Joomla Templates Club 406,261 posts

[cgc0202 Friend cgc0202Join date: August 2007Posts: 2244Downloads:0Uploads:3 Thanks: 206 Thanked: 262 times in 1 posts]

#137770

To follow up on the prior post of jantunes in A JA Teline 3 soon? and the suggestions by other respondents, maybe it would be a good idea to share our thoughts on what we desire and wish to be integrated in the next upgrade of Teline II.

Please share your suggestions here, with some more elaboration — cite examples, either from other Joomlart Templates or even those from other sources, including existing professional news-magazines.

For example, as much as I like Teline II, I still have to make a lot of changes in the layout and the CSS, and there could be room for more. At the same time, when considering these changes or new features to add, we must not lose sight that Teline II is intended as a “news-magazine”. Its main function is deliver credible news and information.

Several features. must be considered basic: and featured prominently

• Front Page module
• News Module
• Most recent
• Popular

More Tab Modules
Space is very critical in an information rich site. The Tab module — presented as true module in the Teline but not in Teline II — must be provided in multiple variance that have customized contents.

For example, right now, the “RECENT” and “Popular” links are placed in the same Tab module. Other custom tab modules would be links of news title collated via RSS from external sources (or even within the site), e.g., grouped as World news, “various regions of the world, e.g., USA, Asia, Africa, Europe, etc.. Other custom tab modules may be based on topics — culture, science, health, business, etc.

More about tab modules later.

Utlilitarian news and image slideshow
JA Slideshow is included in a number of JA templates. However, in a news magazine, it would be nice to have a news and image slideshow, thatt would serve also to feature the most important contents. I will discuss this more but the basic feature must be a slideshow that is clickable so that it will either lead the visitor to a feature article, a category, section or some other contents, or section of the website.

Alternative Themest
As to visual appearance, for my own use, I would prefer and retain the elegant simplicity of the “white background” with as little of the “whistles and bells” that really do not add to the utility of presenting the news and information.

Of course, others may prefer different themes, so one incremental feature to be offered by Joomlart is to provide alternative themes (perhaps during the year, or longer). This is one sure way of providing useful service to members who prefer to concentrate on just one Template, and do not care too much about other templates.

More suggestions later, and even further clarifications of the above. This is just to start the ball rolling.

In doing so, let’s hope that the Joomlart designers will listen to our suggestions.

Cornello

[imsleepy Friend imsleepyJoin date: January 2009Posts: 451Downloads:0Uploads:0 Thanks: 94 Thanked: 45 times in 1 posts]

#289452

All I really want to see are extensions that are a bit more user friendly. Such as the Hot Topics… this problem with the last image in the article being picked for the module is not good.

I think getting the bugs worked out of what is already there would be a great start! No sense in adding more features if they don’t work right.

Slideshow would be a great addition. I incorporated the one from Sanidiine into my Teline, but that was a lot of work to make it right. If it had already been an option would have saved hours of my time.

As far as themes go, I am very happy with the white background of the Teline II. What I would like to see is the ability to assign some of the colors to menu items that are not just associated with the news module. Once again, spent hours changing the front page from gray to another color because I just thought the gray screamed boring. With all the color choices, it would seem logical that you could assign them to menu items. Currently the only choice is to create multiple templates to handle this… I am not ready to spend that much time on my site at this point.

I would also like to see some header modules above the logo etc that are fluid. Another thing I spent hours creating. These types of modules are good for sites that have to advertise something to stay in business and I like to put the banners at the top of the page above everything else so they don’t interfer too much with my content. Would like to see the footer with the same type of feature.

Still, I think that making the modules a little more user friendly and make sure they work properly is the most important first step in an upgrade. This template is great, but some of the features are VERY frustrating to work with.

[questbg Friend questbgJoin date: May 2008Posts: 1912Downloads:0Uploads:1 Thanks: 146 Thanked: 339 times in 197 posts]

#289476

<em>@imsleepy 109764 wrote:</em><blockquote>All I really want to see are extensions that are a bit more user friendly. Such as the Hot Topics… this problem with the last image in the article being picked for the module is not good.</blockquote>

There was a fix for this somewhere on the forum!

Somebody posted a new file called “patch for mod_ja_catslwi.zip” which made it load the first image in the article. I’ve got this stored on my HD but haven’t got round to testing it yet!

For me, I’d really like a ‘most e-mailed’ tab to go along with ‘latest’ and ‘popular’. I’d also like the ability to use SWF files for banners, although I suspect this is a Joomla problem, not a JoomlArt problem!

Cheers
Chris

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