Joomla template parameters

Joomla has a great template system that let you change the website look and feel in a snap.

Sometimes you can change how certain elements of the template look like, by setting its parameters in the administrator interface.

Before the 1.5 release, the way these parameters were used was not consistent across different templates, as it didn't exist a common architecture and each template vendor had to find a way to do that.

Reinventing the wheel is not a nice and smart way to do things, so Joomla 1.5 introduced template parameters. Also used for extension development, these parameters are a great improvement regarding template development.

Let's try to open the template manager, and select the template RHUK Milkyway. On the right, you can see the "Parameters" box.

As you can see, we have 3 parameters: the first defines the dominant color on the page, the second sets the background color and the third decides the page width.

The template parameters creating is up to the designer, that must declare them in the templateDetails.xml file, add a line to params.ini and manage this value in the PHP code of the template.

There's a great guide on how to manage template parameters on the Joomla Documentation Wiki, called Tutorial: Template Parameters.

That's an invaluable piece of documentation that every template developer should print and keep on his desk