The Joomla! developers have done a wonderful job in making the template setup process simple. The first time may take some time to figure out how modules and positions work, but after this first time you can be confident that the template setup is a simple and straight-forward job.

Requirements

• In order to understand this tutorial you need to know the basic terms of Joomla!. Read the What is Joomla! and how it works tutorial for more information on the Joomla! essential terms.
• You also have to have a template of your choice installed. Read the How to install a template tutorial for more information.

Step 1 - Design the structure

The first thing to do is to decide what modules you want to publish (login module, search module, who's online module etc) to which positions.

Each template provides different positions. One way to find the positions availabe to your current installation is to use the tp=1 URL variable (stands for Template Positions). For example, type http://www.example.com?tp=1 . Replace "www.example.com" with your website's domain.

The latest templates from BonusThemes are accompanied by a detailed manual. An easier way to find the template's available positions is to read the related section. In most cases this is named "Template map".

Here is an example of a template map you can find in the manual. This particular example comes from a template that supports the Zone Layout v2.0 technology. The positions are the ones with the blue color. (*)

Step 2 - Publish the modules in the appropriate positions

Use the Module Manager to edit each module. Open the module's control panel and set the position setting. When you are done, click the Save button.

Read the How to setup a module tutorial for more information.

Step 3 - Style your modules

BonusThemes templates accompanied by a manual usually have a section (named "mstyles", "Module Styles" or " Module Suffixes") with a list of supported modules styles (or module suffixes). Next to each module style you can also see an illustrated example like the ones you can see on the left of this text. Use the Module Manager to set the style for each module. Read the How to setup a module tutorial for more information.

(*) Templates compliant with the Zone Layout v2.0 technology take additional custom positions which appear in the "zones" area.