How to Configure for Mobile?

I could not find any posts on this subject so I will start one. I am fairly new to Gavick, but not to Joomla. I discovered Gavick a few months ago and love the incredible power of the templates and extensions. Documentation is usually pretty sparse, but adequate enough to nudge me in the right direction.

But I do not see how to set up the mobile options in The News II.

I had thought that I would find module positions for mobile devices and basically set up a totally new layout that only uses mobile positions. But I only see two mobile module positions (mobile_top and mobile_bottom). I must be missing something here - can someone point me in the right direction?

and what is a facebook layout?

Hi,

You can find layout files under folder \templates\gk_twn2\layouts\ to customize.

Facebook layout is used for Facebook Bot that crawls your site content for sharing feature.

Thank you for the quick response! I found the layout files and after reviewing I believe that I understand how your mobile system works.

If I read it correctly, the template provides for mobile formatting by providing a mobile logo, menu, header and footer. To use the template as published without modifications to the layout file, you publish your mobile header and footer modules (mobile_top and mobile_bottom), provide a suitable logo image for mobile and either select or create a menu to be used for mobile. You can create pages which are intended only for mobile that are only viewable through the unique mobile menu. This provides mobile compatibility without mods.

To provide a more customized appearance, you can use the layout files in the \templates\gk_twn2\layouts\ folder.

If I am correct, then what is missing in your documentation are the three sentences, above, that explains the mobile methodology. It would be helpful if a similar description were included in the "mobile ready" paragraph of the "features" section.

So as I continue to experiment, I see that Joomla articles which are identified as featured are displayed on the mobile home page, but K2 articles which are featured do not. Surely this must be documented somewhere, and I have missed it. I feel like I am wasting time trying to decipher the usage instructions. Do I have to just poke through the quickstart and try to reverse engineer the mobile functionality? Is there any way to use K2 items on mobile devices?

I was able to get the mobile site to do what I wanted, but it took some effort.

The outcome that I wanted was to be able to set up a mobile site using K2 articles and Gavick extensions, especially news show pro.

By placing the modules in the mobile_top or mobile_bottom positions, you sort of get there, but they are not collapsible, so it really wasn't the outcome that I wanted.

To get the desired outcome, I first tried inserting the module in a featured article that is completely blank except for the {loadposition XX} function. That does not work because Gavick modules do not work with that function. So I downloaded and install Modules Anywhere and used it instead of the {loadposition XX} function.

I now have exactly what I wanted.

I can configure the mobile site by creating dummy articles which are "featured" and whose only content is the inserted module. The News Show Pro module functions properly and is completely collapsed on initial access.

A further note, for the below to work properly, you will need to select Mainbody-Frontpage "Mainbody Only". otherwise you will have the featured articles on your front page.

I love this flexibility and forethought, but frankly, I had no idea what the "Mainbody-Frontpage" dropdown selector was used for until I was looking at the template xml. I had thought I would need to hack the xml file to keep featured articles from showing up, and then saw what the drop down was used for.

I love the Gavick flexibility, but there is quite a discovery process involved in becoming proficient.