📰 Article Form Builder
▶️ Authoring & Content
✍️ Joomill

Version: 1.0.0
Developer: Joomill
License: GPLv2 or later
Type: Free download
Includes: Component, Plugin
Compatibility: J5, J6

⬇️ Download
🌐 Demo
❓ Support
📚 Documentation

Build the frontend article edit form with drag and drop. Decide which fields your authors see, in which tabs and columns, per menu item. Hidden fields get their value on the server.

What it does

Your authors write news items on the site. They need a title, a text and a photo. The Joomla edit form gives them five tabs with aliases, metadata, access levels, links and publishing options, and you get the phone call when an article ends up in the wrong category.

Article Form Builder lets you decide what that form looks like. In the administrator you build a form profile with drag and drop: which fields are in the form, in which tabs and in which order. You choose the profile on a menu item, and from then on authors who create or edit an article through that menu item get your form instead of the standard one.

News can have a different form than vacancies or events. A menu item without a profile keeps the standard Joomla form.

How it works


- Create a form profile. Under Components, open Article Form Builder and create a profile. A new profile starts with the complete standard form, so you only have to take away what your authors do not need.
- Build the form. Drag fields from the list of available fields into a tab, put them in order, rename the tabs and remove the ones you do not use.
- Assign it to menu items. On the Menu Assignment tab, tick the Category List, Category Blog and Create Article menu items that use the profile. You can also pick the profile on the menu item itself.
- Done. Authors see your form on the site. The Preview on the site button shows it to you first.


The builder


- Every core field of the article form can be placed: title, alias, article text, tags, category, status, featured and its dates, the publishing dates, access, language, author's alias, both images with their options, the three links and the metadata.
- Drag fields between the list and the tabs, and drag the tabs themselves into order.
- Everything you can drag also works with the keyboard, and the builder announces moves to screen readers.
- Mark a field as required, or show it only when an article is created.
- Give Category, Status, Access, Language and Featured a default value for new articles.
- Choose the buttons under the form: Save, Save & Close and Versions.
- The builder checks your form when you save it: a form without the Title field, or without a category for new articles, is refused with a message that tells you what is missing.


Enforced on the server

A field you leave out of the form is not just invisible. It is dropped from the request when the article is saved, so an author cannot change it by editing the request.


- The profile an article was opened with is remembered on the server and the form carries a signed reference to it. Pointing the request at another menu item does not bypass the profile.
- What the form does not show is kept: tags, the other images and links, the category and the featured dates of an existing article stay as they are.
- An article that was never opened through a profile is saved the standard Joomla way.


Fits your template

The form on the site uses the classes of your template: Bootstrap with Cassiopeia and other templates, UIkit with YOOtheme. This is detected for you and can be set by hand. The layout can be overridden in your template like any other