I worked through a whole bunch of ways to list articles on websites. There is obviously the option of listing them with a Section of Category listing through the menu system or through the latest news module. But that doesn't work well when you want to list articles in two or more Sections or Categories.
The Component SectionEx (Joomla! 1.5) of Robert Kuster works well for this purpose (unfortunately not available for support of the project any more due to time constraints).
SectionEx will list all articles within a section (or more) grouped by your categories (options available in the basic parameters). It combines and extends Joomla!'s native options in their Section and Category Layout.
SectionEx installs as a component and all settings are controlled and configured through the menu parameters.
To activate, create a new menu item with SectionEx and fill in the relevant parameters. There are various options you can choose from, eg:
- Hide/Show Section and Category titles and descriptions
- Add additional Sections
- Show/Hide Line Breaks and Filters
- Pagination
- Order the Categories and Articles
- Show/Hide Intro Text
- Show/Hide Images
- Show/Hide Rating/Voting
- and many more.
It is a really great component and gets my vote!
