In Joomla 2.5/ 3, you can use more than one design template in your webpage. This means that you can create a webpage with groups of subpages, or even individual subpages that have a unique style.
Every Joomla webpage is based on a design template. It is a file that contains the styles in a presentation, including the type and size of bullets and fonts, position of modules, placeholder sizes and positions, background design and fill, color schemes and a responsive features.
To understand how work the templates, think of them as predefined layouts. You can easily imagine a template as a wrapper for your content. The wrapper (layout) is “always” the same; the content changes from page-to-page. The editor of the website just adds content to the page from a database and chooses a template. Joomla will automatically display the page content for the visitors within a chosen Joomla layout. Thus, the design and content are entirely separated in content management system. In Joomla, a template controls the presentation of content.
Using multiple Joomla templates
In CMS Joomla 2.5 and Joomla 3.0, you can apply a design template to an individual menu item in your webpage. And, you can apply more than one design template. You will find all existing templates in your CMS in the back-end. Click on Extensions -> Template Manager to see all templates available in your installation. If you did not install any new, then only three sample template are available. In the list of templates, you can also see that one template is set as default. You will know which one is the default template by the gold star that is in the Default column. When you create a new page, CMS Joomla will automatically take the default template for the new page.
When you install a template in Joomla, it’s added to the Templates tab and one style entry is added to the Styles tab.
Joomla’s Template Manager has two tabs:
- the Styles tab – contain configurable parameters for the template that vary depending on what the template will allow
- the Templates tab – from you’ll able to edit the core template itself (eg. template.css file).
The system of placing different templates on different pages is based entirely on menu links. The Menu Assignment setting is a great feature that lets you assign templates on a page-by-page basis, in much the same way that you can set a menu or module to appear on an individual page or all of your site’s pages. Just select the menu items whose pages (menu links) you want the template to be used for.
Joomla 2.5 it allows you to create more subtle differences on each page using Duplicate icon. This is especially useful if the template has two or more color schemes.
Useful extension for different themes
Sometimes the solution is not enough, then it is worth reaching for :
- HD-Custom CSS (hyde-design.co.uk) – module that allows you to style pages individually from the rest of the site. Joomla’s template structure assigns the same CSS file(s) to each and every page resulting in a framework of similar looking pages. With this module you can broaden the scope of your design by having a different CSS style. Module can also help you avoid losing your template changes in the future when you install template update (new version).
- Advanced Module Manager extension (nonumber.nl). With Joomla 2.5 you can normally only assign modules to certain menu items. One of the most obvious changes between the two templates is the position of modules. With AMM you have the possibility to assign modules to the selected Joomla 2.5 template from the list of installed.