Displaying items by tag: Template overrides

Sometimes, I would like to restrict the way the Joomla front end editing works. More specifically, I want to restrict access to some of the features in the front end editing.

On one site I work on, I've restricted access to the 'Publish' and 'Show on Front Page' buttons. For this particular site, I want local editors of an organization to be able to enter new articles, and to edit the published articles. I don't want the local editors to be able to publish to the front page. This is something the editor-in-chief should do. Thus, this function needs to be removed from the front end editor.

I did this by editing the form page used to edit articles.

If you know some HTML and can read PHP you can remove / comment out the parts of the file you don't want the users to see. This will happen for all users without administrator privileges, though. I've put together a modification which removes the radio buttons for 'Publish' and 'Show on Front Page' if the user belongs to a lower access level groups than 'Manager'.

Even though Joomla is a great platform as it is, there are times when you will have to alter the core files to fit certain needs. For instance, you can't stand how the elements in Joomla content are put together in Joomla. Or your client wants to alter the way the date is shown, where the author appears, how the list of contacts is displayed. We could go on for ever.

The point is: You don't want to be restricted by the platform, do you? You won't have to!

I will show you the basics of how to customize the output from Joomla components, modules and plugins, by applying something called template overrides. Sounds scary? Relax, they're your friends.