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I'm a Web Developer who has recently begun using Joomla. I've written a custom theme using php, html and css etc but would like to create a way for someone with absolutely no programming experience to edit specific parts of the theme.

For example, in a simple GUI they could select a colour from a dropdown which would control the colour/alert type of a specific bootstrap alert on the site.

My issue however is that I'm a tad confused about what it is I need to research creating. Is this sort of thing a 'component', a 'plugin' or even an 'extension' perhaps?

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  • Could you please clarify whether you mean that template config settings are inadequate for what you are proposing (and if so, how so) or you're asking simply how to make template settings and use them in your template? Aug 18, 2019 at 6:10
  • Are you wanting the person with ANPE to be able to adjust it from the Administrator or public side of the website? In both cases I would say you should be looking at a Component extension, but you might find the Admin side easier to deal with. There is also a bucket load of Template Frameworks available that you might be able to find a free version of one of their templates so you can look at the code and get ideas for how to achieve what you want to do. If you need more help tell us more about the type of options you want the ANPE to be able to change.(beaten by 7 seconds).
    – Irata
    Aug 18, 2019 at 6:10
  • @jamesgarrett I don't think template settings are what I'm looking for. I'm intending to create a more bespoke solution. Thanks anyway.
    – Xander
    Aug 18, 2019 at 7:07
  • @Irata I would like to create something in the administrator panel. For example, I (as a dev) could manually add a bootstrap alert into the home page. A user with ANPE, in the admin panel, could go into my custom/bespoke panel/component thing and use a dropdown box to select the alert type (warning, error, success etc) which would control the class of the bootstrap alert.
    – Xander
    Aug 18, 2019 at 7:10

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Depending on how elaborate you want your offering to be then you could start with just adding your customisable attributes as template options via the templates .xml file so that you don't have to reinvent the process of loading template values. And then for you more Bespoke interface write an Admin component to present the options to the APNE that changes the template options under the covers.

There are some pretty sophisticated customisation managers for template frameworks that just use the template settings, so I still suggest looking at some of what is out there already to help you decide the most suitable approach for your intentions.

A quick search on Google for 'joomla template parameters' shows up a few hits, albeit a little old in what I looked at, where people are trying to go beyond the basic template settings so there might be some background information that could be of use to you.

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  • Thank you, it looks like template options might be what I'm looking for. I wasn't aware that custom options could be added. In the long run a component might be desirable to group all the custom/bespoke settings specific for my purpose into one location.
    – Xander
    Aug 18, 2019 at 9:03

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