TOPIC: Customising frontend

Hi

Generally, Hotspots looks really great and provides a lot of good functionality very easily. However, there are a few things I need to be able to do with it:

1) Ability to search by fields, for instance, date range or custom field entries. I see this has been requested by several others and strikes me as an obvious feature. Not being able to search more specifically is a dealbreaker for my intended use of Hotspots.

2) Ability to customise the existing entry form. How do I change the tooltips/mousehover text/description for each field? How do I rename and remove fields? For instance: Postcode rather than Zip code because I'm UK based; I don't want to see "language" because I don't need this for each hotspot, etc.

3) I want to use Hotspot to catalogue things that aren't "hotspots." How do I change this so it says something else, like "projects" or "locations?" For instance, in the map view, the search box says "search hotspots" and the number of hotspots is displayed as "x hotspots"

Many thanks

Hey Ben,

1. It might be obvious, but obvious things are not always easy to do. With that said we have done this in Matukio and it the code will be ported to hotspots.

2. This is joomla. You have full control over your website. Joomla comes with layout overrides and language overrides:
docs.joomla.org/Layout_Overrides_in_Joomla
docs.joomla.org/J3.x:Language_Overrides_in_Joomla
If you want to change the word "zip code" to "postcode" just use.

language is kind of special. I'm going to hide it in the next release when your site has just 1 language. For now you can hide it with css.

3. Use a language override to change the word "hotspots" to whatever you want. We've done the same for our showcase site: compojoom.com/showcase - it reads 23 Websites and not 23 Hotspots

Cheers,
Daniel

P.S. If something is unclear don't hesitate to ask.

Hi Daniel

Thanks for the quick reply!

I have now made some of the changes I want using language overrides as you suggested. I have a few follow-up questions though -- I apologise for being so inexperienced with website development!

1) I do not know how to perform a layout override or edit CSS but I am trying to learn. I am trying to edit the file public_html/components/com_hotspots/views/form/tmpl/form.php to remove some of the form entry fields -- is this correct?

2) I would like to change the "New Hotspot" and "Edit Hotspot" titles that appear at the top of those pages. I cannot find this text as a language override. In the same file as above, COM_HOTSPOTS_NEW_HOTSPOT and COM_HOTSPOTS_EDIT_HOTSPOT are referenced. How do I change the "New Hotspot" and "Edit Hotspot" text?

3) It is good to hear that you are working on the enhanced search functionality. Can you give us a timeframe for when we can expect this? It is crucial to my use of Hotspots.

Thanks again
Ben

Hi

Any update to this please? Particularly the enhanced search functionality. I bought the license expecting that this would be possible, and I cannot use Hotspots for what I wanted without it.

Hey Ben,
1) I do not know how to perform a layout override or edit CSS but I am trying to learn. I am trying to edit the file public_html/components/com_hotspots/views/form/tmpl/form.php to remove some of the form entry fields -- is this correct?
-- docs.joomla.org/Layout_Overrides_in_Joomla

if you are doing changes to CSS what I do concider a standard right now is to have a custom.css file (provided by most templates) and write your CSS modifications there.
by using layout overrides and puting your css overrides in the custom.css file you ensure that updates to the extension won't override your chagnes.

2. Sometimes the language manager doesn't find the entries, despite them being there (it has something to do with the location where the language manager looks for the string - frontend or backend) With out component we have some strings in the backend and some in the frontend. We merge both files in the frontend and backend so it's fine. So just create a language override and enter your new strings. Even if the language override component doesn't find the strings, they should still work.

Regards,
Daniel