RocketTheme Magazine
Sometimes a solution that applies to one member can’t be valid for the other member (very often actually).
One way of doing this can be achieved fairly easy. Basically you have to:
- Create new dummy menu in the Joomla menu manager
- Create hidden dummy menu with the menu type of the page on which you would like to show your module
- Edit module configuration and assign it to the hidden dummy menu item
- Publish your module
This solution can be helpful if you need to publish only few modules on a specific page and also if you need to do that on small amount of pages. This solution can also be helpful if you are the only one that will manage this web site and you are the only one that will need to cope with the module assignments. If you will need to explain how and why you did all that just to publish one module on the specific page to the few administrators and/or other web site managers that will need to follow your steps during the normal web site life cycle, you will soon notice that this solution is not good and easy to follow.
If you invest some time to install additional Joomla extension which will extend the way on which you handle modules and offers a great deal of extra functionality to your modules and module management, you will ask yourself how could you live without it so far.
That additional extension is called “Advanced Module Manager” (AMM later in the text).
AMM is an extension that changes the way your Module manager works. It adds a multitude of functions, like:
- See what modules are active for the menu item you are editing
- Edit modules in modal popup windows
- Option to not show modules that have no output (handy for things like dynamic menus)
- Option to show modules on all pages, except the selected menu items (reverse functionality of normal selection)
- Many other publishing assignments for your modules! You can control publishing modules by (ALL / ANY):
- Menu Item
- Sections / Categories
- Articles
- FLEXIcontent Categories
- K2 Categories
- Mighty Resource Categories
- ZOO Categories
- Components
- URL
- Date
- User Group Levels
- Users
- Languages
- Templates
- PHP evaluation
- You can also choose to mirror the assignment settings of another module!
Installation and configuration
Before you install AMM, lets take a look at the default Module manager screen
You can install AMM normally by using Extension manager like you would install any other Joomla extension. Installation will automatically install component and two system plugins which are needed for AMM to function correctly.
When you install AMM you will immediately see the difference. If you now visit Joomla Module manager you will see some minor changes (different title in the toolbar for example) and some bigger changes (new sort order column, for example, where you can sort your modules by the color, which you can assign in the module configuration or new icon in front of each module title which enables you to open each module configuration screen in a modal window). The biggest changes are visible when you start to edit module configurations.
If you click on the Options button in the module manager, you will be able to set some options that can further customize the way in which AMM works and customize the options that will be available in each module configuration screen.
Default settings tab contains options that adds extra parameters in the main module manager screen, like possibility to edit modules configuration in modal window, sorting modules by the defined color in module configuration, etc.
Extra settings tab contains options that changes the way you handle module assignments by adding additional publishing options in the each module configuration screen.
See it in action
Now that we have AMM installed and configured lets see how this extension works during configuration of the module and how you can use new assignment options to achieve better effects on your site.
First option panel that you can use (Menu Items) works almost the same as the default Joomla module menu assignment options so I won’t spend lots of words on it.
Lets pretend that you want to publish your module (I will use simple custom HTML module) on specific Joomla category blog layout. In the beginning of the tutorial, I mentioned that with default Joomla way of doing this, you would have to create new dummy menu with one dummy menu item that would link to the specific Joomla page. After that you would have to publish module on that dummy menu item in order to see it on a web site frontend.
With AMM, this process is a lot shorter. All you have to do is to create custom HTML module and assign it to the specific Joomla category.
I am working on a default Joomla 2.5 installation with the sample data installed so I choose to show my module on a Joomla category Components and only on that specific category page. For that purpose, I will select Joomla! Content - Assign to publishing options as you can see it on the following screenshot
When you make a selection, option panel will expand to show more options that are related to the selected assignment category.
With expanded panel, choose Components category in the Categories list and save module configuration. If you take a look at the web site frontend now, you will see that your module is visible only on the following page:
URL: index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=21&Itemid=268
If you browse your site now, you will also notice that module is also visible on each article page for articles that are stored in the Components category. You can change that if you deselect Articles checkbox inside the options panel in the module configuration and save changes.
As you can see from the described assignment process, you can do almost the same (and even more) module assignment as the suggested “default” Joomla way but in few less steps and with better overview of what you actually did.
Conclusion
As you can see, AMM is a great addition to every Joomla installation and I strongly suggest that you use it on every web site that you are developing in case you need to assign modules. You will soon realize how much time you saved on a basic module assignment tasks.
This concludes first part of this tutorial. In the next part I will try to explain how you can use AMM to greatly enhance your module assignment process by using some more advanced techniques.
In case you want to know more about AMM, feel free to visit AMM developer's site, contact me through my This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or pay a visit to my website.
One last note to everyone that will use this great extension.
All extensions that are offered on the developer’s site are free and you don’t need a License Code to use them. However, if you use his extensions on websites you make money with or make for / sell to your customers, I would appreciate that you pay respect to the Peter and his extensions and purchase a License Code. The License Code will remove the license message from the extensions administrator settings.
About the Author:
