LATEST NEWS ENHANCED V1.2.7

All-in-one news/articles module presenting the latest, future, featured,

popular or random articles in a consistent fashion with calendar or image.

For Joomla! 2.55+

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Table of Contents

Module Installation ............................................................................................................................................................... 2

Using the module .................................................................................................................................................................. 3

Anatomy of an article ............................................................................................................................................................ 4

Calendar option................................................................................................................................................................. 4

Image option ..................................................................................................................................................................... 5

The list of options.................................................................................................................................................................. 6

Basic options ..................................................................................................................................................................... 6

Head options ..................................................................................................................................................................... 8

Body Options ................................................................................................................................................................... 10

Advanced options ........................................................................................................................................................... 12

CSS3 and media queries ...................................................................................................................................................... 13

Additional information ........................................................................................................................................................ 14

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Module Installation

Install the extension through the extension manager.

It will update itself if the module has been previously installed. In case of an update, make sure you read the changes

that have been made and are aware of potential backward compatibility issues.

Important note: the module requires you to previously install the external library syw_lib.

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Using the module

Click on the ‘Module Manager’ icon in the control panel or go to the menu ‘Extensions’ -> ‘Module Manager’.

Click on ‘New’.

Select the Latest News Enhanced module to create an instance of it.

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Anatomy of an article

Calendar option

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Image option

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The list of options

Here is the list of available options for the module.

Basic options

Option Description

Category(s) select the Joomla! standard categories the articles are from (multiple select)

K2 Category(s) select the K2 categories the articles are from (multiple select)

Sub-Categories automatically selects the next level or all levels of a category

Count the max number of articles that will show (nothing will show all articles found)

Start At The item number to start from

Ordering the order in which the articles are presented * random – popular – order – added – modified – published - finished – touched - title

Featured articles whether to show featured articles or not

Date which date should be applied created - published – modified - finished

When no date If the date is missing (finish publishing date only), show the article item or not do not show – show before – show after

News width The width of each article block (%)

Paginate Adds pagination to the list of items (enable jQuery if not done already on the site)

Items per page The number of items to show per page of pagination

Link to article whether to link to the article or not

Link label an optional label to use instead of the link's title

Category show the category's name (will show for individual articles if the articles are from different categories, otherwise will show one link for all)

Category link label a specific label to use instead of the article's name (ex: ‘More news like this’)

* if the date is missing when ordering by finish publishing date, the articles are ordered by start publishing date instead

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Head options

Option Description

Head type Image, calendar or nothing

Head alignment Show the image or calendar on the left, right or alternate them

Image/calendar width The width of the calendar or image

Image/calendar height The height of the calendar or image

Default/calendar image The image to use as background for the calendar or as a default image

Keep space Keeps the space even if there is no image (and no default image) or no calendar to show

Crop pictures Fit the image into the size selected, cropping it if needed. Otherwise it will show the full image with the selected size

Thumbnails Cache Path The temporary path for the thumbnails created (‘tmp’ is the default path)

Reset pictures whether to re-create the image thumbnails every time the page is loaded or not (set to no for better performance in production, but set to yes for testing purposes)

Show weekday Show the weekday in the calendar (when selected as head type)

Show year Show the year in the calendar (when selected as head type)

Show time Show the time in the calendar (when selected as head type)

Format time The time format according to PHP as found in http://php.net/manual/en/function.date.php

Warnings:

The PHP GD extension (php_gd2) is required for the creation of image thumbnails. Make sure this extension is available

on your service provider’s server.

The PHP 'allow_url_fopen' setting must be enabled in order to access remote image files. Some hosts disable the

option for security reasons.

The module will detect these automatically.

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Body Options

Option Description

Font size reference The reference size of the text for the whole item, except for the calendar head

Letter count max title The max number of letters to show in the title

Title on one line Forces the title on one line only

Text introduction the text to show: article introduction - meta description

Letter count max the maximum number of letters to show (0 will show nothing, empty will show all)

Strip tags whether to strip the HTML tags or not (only available if the whole text is shown)

Keep tags when tags are allowed, keep only the ones specified (empty will keep all tags) (ex: ‘<p><a><br>’ will keep new lines and links)

Wrap Wrap the text around the head or not

Show hits Show the hits for the article in question

Authors select from which authors the articles are written from: anyone – me – others

Show author show the author

Author name author's name, alias or username

Show date show the article's date or the number of days since it has been written or the number of days until the date (finish publishing dates only)

Format date The date format according to PHP as found in http://php.net/manual/en/function.date.php

Hits/Author/Date pos. where to put this information compared to the text: before the title – before the text – after the text

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Advanced options

Option Description Load jQuery Load the library if none is present already

jQuery version The jQuery version to use if enabled (uses the latest jQuery 1.8 by default)

Show errors Will show the errors encountered while creating the news items, if any

Simplified styles Set to ‘yes’ to use a minimal stylesheet that only keeps the module’s skeleton without the extra formatting. For developers only!

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CSS3 and media queries

Note that all CSS3-enabled styles have fallbacks for browsers that do not support them.

Media queries are used to enhance the user experience in responsive websites.

These media queries will have no effect in browsers that do not support them (like IE7/8).

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Additional information

Please visit the forum at http://www.simplifyyourweb.com/index.php/forum/16-latest-news-enhanced.

For more options, upgrade to the commercial version: Latest News Enhanced Extended.