1. Creating a basic Joomla! template
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Contents
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1 Introduction
2 Setting up a directory structure
3 Creating a basic templateDetails.xml file
4 Creating a basic index.php file
o 4.1 Begin
o 4.2 Head
o 4.3 Body Section
 4.3.1 Module Positions
o 4.4 End
o 4.5 Custom Images
o 4.6 Custom CSS
5 Testing the template
6 Packaging the template for installation
o 6.1 Note to Mac OS X users
7 Conclusion
Introduction
The purpose of this tutorial is to serve as an introduction to creating Joomla! templates. It will cover the
essential files and code needed to create a basic template. The code is presented so it can be cut and
pasted with very little modification needed.
Setting up a directory structure
To make the most basic template, create a new folder in the templates folder. Name this folder after
your template i.e. mynewtemplate.
Using a text editor create the files index.php and templateDetails.xml.
To keep things organized, make 2 new folders called images and css. Inside the css folder create a
file called template.css.

2. Although it is fine to place all your CSS code directly in your index.php file to start, many web
developers prefer to place their CSS code in a separate file that can be linked from multiple pages using
thelink tag. This may also shorten the loading time of your pages, since the separate file can be
cached.
This is the most basic practical setup.
Outline of folder and file structure:
 mynewtemplate/
 css/
 template.css
 images/
 index.php
 templateDetails.xml
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Creating a basic templateDetails.xml file
The templateDetails.xml file is essential. Without it, your template won't be seen by Joomla!. The
file holds key metadata about the template.
The syntax of the file is different for each Joomla version.
For , use the following:
<?xmlversion="1.0"encoding="utf-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE install PUBLIC "-//Joomla! 1.5//DTD template 1.0//EN"
"http://www.joomla.org/xml/dtd/1.5/template-install.dtd">
<installversion="1.5"type="template">
<name>mynewtemplate</name>
<creationDate>2008-05-01</creationDate>
<author>John Doe</author>
<authorEmail>john@example.com</authorEmail>
<authorUrl>http://www.example.com</authorUrl>
<copyright>John Doe 2008</copyright>
<license>GNU/GPL</license>

3. <version>1.0.2</version>
<description>My New Template</description>
<files>
<filename>index.php</filename>
<filename>templateDetails.xml</filename>
<folder>images</folder>
<folder>css</folder>
</files>
<positions>
<position>breadcrumb</position>
<position>left</position>
<position>right</position>
<position>top</position>
<position>user1</position>
<position>user2</position>
<position>user3</position>
<position>user4</position>
<position>footer</position>
</positions>
</install>
For and later, use the following version. Change version="1.6" into the version of your Joomla!
installation.
<?xmlversion="1.0"encoding="utf-8"?>
<extensionversion="1.6"type="template">
<name>mynewtemplate</name>
<creationDate>2008-05-01</creationDate>
<author>John Doe</author>
<authorEmail>john@example.com</authorEmail>
<authorUrl>http://www.example.com</authorUrl>
<copyright>John Doe 2008</copyright>
<license>GNU/GPL</license>
<version>1.0.2</version>
<description>My New Template</description>
<files>
<filename>index.php</filename>
<filename>templateDetails.xml</filename>
<folder>images</folder>
<folder>css</folder>
</files>
<positions>
<position>breadcrumb</position>
<position>left</position>
<position>right</position>

4. <position>top</position>
<position>user1</position>
<position>user2</position>
<position>user3</position>
<position>user4</position>
<position>footer</position>
</positions>
</extension>
So, as you can see, we have a set of information between markup tags (the <element>s). Your best
approach is to cut and paste this into your templateDetails.xml file and change the relevant bits
(such as <name> and <author>).
The <files> part should contain all the files that you use - you possibly don't know what they are called
yet - don't worry, update it later. The <folder> element can be used to define an entire folder at once.
Leave the positions as they are - these are a common set so you will be able to switch easily from the
standard templates.
Creating a basic index.php file
The index.php file becomes the core of every page that Joomla! delivers. Essentially, you make a page
(like any HTML page) but place PHP code where the content of your site should go. The template works
by adding Joomla code into module positions and the component section in your template. Anything
added to the template will appear on all pages unless it is added to one of these sections via the Joomla
CMS (or customised code).
This page will show the bare-bones code ready for you to cut and paste into your own design.
Begin
A Joomla 1.5+ template begins with the following lines:
<?phpdefined('_JEXEC') or die('Restricted access');?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
xml:lang="<?phpecho$this->language;?>" lang="<?phpecho$this->language;?>"
>
The first line stops naughty people looking at your coding and getting up to bad things.
The second line is the Document Type Declaration (DOCTYPE), which tells the browser (and web
crawlers) which flavor of HTML the page is using. The doctype used above is XHTML 1.0, which is
supported rather well by most modern browsers. You can also decide to use HTML5, a newer version of

