Unbeknownst to many, Joomla actually has includes a feature to add and edit weblinks from the frontend.  However, it is seldom used because the core layouts do not include "add" or "edit" links in the layouts.  Fortunately, using Joomla's layout override system, those links are not hard to add.  This tutorial shows you how to add and edit link to the weblinks listed in a category view and also add a link to submit a weblink.

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This layout override tutorial gives you a basis for overriding the output of the Joomla banners module. This simple example shows you how to add a title tag to the click link but also gives you a base for allowing addition customisation.

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Is there a way to have Joomla display a section like a table of contents in a book?  It turns out there is.  I wanted the Art of Joomla's Developer Reference to look like a table of contents, with each category being like a chapter and all the articles to display under each category as parts of the chapter.  I found that you can modify the Section Blog Layout with a layout override to achieve this effect - and I think it works quite well.

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Login boxes can take up valuable space on your web site, or just detract from the overall feel of the site.  A popular technique for addressing this problem is to show a modal popup login box.  The idea is that you replace the page hungry username and password fields with a "login" link that, when clicked, opens a modal popup login box.  This can all be achieved out-of-the-box with Mootools and Joomla layout overrides.

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Layout overrides are a powerful feature in Joomla 1.5 but they can be used for much more than creating symantic, accessible markup, or for moving content fields around the page.  Since we have access to the rest of the Joomla Framework API in our layouts, we have the option of pulling in either individual modules, or a whole module position.  This can be used for any number of purposes such as for advertising banners or displaying modules only in articles where you've given up on trying to get them to show on the correct page all of the time.  In the content component, you can do this on an Article layout, but you could also do it for the Frontpage layout (have modules loaded between articles), or the Section or Category layouts just to make them a bit more interesting.

Learn more about Joomla modules