In this thread community.getk2.org/xn/detail/3536014:Topic:55132Simon says mentioning Artisteer makes him cry.That's rather disappointing to hear. Not terribly surprising tho, as tools like that often have shortcomings that require workarounds.However, when it comes down to an either / or decision between Artisteer templates & K2, one must evaluate which tool saves the most time.Although I'm an experienced web developer, I decided the dramatic time savings of Joomla and Artisteer were very appealing over other development methods I've used used before (although JBoss SEAM was a pretty good approach to web RAD, I believe the Joomla PHP platform is much better).Back to Artisteer. Now since I'm comitted to using Artisteer and just starting out with K2, what problems an I likely to face? It would really be helpful to know where Artisteer is going to give me grief and avoid that or find an alternative way to implement.Simon, this is not an invitation for bashing, but I'm sure there are quite a few people out there that could benefit from your experience with Artisteer. Would you be kind enough to elaborate on some of the problems you discovered with it?

Hi Richard,

Thanks for bringing that up and I would of course like to explain a little more, bashing is not my style.

Let me first start by saying, you cant compare K2 with Artiseer, they are two complety different products.
Artiseer is used to design and produce Joomla templates.
K2 is expanding the way Joomla content is created and displayed. Although K2 has its own templates this is no different to any other major Joomla extension such as JomSocial, Kunena, VirtueMart as none of them would have been styled by Joomla.
The decision to retyle these extensions is then down to the user/designer/developer or in many cases the default style is used.

So the time saving evaluation cant really be judged as apples vs apples.

Now going back about 18 months, I wanted to start to learn how to create Joomla templates.
I had loads of PSD that I had created and did not want to spend a bunch of money for someone else to do the fun, magic stuff, i wanted to learn. Trying to find resources to do so where limited.
Thats when I stumbled across Artiseer.

Dont get me wrong, it is a good tool, easy to use, select click and see your design change, but at the time, there was no way of expanding the library of cliparts, backgrounds etc which was limiting if you wanted to create something that did not look like it had been created by Artiseer.

I also found that it was extremely difficult to modify files that it created.
Once the design was done, the code as I recall, was not easy to work with. I could not send the files to clients as they could not easily modify them without using the software.

There were also issues with modules positions not being recognised by Joomla.

Now, to remain balanced, I just went and got me a demo version to test as things will have changed since i used it and will try and create a template by using it and will host a demo site, purely for this project.
Again, this will not create any K2 template data and will have to rely on the default K2 template, or will need to have a dedicated K2 template created for it, which I wont have time to do so I shall use one of the new K2 templates that I have created on k2joom.com

Hope that helps some, but feel free to come back with more questions.

Simon
K2 Support

Thanks Simon for the followup. I didn't mean to imply Artisteer & K2 were aimed at the same task; I realize the purpose of both and what they provide for Joomla websites. However, both content (K2's domain) and site templates (Artisteer's area) are required to create a good quality website, and both will require a share of the available time to do so.

I find it extremely time consuming to tweek the UI and Artisteer reduces that effort dramatically. And I'm very hopeful K2 will be just as good at reducing the time to put content together.

Your original post gave me the impression there were conflicts or problems between K2 and Artisteer and I just wanted you to elaborate on that a bit. Thanks again for doing so and taking the time to check on Artisteer's progress since you last used it.

I am still a bit disappointed in K2's lack of documentation however. I'm sure I speak for many in saying we appreciate your efforts to help us noobs get up to speed in using K2.
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I just imported all of my Joomla sections/categories/articles into K2, so now what? How to I simply turn on comments, or get the K2 items to show up on the front page?

I know, its a bit of a left turn in this thread, but if you would point me in the right direction it would really help me move forward.

I'm making some progress with K2, though it is quite tedious. I am using a blue background in the Artisteer template, with white and yellow text. K2 uses white backgrounds but inherits the css definitions for h1.. h3, thus I have yellow on white or white on white, not very good!

So I've been tweeking the k2.css stylesheet to get a workable version for use with my Artisteer template.

I see in the category settings under "Category Item Layout" a drop down for template. When I'm done wih my tweeking of k2.css I will restore the original and look to providing my modified version somehow. Could you point me in the direction for how to go about that? What is the preferred mechanism for getting additional (k2?) templates to show in that drop down?

From what I read, k2 uses the standard Joomla extension facilities, so I presume I could just create a template with the new k2.css in it, but that seems a bit clunky to be right.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Hi Richard,

Its fine, I wanted to make the clarification for those that dont know about Artisteer.
For k2 docs, I can only recommend one place, simon.getk2.org
I will tell you exactly the same as whats there, as i created it.

Any questions leading from that, then please ask.

Here a guide that will help with templating: simon.getk2.org/k2-documents/item/91-templating
You basically copy the default k2 template and drop it in to you Joomla Temaplate folder which creates an over ride.
Multiple K2 templates can then be created using different php page layouts but sharing the k2.css thats now resides in the Joomla template folder.

This can be further expanded by using the CSS 4 K2 plugin aslo available free on simon.getk2 as this allows per k2 template css file to be added.

Let me know how you get on.

Simon
K2 Support

I use Artisteer for joomla template's and I do use K2. The tweaks that must be done are mostly cosmetic. For example, in artisteer I turn off bullets and lists because K2 handles this and in the comments section I have to turn one of the buttons off. Over all I have not had any problems with using both. I'm just now starting to get into K2 template's(layouts) so maybe more problems will occur.
JR

Richard Marks said:Thanks Simon for the followup. I didn't mean to imply Artisteer & K2 were aimed at the same task; I realize the purpose of both and what they provide for Joomla websites. However, both content (K2's domain) and site templates (Artisteer's area) are required to create a good quality website, and both will require a share of the available time to do so.
I find it extremely time consuming to tweek the UI and Artisteer reduces that effort dramatically. And I'm very hopeful K2 will be just as good at reducing the time to put content together.

Your original post gave me the impression there were conflicts or problems between K2 and Artisteer and I just wanted you to elaborate on that a bit. Thanks again for doing so and taking the time to check on Artisteer's progress since you last used it.

I am still a bit disappointed in K2's lack of documentation however. I'm sure I speak for many in saying we appreciate your efforts to help us noobs get up to speed in using K2.
----
I just imported all of my Joomla sections/categories/articles into K2, so now what? How to I simply turn on comments, or get the K2 items to show up on the front page?

I know, its a bit of a left turn in this thread, but if you would point me in the right direction it would really help me move forward.

I'm going to preface my comments by warning you that I'm going to provide alot of noob feedback here, and some of it may sound critical. Take it as a fresh perspective and take the best and ignore the rest! But I also want to say thanks a million too, because without this site I would have abandoned K2 already.

Templates?
I found the "91-templating" doc you mentioned and was able to get a new K2 "template" to show up in the category drop down list. However, I'm not sure you can truly call that a template, since the scheme you described doesn't include any css. I haven't yet looked into the css 4 k2 tool you mentioned, but it sounds like it may be necessary to create a complete template for K2. In fact, in my case that tool may be all I need.

Functional K2
At this stage of my development I'm just looking to get functional content into K2, and I believe I can do that through the k2.css alone. My issues deal primarily with text visibility. I say K2 isn't functional but that's just because there's a conflict between the K2 foreground / background and that of the Artisteer template.

Dark or Light Text "conflict"
It may very well be that the color of an item's title, which is inherited from the Joomla template and not specified in k2.css is the same color as the (block) background which is defined in the k2.css file, therefore rendering the title text invisible. I suspect that type of conflict has a high degree of probability of occurring, especially if the joomla template has a dark tone or background. Is it even possible for a K2 template to be designed such that it doesn't know or care about foreground & background colors of the Joomla template it inherits values from?

Similar problems arise within joomla itself, such as white text for a dark background that can't be seen in the article editor without changing the editor configuration to provide a dark background. Fortunately that capability is available.

Template Expectations
I also read your article about template expectations (simon.getk2.org/blog/item/422-k2-templates-the-expectation-a...) and was surprised by the lack of details there.

To be fair the purpose of that article seemed to be explaining how joomla templates and K2 templates are totally separate and segregated beasts and therefore they are inherently "compatible". However, I can tell you from first hand experience that is a bit of an oversimplification.

What is Compatibility?
There are several things to consider in determining template compatibility in addition to structure. Perhaps it's all in the word "compatible", but I'll bet many people expect turn-key compatibility where such issues are handled by Joomla or K2.

It would be nice if K2 was structured such that templates were fully encapsulated, including an xml file etc so it could be installed like any other joomla extention. From what I can tell a K2 template must be "placed" in the correct location by ftp or other direct file insertion method.

