Using Link A instead of the title link

Question

I am using the module Articles - Newsflash to show a category of mine, which works just as intended.

Now I can see all intro images of the selected articles and also some corresponding text.

Clicking on the titles of the articles sends me to the full article, but I would like to change that.

Instead, I would like to use the Link A field of each article to define where the user is sent upon clicking the article title.

I found some threads such as: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/24350538/linking-intro-image-in-joomla-3-3-1

https://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?t=926779

Those threads seem to go in the right direction, but I am not experienced enough to manage it on my own.

Answer 1

I found the file I needed to create an override of and edited the neccesary files accordingly. Thats what I did:

In file /html/mod_articles_news_adv/_item.php

<figure class="item_img img-intro img-intro__<?php echo htmlspecialchars($imgfloat); ?>"> 
<?php if (isset($urls) && (!empty($urls->urla) )) :
        $articleLinkAUrl = $urls->urla;
        endif;?>
    <?php if ($params->get('link_titles') && $item->readmore) : ?>
    <a href="<?php echo $articleLinkAUrl;?>">
    <?php endif; ?>
        <img src="<?php echo htmlspecialchars($item_images->image_intro); ?>" alt="<?php echo htmlspecialchars($item_images->image_intro_alt); ?>">
        <?php if ($item_images->image_intro_caption): ?>
        <figcaption><?php echo htmlspecialchars($item_images->image_intro_caption); ?></figcaption>
        <?php endif;
    if ($params->get('link_titles') && $item->readmore) : ?>
    </a>
    <?php endif; ?>
</figure>

This part gets the Link A Url in php:

<?php if (isset($urls) && (!empty($urls->urla) )) :
    $articleLinkAUrl = $urls->urla;
    endif;?>

Unsing articleLinkAUrl as new URL for the intro image:

<a href="<?php echo $articleLinkAUrl;?>">

Same can be done to change the title URl to use articleLinkAURL

mickmackusa improved my solution which is available here: https://3v4l.org/JFDRM