Understanding How Joomla! Templates Work

Designing Joomla! templates certainly requires a different approach to the usual web standards-based site design. It needs a little bit of lateral thinking and good planning to get it right from the very beginning. The more time and effort you put into thinking about your design needs, the modules that you need to use, the better it pays off in the end. So getting it right with Joomla! really does mean, good planning.

Earlier versions of Joomla! (<1.5) also used tables for layout. This goes against the grain of accessible web standards design. While it is not always a showstopper, it is not an ideal development method as it is preferential to use various CSS<div> elements as containers for your Joomla! module content. This is possible with Joomla! 1.5, so let's look at this issue first.

Note

I use the term web standards to refer to best practice in web design and development. For more on web standards have a look at the following website www...