How do i edit my Yootheme category blog layout page please?

Question

I am using a Yootheme template for my website and i am trying to create a category blog overwrite so that when the user views my blog the following happens:

1. Each of the articles within the blog displays the image and say only 200 characters, then a read more link is automatically inserted
2. All the styling from the article is stripped so it is just a single paragraph

then when the article is opened all styling and text appears as normal

What file would i need to modify to make these changes? and what modifications would i need to make?

Any help would be greatly appreciated Luke

Answer 1

Template overrides my friend!

Template Override This is done by adding files to the template's HTML folder to override Joomla files. - Connect to your site via FTP - Navigate to: templates => template_name => html => com_content (you may need to create this folder) - Navigate to: components => com_content => views => category => tmpl => blog.php - Copy (don't move!) blog.php into the template folder you created - Hack and slash to your heart's delight!

Joomla will look to the template file and use it in preference to Joomla's core file.

YooTheme often create a lot of their own overrides in the templates they sell, so you may find those things already there. If you modify those files and then later update your template, your changes will be overwritten. Once you're done, you may want to create a copy of that file and name it something like blog.bak.php, so you have a copy of your work in case it's overwritten.

Answer 2

Standard Joomla template overrides does not work with YooTheme template as they override Joomla core files.

You need to create seperate styles for each layout/design, and copy the articles.php file (it is also the category blog view) from "TEMPLATE\warp\systems\joomla\layouts\" folder. However there are many limitation like not being able to edit the category blog view seperately from the article view. It insanely uses the same code for both showing the full article and each article (preview) in the category blog.

Example of what is not possible: Not showing articles content field in the category blog overview but showing them in the article view. As no difference is possible is not possible to automatically shorten text either :-(

So there is no good or even close to clean solution for a something many users need - if you are using a YooTheme template.