Mastering Joomla: How to Install and Customize Joomla Templates

Joomla makes child's play of creating and managing powerful websites with little or no knowledge of HTML. Joomla is a content management system that is used to build many websites. Joomla features RSS feeding, page caching, web polls, blogs, and website searching.

Once you have successfully installed Joomla, you may want to change the default template so that your website has a different look and feel. Installing templates is a very simple and straightforward process that will only require as little as five minutes of your time.

There are numerous free and commercial Joomla templates available online. This link is just one of the many; a few more links are listed at the end of this tutorial: www.siteground.com/joomla-hosting/joomla-templates.htm

Step #1
So first, find a template you like and download it. These templates are typically in a compressed .zip format. Unzip the file and save it to a specific folder.

Step #2
Now log onto the Joomla administrator panel and go to the Installers menu. Click Templates-Site. This opens the templates menu. Click Browse.

Installers >> Templates-Site >> Browse

Step #3
Select the downloaded file, then click Upload and install. Click Continue to proceed

Step #4
This will automatically take you to the Templates Manager. Click on the new template's radio button, and then click Default in order to make the template your default design for your website.

And you are done!

Customizing Your Joomla Templates
Your Joomla installation comes standard with two templates included. You will find these under the templates manager. To see a thumbnail preview of each one, just hover your cursor above its name. To change to a different template, simply click on its radio button and then click on the default button in the menu bar.

You can also further customize the standard template or a new template that you downloaded. Joomla templates consist of an HTML file and a CSS file. This is where you will make your changes.

*Click on the Sites Menu and then the Templates Manager. This takes you to a page that lists all the available templates, both the standard and downloaded templates.
*Click on the template's radio button, and then click on the Edit HTML/Edit CSS button in the menu.
*This will take you directly to the HTML or CSS editor, where you can make your edits directly to the HTML or CSS source code of the template. Knowledge of HTML and CSS is essential for this process.

Creating Custom Templates
In addition to pre-designed templates, you can also create custom templates on Joomla. This method is a tad bit more complicated - you may save some time and sweat if you simply download one of the numerous free templates available on the Internet. Custom templates do require a sound knowledge of HTML, SHTML, CSS, and other scripting languages.

But far be it for me to make that choice for you. To create a custom template, you will need to manipulate the Joomla template file structure, which is as follows:

/templatename
/css
/template_css.css
/index.html (blank file)
/images
/index.html (blank file)
/(all of your template images)
/index.php
/templateDetails.xml
/template_thumbnail.png

Each section on this structure indicates a specific feature that needs to be applied to the template. For example,

/templatename
=> The template name goes here

/css
=> All Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) will be stored here

/images
=> All image files will be stored here;

/index.php
=> Contains the instructions on how Joomla will render your template; and

/templatedetails.xml
=> Contains details about your template.

Good luck!