Print
Category: Tutorials
Hits: 4049
25May2019

Unleash the power of custom fields in Latest News Enhanced Pro

Information
First published May 25, 2019
4049 hits - No rating

The addition of custom fields in the core of Joomla! 3.7 opened an era of new possibilities. Articles, for instance, can now contain data that only third-party extensions or hacks could provide.

Latest News Enhanced Pro, which is based on data available in the Joomla Content component, is taking advantage of custom fields by offering options that were not available before. You have now access to additional data to show image, title, text introduction, link and even data stored thanks to third-party custom fields!

Use custom fields as an alternative to the standard head type

The head of an item in Latest News Enhanced Pro is an element that is added to the text snippet such as an image, a calendar representation or an icon.

Head

With custom fields, you can now use an alternate image that is not the first image found in the article or the intro or full image parameters. Any custom field of type media will appear in the combo box.

Custom fields for head types

You can also select an alternative date for a calendar representation if you created an instance of a custom field of type calendar.

Finally, if you download, install, enable and select the custom field of type SYW Icon, you can also use icons as a selection.

Example with icons custom fieldExample of the SYWIcon custom field usage

Use custom fields as an alternative to the title

The title can be replaced with any custom field of text type.

Custom fields for titles

Use custom fields as an alternative to the text introduction

Custom fields of editor or text area types will appear in the selection.

Custom fields for text introduction

Use custom fields as an alternative to the read more link

Custom fields of type url (for the http/s and mailto protocols) can be used as a link replacement.

Custom fields for read more link

Add information with Joomla core or third party custom fields

The following core Joomla custom fields are supported: calendar, checkboxes, integer, list, radio, text, textarea and url. Default layouts are provided for those fields, but it is easy to just use template overrides to re-define their outputs. Any instance of those fields will appear as a selection.

But most importantly, you can show any third-party custom field you wish to include as visible information.
In that case, you will be required to define the field's representation in Latest News Enhanced Pro by creating a specific layout for that custom field type.

Custom fields for additional information

For more information on using third-party custom fields in the extension, please refer to the tutorial: Enable third-party custom fields in Latest News Enhanced Pro