My Expectations
When I installed K2 I had a site template I was fairly happy with and I wanted to add K2's functionality. However I discovered I needed to redesign the k2.css to make it work (mainly to resolve the invisible text problems due to foreground and background choices in the 2 templates). And that is a time consuming and tedious task as it stands today.

As I read the "expectations" article it sounded to me like people didn't expect to work through all the detailed tweeks as I am doing, which seem to arise as a side affect of choosing a dark background color scheme.

This is looking more and more like "Richard's Noob Blog" page. As I work through the K2 issues I am learning all about how K2 is put together, at least the k2.css and to some degree the way it constructs pages.

It took some time but I finally got a K2 template built and integrated with my Artisteer template. After changing the Artisteer template's xml file they can both be installed as a single extension. I overcame the problem with the css4k2 plugin archive being corrupted (Joomla would NOT accept it) and it now loads a modified copy of k2.css which I named k2-tech_style.css. The only unresolved issue is that the K2 template's images folder must exist directly under com_k2/templates and so "images" appears in the category item template drop down list. That is the only place the images folder seems to work in the K2 template.

And speaking of images one problem I resolved was the display of Artisteer's bullet icons in almost every ol / ul / li list. Artisteer uses the background-image selector for those and to disable them I needed to add this rule: background-image:none. Some of these were tricky, like the "rate this article" which requires the background-image to work properly.

After spending a good part of the day yesterday meticulously editing the k2 template's css and packaging it with the Artisteer template I added some users and gave them front side edit permission. Which is when I discovered the modified template isn't being used in the edit mode. Firebug lists the k2.css stylesheet for the definitions used not my k2-tech_style.css which I set in the category properties.

This is alot more css work than I thought would be necessary. And I'm also wondering if this effort will be required again with another K2 release. Although K2 provides great functionality I'm finding it comes at a relatively significant price. I can't imagine adding K2 to a production Joomla site without an understanding of html and css or employing a company that does to do the work of adding it, even on a simple website.

On a positive note, please keep in mind I'm new to Joomla and K2 and I may ultimately discover there is a better way to accomplish using K2 without all of this detailed css work. But for now, I see no other way around it. I am not writing this to bash K2, but rather to explain how one newbie works through various issues in an effort to find solutions, and hopefully help others in the process.

K2 provides a tremendous feature set and fills the gap where Joomla has shortcomings. Joomlaworks deserves kudos for bringing it to the Joomla community. I'm sure it will get better as time goes by, just like Joomla.

I ran into the very same issues you described JRGWeB. Rather than change the Artisteer template I decided to use the css4k2 plugin and alter provide a K2 overide template. After re-reading your post I will see if it may work better to disable the bullet lists in Artisteer. Artisteer uses bullet lists for menus too, and I and using a custom image (lightning bolt) for that. But I'm not sure if I can disable all other bullet lists and leave those on. I suspect it can be done though, as menu items are completely separate animals.

JRGWeB said:I use Artisteer for joomla template's and I do use K2. The tweaks that must be done are mostly cosmetic. For example, in artisteer I turn off bullets and lists because K2 handles this and in the comments section I have to turn one of the buttons off. Over all I have not had any problems with using both. I'm just now starting to get into K2 template's(layouts) so maybe more problems will occur. JR
Richard Marks said:Thanks Simon for the followup. I didn't mean to imply Artisteer & K2 were aimed at the same task; I realize the purpose of both and what they provide for Joomla websites. However, both content (K2's domain) and site templates (Artisteer's area) are required to create a good quality website, and both will require a share of the available time to do so. I find it extremely time consuming to tweek the UI and Artisteer reduces that effort dramatically. And I'm very hopeful K2 will be just as good at reducing the time to put content together.
Your original post gave me the impression there were conflicts or problems between K2 and Artisteer and I just wanted you to elaborate on that a bit. Thanks again for doing so and taking the time to check on Artisteer's progress since you last used it.

I am still a bit disappointed in K2's lack of documentation however. I'm sure I speak for many in saying we appreciate your efforts to help us noobs get up to speed in using K2.
----
I just imported all of my Joomla sections/categories/articles into K2, so now what? How to I simply turn on comments, or get the K2 items to show up on the front page?

I know, its a bit of a left turn in this thread, but if you would point me in the right direction it would really help me move forward.

Here is the structure of the combined Artisteer and K2 templates: