In the first example, I am going to simply add a notification to the home page for new visitors to add our site's RSS feed to their browsers. By default, most Joomla! templates display the RSS feed icon on the bottom of the page. This isn't very good, as it can be easily missed. Then again, you don't want to take up space above your article listing as your returning visitors will find it annoying and confusing. With V2B we can display this icon above our content only to new visitors.
First off, I have to tell you that I'm going to use my beloved “faux module inclusion” technique, as illustrated in my blog post on hiding Joomla! modules from registered users. The reason I want to do that is that Joomla! offers a neat RSS icon module, mod_syndicate. It displays the RSS icon for the current page's RSS feed. Of course, you might be using a different module, or an entirely different service (FeedBurner, anyone?) but the concept is still the same.
I start by creating a new mod_syndication module with the following parameters:
- Show title: No
- Enabled: Yes
- Position: faux-rss
You can use any name you want, as long as it doesn't correspond to an of your template's module positions
Next up, I create a new mod_v2b module with the following parameters (leave defaults on everything I don't mention below):
- Show title: No
- Enabled: Yes
- Position: user1
You can, of course, use any position deemed appropriate - Unique Identifier: v2b-rss-notice
Use anything you want, as long as it's unique between your site's V2B modules - Custom Message: In the area of the custom message I typed my message:
Note: There is no space between the curly braces and the enclosed text; I added the space on this example to prevent Joomla! on this site from parsing this as a plug-in command.
- Menus: Select menu(s) from list
- Menu Selection: I selected my home page
When I visited my home page again, I could see the V2B text over my other module in the user1 position. However, since the result looks poor, I made the “Welcome to my site!” into a Heading 3 – that is the default heading level used by modules – and added an extra horizontal rule below the rest of the text. The result was better already:
That's a subtle effect which can increase the amount of people subscribing to your RSS feeds. Since these are the ones who really care about your content, they'll come back often. That's a huge traffic boost to your site, both in volume and quality of visitors.[span class=cart]Get your copy by visiting my vendor page on Joobi's website.[/span]
