Habitat3 Documentation

The Habitat3 Joomla template was released in December 2007.

The following steps will help you to work better with the Habitat3 template. Please follow the instructions and use this item as a guide for setting up your site and configuring the various options found in the template as well as the extensions and scripts that are showcased on the Habitat3 demo site.

Getting Started

Choosing between the template or the quickstart.

Installing the template.

Choose this option if you already have your site created or have at least made changes to the default Joomla installation and want to overlay this theme onto your site. For a complete installation of the demo site on your server please refer to installing the quickstart package.

Installing the template is achieved using the same method as installing any other template or extension.

Navigate to your Joomla admin area at yoursite.com/administrator

Navigate to Extensions > Install/uninstall

Click browse and locate the template zip on your harddrive.

Click upload and install.

After you receive the success message, navigate to Extensions > Template Manager

Select the radio checkbox next to the name of the template that you have just installed and then click on the button at the top right of the screen that says default.

Now if you navigate to the front page of your site and you should see the Canvas template installed into your Joomla site.

Installing the quickstart.

The Joomlabamboo quickstart packages are complete replicas of the particular template's demo site. They are basically the same as the Joomla installation zip except they come with the template, watermarked images and extensions you see on the demo site. They are a quick and easy way to have your site setup and ready to edit.

You can read the tutorial on installing the quickstart packages here.

configuring the template

You can change the settings of the template, and the settings are below.

menus

The drop box is a new technique for delivering dropdown modules and images from a menu ala adobe and amazon. Just set the parameters in the index file, create the module position in the Joomla admin (see below) and then publish the your module to the module position as per the instructions below.

Setting up the drop boxes - The first step is to set the parameters in the index.php file.

1. Publish the menu items and names that you want to use in your site in the index.php file.
2. Create the following module positions in the Joomla module position manager - dropbox1, dropbox2, dropbox3, dropbox4, dropbox5, dropbox6, dropbox7, dropbox8, dropbox9.
3. Each module position relates to its corresponding menu item. eg menu item1 will trigger the dropbox1 module position to appear etc
4. Publish the module you want to use to the module position and click apply.

The menu item and corresponding drop box should now be published and visible.

Styling the Dropbox

Styling the dropbox occurs in the template css file. The class is determined the current theme of the template and includes three basic css classes. You set the width, colour and other standard css attributes in the template_css.css file. The default background image is called white_overlay.png.

Menu Styling

In the demo site we created a drop down menu by adding the module class suffix -dropdown to a menu module published to one of the dropbox module positions.

Layout and module positions

The Habitat3 is an amazing number of module positions available. When every module position available is published there are a whopping 30+ modules available. This includes 9 modules in the bamboo slider and 9 dropboxes from the top menu.

habitat3_modulepositions