Chapter 6. Front End Usage.

Table of Contents

Front End Edit
[Note]Note

Any display in the front end is very dependant upon the specific site template in use and any 'tweaks' that may have been performed by the site administrators to the CSS to achieve a 'site standard'. For that reason any images shown in this section are for illustrative purposes only, the display upon your own site may differ, in some cases considerably.

Any entries (advertisements) shown in this document are purely for demonstration purposes only and serve to show what is possible.

The image below shows the front end image display using the Photostat site template, immediately after the component is installed with no entries having been created. This is assuming it is not a multilingual site. From the front end perspective most of the multilingual features of Rialto will be transparent. The most obvious change would be that the category display would include an additional column indicating the language in which an entry is specified. This would usually contain a value of the currently selected site language, the translated equivalent of 'All' where an entry has been specified as being visible for 'All' defined site languages., or 'Undefined' where a language has not been provided. This latter is not expected to be present on the site since upon updating the component all existing entries would have been updated and any new or updated entries would have been modified to provide a valid value for the language of the entry.

Figure 6.1. Front End Categories Display.

Front End Categories Display.

The above display is shown when a 'guest' user is viewing the categories. If logged in a registered user will see a few more links in the display, one to enable creation of new enters, one to display the users 'own' raised entries and to display their own detail profile settings.

Category icons may or may not be displayed depending upon whether they have been specified for the particular category. For example in the above display there is no defined icon for the 'Uncategorised' category but there is for the 'Demo category'.

Selecting one of the specific 'categories;' will display the items which are associated with the selected category.

Within each category one can view more details about each item as illustrated below. The following is what is shown to an unregistered user (or visitor). Clicking upon the image will display a 'larger' view of the associated image.

Figure 6.2. Entry Display (1).

Entry Display (1).

If the site is configured for multiple images to be displayed (maximum en images) they will also be displayed if defined within the entry. Similarly if videos are configured to be added to entries (maximum of 3 videos) they will also be shown immediately below the images. If no videos or images are present for an entry the descriptive text of the entry will expand to fill the total width of the display.

Clicking upon the image (or video), if present will display a larger version of the image (or video) in full screen.

If a user is logged in then the details (as specified in the component options) and as populated by the vendor will also be shown. In the example below only two fields have been populated, the name and the vendors email address. Any optional fields not populated by the vendor will not be shown.

Figure 6.3. Entry Display (2).

Entry Display (2).

You will have noticed the 'Contact Vendor' button. When pressed a small form is shown that has to be filled in, and when the 'send' button is pressed will cause an email message, with the supplied details to be send to the vendor.

Figure 6.4. Entry Display (3).

Entry Display (3).

The email mail address of the vendor will only be displayed if it is a configured option.

The logged in user is also presented with a few additional 'menu' items, namely 'My Entries' , New Entry' and 'My Profile'. Clicking on these will present the user with the expected views.

The Edit and Delete options shown at the bottom of the previous image will only work IF the entry being viewed is 'owned' by the logged in user. A logged in user cannot edit or delete entries for which they are not the 'owner'.

[Important]Important

When creating an entry on the front end it is not possible (currently) to create associations between entries in different languages. This is a design decision based upon current functionality provided in other Joomla component. Associations have to be created in the back end of the site.

A new entry can be created on the front end by the logged in user using the 'New Entry' link shown in the Entry Display(2) above. Only registered and logged in users can currently create entries. Release 1.2.0 changed the front end entry edit to use JForms, and it is possible to also add a new menu item to access the Entry form. Again the user has to be logged in to be able to 'see' the form, otherwise the 'guest user' is redirected to the main Rialto index display.

A new entry created from the Rialto menu bar, shown in Entry Display (2) above, steps through a number of steps (not shown) and is not in Release 1.2.0 and earlier using JForms. This is an early design criteria as it permits decisions to be made upon what subsequent information is required based upon the earlier selected entry criteria. This may well change in later releases, where greater use of JForms is expected.

The user can also view all of their 'entries' by clicking on the 'My Entries' link shown in Entry Display (2) screen shown above.

A user may also delete their own displayed entry by clicking on the 'Delete' text shown below the displayed entry, seen when they are logged in. They will be prompted to ensure that they really do want to delete the entry. If they conform the displayed dialogue box question then the entry will be removed from the system. The entry is NOT placed in the trash folder and is immediately removed and no recovery is possible.

The other link on the Entry Display (2) screen is the 'Profile' which permits the user to set up their specific criteria used by default for any entries they may create. They can always over write them for any specific entry, but it saves them entering the same information for new entries when they create entries regularly.

[Note]Note

Depending upon the specific category to which they are adding their new entries will determine whether which (or all) fields are displayed for a category entry.

Front End Edit

When originally released there were a set of 'step by step' screens displayed that permitted the user to fill in the fields as they create the entry. This mechanism still exists (as code) but has been replaced by the use of standard Joomla forms.These display screens were also used when an entry was edited, but Rialto 1.2.0 and later versions changed to use a tabbed form based entry mechanism. The form mechanism is also used if the administrator creates a menu item to create a Rialto entry. This method makes better use of the display screen and is more 'modern' in its usage.

Release 1.3.0 removed the 'step by step' Rialto entry creation completely, although the code still exists, and replaced it with a standard Joomla JForms implementation. The code will be removed completely in a later update.

Note that the 'published state' of the entry is not modifiable by the creating user unless they have been granted the appropriate Joomla ACL permission to 'edit.state'.

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