5. HTML that is largely backwards compatible, but contains many new features. To use HTML5, change the
doctype to
<!DOCTYPE html>
You should be aware that this will not work well in Internet Explorer 8 or earlier without a hack. You might
want to investigate this situation and your clients' wishes before deciding on which doctype you want to
use.
The third line begins our HTML document and describes what language the website is in. A html
document is divided into two parts, head and body. The head will contain the information about the
document and the body will contain the website code which controls the layout.
Head
<head>
<jdoc:include type="head" />
<link rel="stylesheet" href="<?phpecho$this-
>baseurl?>/templates/system/css/system.css" type="text/css" />
<link rel="stylesheet" href="<?phpecho$this-
>baseurl?>/templates/system/css/general.css" type="text/css" />
<link rel="stylesheet" href="<?phpecho$this-
>baseurl?>/templates/<?phpecho$this->template;?>/css/template.css"
type="text/css" />
</head>
The first line gets Joomla to put the correct header information in. This includes the page title, meta
information as well as system JavaScript. The rest creates links to two system style sheets and to your
own style sheet (if it's named template.css and is located in the css folder of your template directory.
So if your temlate is in http://www.mysite.com/templates/my_template/ then the css files will go
in http://www.mysite.com/templates/my_template/css/).
Body Section
<body>
<jdoc:include type="modules" name="top"/>
<jdoc:include type="component"/>
<jdoc:include type="modules" name="bottom"/>
</body>
Amazingly, this will suffice! Yes, it's a very basic layout, but it will do the job. Everything else will be done
by Joomla!. These lines, usually called jdoc statements, tell Joomla to include output from certain parts of
the Joomla system. Note: you will need to ensure your menu is set to go into the "top" module position.
Module Positions

6. Above, the line which says name="top" adds a module position called top and allows Joomla to place
modules into this section of the template. The type="component" line contains all articles and main
content (actually, the component) and is very important. It goes in the centre of the template.
Note: You can add your own module lines anywhere you want in the body, but you have to add a
corresponding line to the templateDetails.xml file which sits alongside the index.php of your template.
End
Finish it off - one last bit:
</html>
Custom Images
If you want to add any images to the template you can do so like this:
<img src="<?phpecho$this->baseurl;?>/images/stories/myimage.png" alt="Custom
image" class="customImage" />
Here the baseurl variable will fill in the path to your template for you.
Custom CSS
You can add custom css like this:
<link rel="stylesheet" href="<?phpecho$this-
>baseurl?>/templates/<?phpecho$this->template;?>/css/styles.css"
type="text/css" />
Every file which is added must have a line in the templateDetails.xml file for the template.
Full template source code:
<?phpdefined('_JEXEC') or die('Restricted access');?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
xml:lang="<?phpecho$this->language;?>" lang="<?phpecho$this->language;?>"
>
<head>
<jdoc:include type="head" />
<link rel="stylesheet" href="<?phpecho$this-
>baseurl?>/templates/mynewtemplate/css/template.css" type="text/css" />
</head>
<body>
<jdoc:include type="modules" name="top" />
<jdoc:include type="component" />
<jdoc:include type="modules" name="bottom" />

7. </body>
</html>
Testing the template
Find the template in the Template Manager, select it and click Default to make it the default template.
In Joomla! 1.5, your new template will show up immediately in the Template Manager, accessible
via Extensions -> Template Manager.
+ In Joomla 1.6, you first need to tell Joomla! that you have created a new template. This feature is
called Discover Extensions and can be accessed via Extensions -> Extension Manager -> Discover (i.e.
the Discover tab). Click Discover (i.e. the Discover button) to discover your template, then select it and
click Install to install it. Now your template should show up in the Template Manager (Styles), accessible
via Extensions -> Template Manager.
HINT: there are a couple of ways you can preview your index page as you put it together, either insert the
styles into the head of the index page or directly link it to the style sheet you will be using temporarily. You
can remove these links before packaging the file.
Packaging the template for installation
A directory with several loose files is not a convenient package for distribution. So the final step is to
make a package. This is a compressed archive containing the directory structure and all the files. The
package can be in ZIP format (with a .zip extension), in TAR-gzip format (with a .tar.gz extension),
or in TAR-bz2 format (with a .tar.bz2 extension).
If your template is in a directory mytemplate/ then to make the package you can connect to that
directory and use commands like:
 tar cvvzf ../mytemplate.tar.gz *
 zip -a -r ..mytemplate.zip *.*
Note to Mac OS X users
Note to template developers using Mac OS X systems: the Finder's "compress" menu item produces a
usable ZIP format package, but with one catch. It stores the files in AppleDouble format, adding extra files
with names beginning with "._". Thus it adds a file named "._templateDetails.xml, which Joomla
1.5.x can sometimes misinterpret. The symptom is an error message, "XML Parsing Error at 1:1. Error 4:
Empty document". The workaround is to compress from the command line, and set a shell environment
variable "COPYFILE_DISABLE" to "true" before using "compress" or "tar". See theAppleDouble article for
more information.

8. To set an environment variable on a Mac, open a terminal window and type:
export COPYFILE_DISABLE=true
Then in the same terminal window, change directories into where your template files reside and issue the
zip command. For instance, if your template files have been built in a folder in your personal directory
called myTemplate, then you would do the following:
cd myTemplate
zip -r myTemplate.zip *
Conclusion
You should now have created a template that works. It won't look like much yet. The best thing to do now
is start experimenting with the layout.
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