I was looking for a workaround for the Itemid-issue for Joomla 1.0.12 (and for those who cannot use the compatibility setting in 1.0.13) and have to report that there is none.

The idea of of the content item module was to mimick the mainbody-call als closely as possible by using the core functions to display items. The Itemid is calculated in these core functions and unfortunately there is no way to override this (short of modifying core files which would defy the purpose of a plugin API).  So I have to say sorry, there is nothing I can do about that.

I received a report about a strange bug in the alpha for the content item module for 1.5. The bug description is as follows:

1. I have created a module (contentitem item type) which is displaying one specific article and “Read more” link. It works fine.
2. I have linked that same article to a menu item. And then link in your module changes. And I get 404 error.

I have so far been unable to reproduce this, but experience teaches that you can test only so many configurations yourself.  So I’m curios, has anybody else observed this kind of behaviour?

I promised that I would have a version of the content item module for Joomla 1.5 to test by the end of the week and here I am (I’m aware that in some parts of the world the new week actually starts on sunday but I will cheerfully ignore the fact).

This seemed to install fine and mostly work on Joomla 1.5 RC1, but pleased by advised that this is for testing only. So if you want to help me then play around with the thing and send me some feedback, but please please don’t use it in a production site, especially since in the next and hopefully more stable version filenames will change to reflect name changes in Joomla (content items are now called articles). Actually if somebody has an idea for a good and descriptive name I would be grateful.

So, this is the Alpha-Release of the content item module for Joomla 1.5 RC1. This will not work with previous versions: mod_contentitem1.zip. (By now there is a link to a download page in the sidebar).

Please send feedback by email or comment on this post.

And now please excuse me, I still have miles to go before I sleep.

I started this blog a week ago or so and by now I’m getting about 150 visitors a day, almost exclusivly from the Joomla Forum, so I assume somebody is watching what I’m doing 😉

I’m currently rummaging around in the innards of Joomla 1.5 – despite many Betas I haven’t had the time to get familiar with the new API, so currently I sometimes have trouble to find my way around. A lot of things have been vastly improved, and some other things got at least a lot more complicated from a programming POV, so in some ways 1.5 is a completely different beast than 1.0.xx.

The good news is that work on the Content Item Module for 1.5 is making some progress – things are working in principle, even if the actual code is for now a bit garish. I guess I will release an alpha version by the end of the week (unless those nasty paying customers use all of my time..). So bear with me, just a little bit longer.

I was going to write a new version of the content item module that should have featured better code and a simple templating system. However it looks like nobody was troubled by mediocre code quality or missing features but that some people urgently need a version for Joomla 1.5, so I’ll scratch the new release for 1.0.xx and concentrate on a release for 1.5. This will still take a couple of days and will propably come with a reduced set of features (I think I’ll have to leave out the “merge” function in the first release), but at least you can be assured that I will work I’m working on it.

Since I wrote a Module for Joomla to display content items in module positions I’ve been asked if it could be used to display other components than com_content in module positions as well. No it can’t and it would be to much work to change this. I can, however, offer a workaround that did the trick for me:

• Go to the Menu Manager and create a new Menu (but don’t publish it)
• Create a blank template (a template with just a mainbody call) or download and install from here: blank.zip
• In your new Menu create a Link to the item or component you want to display
• Go to template manager and assign the blank template to the link you’ve just created.
• Download mod_iframe.zip and install. This is a module that will insert an iframe in a module position and allow you to specify source url, height and width. Install the module.
• enter the link you’ve just created as source, assign a position and publish.

Quite probably you will need to edit the template.css file for the blank template so fonts and colors will fit in your main template – remember that the content of the iframe is a page on it’s own, even if it’s embedded in another page, and will not be affected by changes from your standard css files.

Usually all links to other sites would open inside the iframe, which is most likely not what you want. So I added a small Javascript to the blank template that opens relative links and links on the same server within the frame and outgoing links in a new window or tab (the javascript adds a target attribute and it depends on the browser how this is handled).

I can say that it worked for me with a fresh installation of Joomla 1.0.12. If you get any errors feel free to contact me, I’ll see if I can help you.