Renaming positions in the template XML manifest file

Question

I am converting theme from HTML to Joomla. When I have defined position in below manner, It gave me nothing as output.

    <positions>
        <position>top_header</position>
        <position>left</position>
        <position>right_menu</position>
        <position>right_content</position>
        <position>footer</position>
    </positions>

But When I changed that into following code, Everything is working fine.

    <positions>
        <position>position-0</position>
        <position>position-1</position>
        <position>position-2</position>
        <position>position-3</position>
        <position>position-4</position>
        <position>position-5</position>
        <position>position-7</position>
        <position>position-8</position>
        <position>position-9</position>
        <position>messageIE</position>  
        <position>debug</position>
    </positions>

As I am new to joomla, I don't have any idea why is it so.

So anyone can tell me why position works in that manner? Can't we define our own position in Joomla? Because I have seen themes which have their own defined position and they were working perfectly.Then Why my position did not work?

Answer 1

Have you based your new template on an existing template?

There are several conditions that must be met in order to display modules in your new positions.

1. /templates/YOURTEMPLATE/TemplateDetails.xml
   You must define your module positions in this file. Your code in the question is correct.

2. /templates/YOURTEMPLATE/index.php
   The positions must be defined in your index.php file. Place this code wherever you want your module positions to appear:

   <jdoc:include type="modules" name="top_header" style="xhtml" />
   

   (Replace "top_header" as needed)

This code will be replaced with your module content if a module is published to this position.

3. Publish your modules
   Now publish a module (or several) to the position top_header, and make sure you set "Menu Assignment" -> "Module Assignment" to the pages where you want the modules to display. Also make sure "Status" is set to "Published".

Most of these steps are basic, but I'm listing them because it's easy to overlook something.

Answer 2

The XML file probably doesn't accept underscores _ in the module position name. Try using "top-header" instead of "top_header".