Slideshow module in the banner position and three instances of the microblog module in the grid1, grid2 and grid4 positions. You can see screenshots of the settings used for these module below.

General Overview

Here is a quick run down of the modules we have used on the front page of the demo site.

• A custom html module is published to the top1 position with the text: "Providing innovative ideas for new businesses."
• The top right corner contains two links. The first is a scroll to bottom link and is controlled by the template. The second is the trigger for the hidden panel which will appear when any module is published to the panel1 to panel4 positions. The title for the panel is controlled via the template.
• The logo is set to display in the header row.
• The main menu is a core Joomla menu published the menu position. You can see a full run down of the settings required to recreate the layout and the superfish menu in the Zen Grid Framework documentation. The two line menu is achieved by using our slight reworking of the original YVBB plugin that renders BB code anywhere on your Joomla site. Take a look at the creating  a two line menu tutorial for more information on how to do this.
• The JB Slideshow3 module is published to the banner position. You can see the settings for the slideshow module in this position via the below. You will notice that when you click the images images in the slideshow that the images from the slideshow are not displayed on the actual content pages. In order to recreate this you need to ensure that you create a menu item that points to the category that you are drawing the slideshow content from and that the option to show intro text is set to hide in the menu parameters
• An instance of the Microblog module is published to each of the tab positions grid1, grid2 and grid4. You can see the settings below.
• An instance of the jTweet module is published to the Grid24 position.
• A custom html module is published to the bottom1 position.
• A latest news module is published to the Bottom2 position.
• A most read module item is published to the Bottom3 position.
• A latest news module is published to the Bottom4 position.
• A custom html module is published to the bottom6 position.
• A custom html module is published to the footer position.
• The Joomla Bamboo logo is set via the template parameters and can be set to be displayed or removed depending on the permission granted by your subscription.

Setting up the slideshow

The slideshow module has the ability to display both Joomla content items and K2 items in a content fading / sliding / scrolling  module. The demo site uses Joomla content to display the content and the settings that were used are below:

Microblog Settings

The following screenshots highlight the microblog settings used for the grid1, grid2 and grid4 module positions.