Joomla! Out of the Box - October Challenge
This is my entry for Crystal's challenge in the Joomla Magazine.The objective of building this site was not just to only use core joomla but to also make it attractive, accessible and very fast.
I always aim to hand off a website to a client so that they are fully able to manage the content on the site. That means the site has been built in such a way that the "magic" takes place with the css and the layouts. The client only needs to deal with the content without being concerned with any of the "complex and scary" technical stuff.
On the trips page I have created a "masonry style" layout with filters. This is all just css. Each trip is an article with some custom fields for displaying additional information. The page is a customised category blog layout and the filters are created from content custom fields.
My favourite part of this exercise was to produce a site that will hopefully showcase, when used correctly, the power that Joomla provides out of the box. You have all the tools you need - you don't need to rush to install a million extensions.
Spending just a little time in advance to organise and structure your content pays off. With this site anyone will be able to update any of the content as it is all just content.
The photo gallery on the home page is the mod_article_news module again with a custom layout which displays all the articles in a category. The thumbnail image is the article intro-image. The larger image is the article full image and the displayed caption is the alt description. The layout is completely responsive and will dynamically adjust the size of the thumbnail images dependingon how many articles are in the category. This module uses some additonal bootstrap javascript. Using the web asset manager the module loads just the standard bootstrap javascript for modals and carousel and an additional bootstrap javascript library for the lightbox.
On the individual trip pages the header image is the article full image. The information in the six boxes are custom fields. The covid information is a tinymce snippet as is the "accordion" which is javascript free using the native html5 summary/details.
I have probably ignored almost every part of the brief, but that's because the client was wrong. Creating a standalone site as an addition to their main site might have seemed like a good idea but it dilutes the SEO etc etc.
My only real concession to the design brief was the addition of the floating ghosts. That is also just a custom html module with an image of a ghost and some css animations to move the ghost around. Because it is actually quite annoying it only runs on the home page and only last for sixty seconds. Of course as its a module I have already set it to be unpublished on November 1st when I guess the client will probably want to replace it with a flying santa.
There are lots of other little hidden secrets on the site - have fun finding them all.
