The Front Page

Well, I promised you Guru Simon would be around last Friday and those of you watching (and I'm starting to see you guys linking across on Google Analytics)  may have spotted some subtle changes:

• the blurb with a geographic indication and a contact phone number at top right. I achieved this by using the "newsflash" module which normally occupies that spot and making the blurb the only news story available.
• the contact details - now the postal address and phone number are more obvious on the contact page. I did this in Components | Contacts | Contacts. Simon requires that I make the phone number a but more obvious - I'll have to work on this one.
• the pdf / print / email icons above each story were distracting, especially on the front page. They are made invisible on all articles via Content | Article Manager | Parameters. You could still specifically set the icons to be visible on specific articles but the general setting has made the front page a darned sight tidier.

Guru Simon pointed out that the template colours the headers in blue and this could be confusing as links are traditionally in blue, leading visitors to try to click onthe headings and get annoyed. Changing the template colour (Extensions|Template Manager|Milkyway|Edit|Color(sic) Variation) also changes all the hyperlinks to that colour too, so no joy there!

Clearly this is a job for delving back into the style sheets. I have already done some black magic editing html in the template files to get the company logo, company details in the footer, and the aforementioned Analytics code set up. I shouldn't be afraid, but CSS is just sooo scary!

BTW, I've sorted out more stuff so far than I can remember, and still haven't scratched the surface of what I could do on this website. If there's something you guys are struggling with, by all means comment it up here and we'll work it through together.

'Til next time

Dave

My site is here.
Joomla! is based here.