Ive spoken in the past about the power of twitter for helping to connect members of the Joomla community and today's post is a guest posting from K2Joom's Simon Wells - someone I met on Twitter. Simon is what's probably best described as a Joomla and K2 fanatic and so it's no wonder that he created his K2Joom site to showcase the power of K2 as a content construction component for Joomla. I recently asked him to list his ten favourite things about K2 (via twitter) and here is his response.

1. Auto Comment Notification - Modification
   Through the help of some modifications, it is possible to have all new comments mailed directly to a specified mail address, thus saving you the effort to log into your control panel to check if new comments have been added.
   A new K2 parameter field is supplied to enter to TO email address.
2. Item Image Gallery - Feature
   K2 comes with the ability to add images galleries to your posts, use them with Simple Image Gallery Pro, from Joomlaworks.
   Within your item, click the Image Gallery tab, select a zip file with images, upload and your done. Fully configurable through the SIG plug-in you get to choose from seriously cool effects, Simple.
3. K2 Micro Theming - Style
   We just love this!! K2 gives you the possibility to create separate layouts per category and with the addition of the CSS4K2 you can then even change all styling too.
4. Categories - Content
   Gone are Joomlas Sections & Categories, in with Categories and Sub Categories.
   This makes assigning content easier, but the smart part is you can get any category to inherit the layout of another category, without having to go through the tasks of manually configuring the categories parameters. The categories parameters are vast and gives a infinite amount of possibility in laying out not just the category display, but also controlling sub category and item views to.
5. Front End Editing - Feature
   K2 allows, though some User Group permissions, for users to be able to post items directly through the front end of the website, without the need to log in to the back-end. This prevents any need for additional back-end access control and give confidence that nothing will get tampered with. Each logged in user has there own profile page with a link to Add New Item and once clicked a pop up window appears displaying the same Item Edit screen as seen from the back-end so not only can the text content be added, but also Intro Image, Gallery, Video, Extra Fields, Attachments etc.
6. Extra Fields - Feature
   This feature could be used within a download or product site to show reoccurring information such as colour types, size variations etc.
   Extra Fields are created and saved as a group, the group is then specified within the category that they are to be used in. Any item that is then created within that category will then show those Extra Fields so that they can then be populated as required.
7. K2 Tools Module - Feature
   K2 is shipped with 4 modules, one of which is the Tools Module and is multi functional.
   Functions include: Archive, Authors List, Blog Style Calendar, Categories List, Category Select Box, Search Box and Tag Cloud.
8. Image Gallery Type Category Layout - Trick
   To change a category layout to display just images of all of its sub categories, you will need to upload an image to each sub category via the Image tab, ensure you have the correct dimensions settings you need under the Item Image Options .
   In the parent category, under Category Item Layout, set Leading, Primary and Secondary to Zero (0), by doing so, no contents items will be displayed within the category view.
   Under the Category View Options, hide everything, except for Image, sub-category blocks and sub-category image.
   The remaining Item View options can be set as you please as it has no bearing on the category view.
   These same settings can then be added to one of the Sub Categories, you may wish to make a few visual changes to suit your needs. One you have set the Sub Category Options, all subsequent Sub Categories can be set to Inherit parameters options from category from this "master".
9. K2 Social - Feature
   Every item can, if configured, display common social media buttons to enable users to share item.
   These include: Delicious, Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Facebook, MySpace and Technorati.
   And of course, you can change the default icons as you wish.
10. Joomla Articles to K2 Items - Feature
    Articles are not used within K2, instead you create Items. You may already have a Joomla site and want to use K2, no problem.
    K2 has an import feature, one click and it automatically converts the sections/categories and articles to categories and items, without any changes to your original content. All that is needed is to then create or modify menu items so that they point to the corresponding K2 Item instead.

About K2Joom

K2Joom is a leading supporter of K2, providing technical support and advise for K2 users at getk2.org and endorsed by JoomlaWorks. The creation of K2Joom.com was conceived by UK based Joomla! fan Simon Wells, to keep a personal track on how to use K2.

This very quickly developed into a primary source of guides, working examples, hacks, plug-ins and much more. We provide this support for free to encourage K2 users to advance their skills and knowledge and due to repeated requests, we also offer a paid service for custom K2 deployment, configurations and templating.

blog comments powered by Disqus