It would be nice to show a featured sermon some how. I have in mind a window about the size of a poll. It shows the pic of the speaker, the title, the description. Probably doesnt need any media icons. Just needs to link the title to the study itself.

I would use this in the sidebar of mutliple pages to encourage people to check out the message.

An additional field to allow any number of sermons to be tagged as 'Featured' would allow us to filter which ones would display. Having multiple ones would allow for random slection within that group. Or maybe it cycles through them showing one for an entire week or day or session or something.

That's a great idea, and I've been thinking of ways that we can implement unique designs on a per study basis. I've tried different templating solutions that we might be able to implement, but I couldn't find a suitable one which would give full control over the ouput of each record.

The best solution (for now at least), is to make a Interface for all the position options that are found in the Parameters. For example, instead of setting the postions content, the style, etc in the paramters, you would use an "interface" to set those settings, to make it easier for new comers, and make it more clear as to the changes that are made. Furthermore, this would maintain the compatibility between earlier versions of the comopnent.

Sounds like a good solution genu.

A solution that i would like is:

1. Create a content item that becomes the template for the study.

2. This content item gets reproduced one under the other for every bible study returned by the query (depneding on topic, teacher etc)

3. Inside the content item you can put whatever you want wherever you want. All you need to do is specify using plain text what field goes where
- For example, i make 5 column table in that content item that looks like:
[Date] | [Title:Link] | [Teacher] | [Icons]

- or I i just put the fields in a standard detailed layout:
[Date]:[Title]
Teacher: [Teacher]
Download links: [Icons]
[Brief Description]
[Full Notes]

This means we could create any layout we like putting fields wherever we like and setting all the formatting options in the gui. All BibleStudy has to do is a Search/Replace on [Date], [Teacher] etc.

We should be able to produce something that could look like this: www.baycfc.org.au/index.php?option=com_c...id=66&Itemid=172
This page is just a category page showing each content item one after another.

You would need some way of adding a link to the details. My [Title:Link] suggestion may not be ideal.

You could specify the template content item as part of the Menu parameters.

Or you could set it in a plugin (i like plugins
Eg: {BibleStudy Teacher="Pastor X" TemplateID=123 OrderField="Date" OrderType="Desc"} where 123 is the ArticleID

Pseudo Code

Load Template Article into memory
Set RS = SELECT BibleStudies WHERE Critieria ORDER BY Criteria
FOR EACH RS.Item
HTML = Replace TemplateFields with BibleStudy data
BScontent = BScontent + HTML
NEXT
Show BSContent

So easy in pseudo code

Thats how my initial idea was....www.joomlaoregon.org/joomlaoregon/index....p;catid=4&id=408

and also some assistance for the "plugin" type approach: forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f=304&t=379131

but like i said, i haven't had much success with those methods

Checked out your templating idea. I like it a lot. i think that is an ideal way to go. You would probably need to specify for each study a list template and a detailed template. They could default to some standard one.

Would be ideal to be able to override that temlpate with another template as well. i would see this used when trying to display a study in a 'Featured Study' box on the main page say.