Joomla 1.5 / Modification of YooTheme "ZOO" Component

Question

I'll start out by mentioning that there is a developer forum for Zoo and I have used it already. My purpose posting here is that I typically get a thorough answer within minutes or hours at SO, whereas the responses on dev forums can be slow or non-existent due to the smaller population base.

My question regards Yootheme's ZOO 2.3.2. By default, a product "Frontpage" appears to have a "Categories" box rendered on top of the items. If one turns off all the available options in Frontpage/Template configuration (hide Titles, Count, Descriptions, etc.), an empty box still remains on top of the items.

I've been able to manually remove the box in its entirety by addressing the following file:

media/zoo/applications/product/templates/default/frontpage.php, and commenting out lines 84-92:

<!-- <?php

    // render categories
    if ($this->category->childrenHaveItems()) {
        $categoriestitle = $this->application->getParams()->get('content.categories_title');
        echo $this->partial('categories', compact('categoriestitle'));
    }

?> -->

Seems like there should be a more eloquent way of doing this on the admin backend, but I couldn't find one. Am I missing something or is my solution the best one?

Brent Friar Brent Friar · Accepted Answer · 2011-05-25T23:34:19

ZOO is designed to easily be able to modify the built in templates to suit your needs. ZOO templates are meant to be overridden much like Joomla uses template overrides. Rather than editing the default template, you simply create a new template that does what you want it to. The default template should not be changed.

Here is the documentation on ZOO templates - http://www.yootheme.com/docs/home/item/create-a-new-template

Rather than edit the file you mention above, you make a new template here -

media/zoo/applications/product/templates/YOUR-TEMPLATE-NAME/frontpage.php

Then do all the changing you want without messing up the default.

Joomla 1.5 / Modification of YooTheme "ZOO" Component

2 Answers