Okay, two years of knowing about K2 and I finally tried it, installing is fine and I generally got the idea of how to start using it by searching Google and finding one or two old articles called "First Steps" from ages ago. Still none the wiser about the possibilities of templates and sub-templating.

For all the brilliance of what K2 is and does, it's really let down but the complete lack of documentation and explaining what can fully be done with it (and how). The current documentation section of this site is of no real help, just three short 'tutorials', only one of which is vaguely useful in that it mentions templates but doesn't really explain the issues, reasons and problems of "just copying the Joomla templates across to K2". For instance I have used an Artisteer template, but from what I can tell this is not compatible with K2, not that I'd really know that by reading anything here.

So far I haven't copied the Artisteer template across to K2 as I haven't really noticed much of a problem, my template styling is coming through in K2 so long as I don't use menus that bring collections of categories together it seems. Single defined category sections seem fine (and that's all I really need on my current development website) picking up the 'items' and displaying them in the correct fonts, colours and positioning, but I'm left wondering if I could adapt my templates more fully for K2, but again, no real documentation about the requirements and pitfalls of K2 template creation. I realise you probably all dread Artisteer but finding a pre-built template to look and function how I want is never possible.

So, I have two options, abandon Artisteer templates or abandon K2 and go back to the standard Joomla2.5 setup. It's a shame I have to make the choice after realising some of the potential of K2 and spending the best part of a couple of weeks using and understanding it, but without current relevant documentation and lack of suggestions about how to control, create and use templates (and K2 itself) it looks as though I'll have to give up on K2 for now and finish the site I'm working on in the standard way.

Will now go and moan on Artisteer forum asking for some K2 compatibility, or maybe someone here can explain if it's all actually quite simple so long as I can tweak a bit of css or other files?

Many thanks

Thanks for your kind words.
K2 views are displayed in the "content" area of the Joomla templates or K2 modules display where you put them.
All have the ability to use css subclasses
"custom K2 overrides" are accomplished by making a copy of the default layouts and Editing them to Suit your needs.
item.php - the single item view
category.php - the category layout
and so on....
A handy add on is CSS4K2 which allows each override to have its own copy of K2.css and be "different"

William White wrote: A handy add on is CSS4K2 which allows each override to have its own copy of K2.css and be "different"

Thanks William, I didn't immediately notice your reply on the website, I can't find where, if possible, to get email notification of replies! Does the possibility exist here?

I had forgotten about the CSS4K2 plugin, thanks for reminding me, I installed it last week and had forgotten about it as it didn't seem to do anything. Looking at it again, I see it's a plugin with just four settings. Is this all there is to it or am I missing something (again no documentation explaining its use!). In the back end I can't find any other references to it anywhere, not in Categories, Parameters, Menus, Templates. Of the four options available to me, all I notice is that the first one destroys the layout by turning off the K2 styling, much the same as the first setting under K2's Parameters.

To confirm, I have now copied the K2 template files over to my Joomla template folder, have renamed copies of the 'default' folder to match some of my categories, and finally realised and found out (where is that explained!) that I needed to copy the k2.css to my templates css folder as well.

From that css file I have confirmed I can now change some of the styles, but what is the point in having just the one css to 'globally' change things if the idea of having 'local' individual category styling done via the com_k2 folders copied for each category? (I tried copying the css files into them, and a css folder of them, with no effect.)

Not that I fancy attacking those 'view' overriding php files in my template folder to customise anything anyway, they're all just a bunch of references to other things as far as I can tell (I'm not a php expert) with nothing particularly configurable such as in CSS. Which all kind of defeats the whole point of K2 doesn't it? i.e. to make life simple.

So, based on the hope that your suggestions might have helped, I spent the last few hours trying out all sorts of options, combinations of settings and googling to get things tightened up, but essentially I'm none the wiser and nothing really looks any different.

To be honest I wish I'd not tried K2 right now, I've wasted so much time on it and everything is a mess of configuration options and my website is a complete visual mess of things going on and that's before I've got more than ten sample 'items' and a few categories in place with just simple content.

I shall be going back to plain Joomla 2.5 for now, and I was getting good layouts with that using other basic extensions to put stuff where I needed, in the style I needed. I'm afraid K2 has made the whole thing far too complicated for me with it's marvellous but yet seemingly far too many permutations to keep track off without adequate instruction for even the most basic of things (setup, configuration, possibilities, ideas, samples, etc). I know I could probably condense the layouts and permutations down to something manageable eventually, but given the visual clutter of layout and settings in both front and back-end, plus the fact I have to edit php files etc to get anywhere near the layout and scheme I like and had already, it's a bit like trying to find my way through a hay-stack with a mouse-pointer without a road-map on a foggy day!

Many thanks.

but what is the point in having just the one css to 'globally' change things if the idea of having 'local' individual category styling done via the com_k2 folders copied for each category?

They are in the middle of updating and upgrading their sites and i do not see css4k2 documentation
put a copy of k2.css into the override's folder and rename it to YourOverride_style.css. it will then only be picked up by the plugin and applied to the category that has it selected. test with firebug and you will see the changes

Thanks for the tip on what to do with the css styles. Where was that documented! You have no idea how hard that was to not find anywhere. I will give it a go.

It seems like the two sites that feature the CSS4K2 plugin, actually three/four sites including the K2 sites all are always 'updating' and 'upgrading' and never quite seem to have what's relevant with the current important information available. - I know what it's like, where does time go these days and so many things to catch up with!

It's a shame though, good documentation is everything (Akeeba-brilliant !!!). Without it, all the hard work in the creation of the 'thing' is almost worthless. I once heard a good (true) story about a company that set about building, marketing and selling a (real, life-size) plane as a kit. They spent a fortune developing it, manufacturing and buying in the parts, shipping, etc., but in the end they spent more money/time/effort developing the instructions and manuals that went with it.

Good, current and relevant instructions with 'What this is', 'What it can/can't do', 'Why it's a good thing' and 'This is what you can do and why' documentation is everything..... My next best thing that I loath is websites that don't date anything! (Not this site of course.)

Many thanks.

I just installed and tried to use K2 yesterdat and I'm glad I found this thread. I can't even get K2 to pick up my Artisteer template! I was looking to use K2 with Joomla instead of Drupal for a rather large website that displays a huge private collection of manuscripts. But I think I will try Drupal - K2 is just as complicated to use as Drupal, it seems. to me.

By the way Mr Artist, how did you get your Artisteer template to work with K2?

PS - not sure how I will know anyone replies to this message since it doesn look like there is an email alert option. But I'll check in at least once a day. If you can be bothered, email me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Best of luck.