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JoomlaPraise: A template contest entry from Pixel Praise.

To all of those who waited for this thank you for your patience. Please see our tutorials section on what we updated and how to use the Front End Control Panel

A special thanks to Digital Gray for all of their help on the template!

Demo Site: http://joomlapraise.com

Download Template with Frontend Control Panel Here: http://joomlapraise.digital-gray.com/pp ... praise.zip

Download Template without Frontend Control Panel Here: http://joomlapraise.digital-gray.com/pp_joomla.zip


Brief History and Template Parameters

Although the history of the template has been very short lived, it has gone through some extensive changes.

We are still devoted to keeping things truly simple for those who aren't extremely savvy using the Joomla! system, but we've added some features and answered some requests in this very strong update.

As some of you already know, we chose this specific layout based on our current layout of the Pixel Praise website. Many will ask why we chose to use the same layout as our business website. The answer is easy.  We have had an overwhelming number of compliments and permission requests to use our design and layout so we wanted to give back to the Joomla! community.

Unlike the Pixel Praise template, the JoomlaPraise template has a few more features.

• Collapsible User Positions
• Ability to change the Header Styles
• Ability to change the Background Theme
• Custom color options
• Choice of showing and not showing the Large Top Banner
• Custom banner upload from the frontend

Some of you also already know the overall design of the JoomlaPraise template is a fairly simple one. Our idea was to make a template that wasn't too flashy and over-the-top. We came up with this lightweight design  to ensure a number of websites could use this template without having to modify too many things or getting confused and overwhelmed with a large array of parameters. At Pixel Praise our motto has always been to  keep things simple and that's exactly what we are trying to do.

Frontend Control Panel
The frontend control panel is a new addition that allows more usability for the template and is only present on the site when logged in as Super Administrator.



You can now customize:

• Parameters from the front end
• Custom banner images assigned to menu items
• Replacing the logo, bullet, and blockquote images

You'll notice on the backend that we now have fourteen parameters, as opposed to the four we had before.

• Template Foreground Color: This has two default options. White and Black for those who aren't confident enough for custom parameters.
• Background Theme: This controls the color of the background and the gradient image that reapeats.
• Header Styles: This controls the color of the H1/componentheadings and H3/moduletable headers.
• Template Width: This controls the width of your template. You have the choice of 760px 960px and a Fluid width.
• Show Component: This controls whether or not the mainbody is displayed.
• Show Banner: This controls whether or not the large banner image is displayed.
• Switch Layout: Choosing yes on this parameter with switch the layout of the site. Instead of the Menu Modules being on the right, you have the option to place them on the left in a more conventional layout.
• Custom Background Color: This field allows you to change the background color to whatever you wish. Make sure you don't type a # sign before your hexadecimal color.
• Custom Header Color: This field allows you to choose a custom heading color. This will change the color of the h1/componentheading/h3 classes.
• Custom Primary Color: This parameter allows you to change the foreground color of the template. There are two default options above in the Template Foreground Color.
• Custom Secondary Color: This field changes the color of the embelishments of the site. This is where the light gray areas are in the default install.
• Custom Font Color: This parameter allows you to change the font color of the site. In cases where your Custom Foreground Color is too dark you would use this field to lighten your font color.
• Custom Link Color: This field will function like the Custom Font Color parameter. You can choose a custom hexadecimal color here.
• Custom Link Hover Color: This controls the hover action on all links.

It's a lot to take in at first, but once you get the hang of it the parameters seem very useful if you want to create several sites using this template.

Why It's Better



Before we started making changes we looked through our comments and suggestions made on the Joomla! forums. After filtering through those we decided to make extreme changes to the template in order to  accommodate the many suggestions without becoming over complicated.

Number One: We wanted to take advantage of the Joomla! over-ride features. Making the template more accessible means that the template could be more flexible and easier to use for some. We dove feet first  into overriding some of the components and modules that featured a table. We also optimized for seo using h1 h2 and h4 headers. We hope that this will contribute to eventual table-less websites for future Joomla!  releases.

Number Two: PNG Transparencies. This was a bugger of a problem when we received a post exclaiming that our transparent png files were a bit off in IE. Apart from writing a letter to Microsoft we decided it was  best to fix this. We integrated a pngfix solution in /templates/joomlapraise/js/pngfix.js

Number Three: We found that more users needed a flexible layout system than the previous submission. Not only did the template have only one width, it also did not provide custom color options. We've fixed  this in the parameters of the template. Now we allow for three variable widths. Custom foreground, background, banner, header, font, and link colors are available as well. You can see how to use these to your  advantage in the tutorials section of this demo site.

Number Four: Custom Banner options. The banner implementation we used on the older template worked great for simple sites, but what about more complicated ones? How do you put a different banner on each  page? After all not many sites use the Frontpage banner for every page. Some were asking about sub banner images. We've solved this by making a custom module that is integrated with the template from the  frontend. You can now upload custom images and assign them to menu items...all from the frontend.

For more information on how to change these parameters, see our tutorials section.

Best one so far. Nice work!

excellent work!!! 

Excellent work here, this one is really good (also from a technical perspective)!

Valid XHTML

http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1 ... ise.com%2F

Valid CSS
http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/vali ... ise.com%2F

My favorite so far 

Just comment.. nice work..

Simple and elegant..

Nothing to say...
simple... clean...elegant....

...does not have sub-menu level. It could be great if you add this  :P :P

Thanks!!
i have to get this :-*   :-*

Language file missing.
Add
img {border: none;} in CSS

yes a good concept template... good work!

I love this template!

FYI: Background Theme & Header Styles - Green is written green. It is the only color not capatalized.

Fantastic job!  I really dig this one.

favourite.  :-*
i love the simplicity.

Thanks to everyone for your kind comments and suggestions. It's good to see our community reaching out to help one another, whether it be about a design or about a coding issue.

I'd like to see how it works on the iPhone... what a pity I haven't... anyone for testing it?

We had one of our contractors test it... It's a pity I don't have one myself(drool)

yeah, I agree with you!

Untranslated strings•

BLACK
BLUE
CHOOSE A BACKGROUND THEME
CHOOSE A HEADER COLOR
GREY
ORANGE
PIXEL PRAISE JOOMLA DEFAULT INSTALL
PP_JOOMLA
GREEN
PURPLE
RED
SHOW/HIDE THE COMPONENT OUTPUT
SHOW/HIDE THE LARGE BANNER
YELLOW

Great template. The only problem I can see is that In IE6, png transparencies aren't working properly.

Thanks

Nice job

Have you updated your package with the new language strings? As I have just downloaded and still some random language strings.

Still need to do this http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic ... msg1000365

Thanks,
We'll be updating that amongst many other things after the RC3 release.

Ah right cool Just testing my favourite templates out.

This one is in my top 4. Nice work!

This is defenitely on my top 5 list - got one u see

it would be really nice to have a template where instead of choosing one of x many colored backgrounds in the administrative section you could put in your own color number, like #B4B2B2 or #E9DCDC.

under Konqueror browser your template is good and working!! Bravo!! 

NixieAnne wrote: it would be really nice to have a template where instead of choosing one of x many colored backgrounds in the administrative section you could put in your own color number, like #B4B2B2 or #E9DCDC.

You'll notice that there is a "repeat-x" background image that gradiates. In the next release we have fixed this and added a field for the hexadecimal color. When you type a hexadecimal color like #E9DCDC the gradients are removed. We hope to have our new release up soon.

Hey any info about the new release?

Thank you!

We are hoping by Wednesday. We are almost finished with the updates.

Great template! IMO 2b one of the Top 5!