How to Show Weather Forecast for FREE on Joomla
You may want to show weather forecast on your website for a number of reasons. You may run a newsmagazine website or say a sports site where a match certainty vastly relies on the weather and your visitors would like to know that. If your site is running on Joomla, it might be a bit complex to show weather data. But in today’s tutorial, we will see how to add weather forecast on your Joomla website for free in a few very simple steps.
How and what tool will we be using?
Of course, we will be using a free tool. That is SP Weather, a free Joomla weather module that lets you use 5 different APIs for showing weather data. Head over to this article for a further read on SP Weather. We will go into details on how to use each of the APIs separately, but remember you only need to choose one API to get your job done. So let's dive in.
SP Weather has 5 ways to show weather data on your Joomla website. Choose one.
Common steps for all APIs
I think it’s safe to assume that you have a completely functional Joomla website up and running smoothly. Now you want to display weather data. The first step would be to download SP Weather from the official website. Then you install the zip file like any other Joomla extensions. By going to Joomla backend > Extensions > Manage > Install > Upload Package File.
You can now either activate (publish) and edit the SP Weather module or you can create a new module using SP Weather. Let’s see how to do that. Browse to Joomla backend > Extensions > Modules. This will take you to the page where you will find all the installed modules on your website.
Creating the Weather Module
From the installed module list page, hit the “New” button and select SP Weather from the list. You’ll be presented with a pop-up window of SP Weather. This is the place where all the configuration would be done. Let’s start by putting the name for your module in the title field. Don’t worry, the name would not be shown on the website unless you want to. Do this by setting the value of “Show Title” to HIDE.
Please note, you don’t have to spend money at all. All of these 5 API platforms are free to use (although premium plans are available). You can choose one that suits you the best. Following are the API creation links.
Once you have your desired API key, we can proceed to the next steps.
Choosing your API
You can select any of the five API providers from the dropdown list of “API Platform”, choose the one for which you created a key. We’ll be using Weatherbit for this article.
If you have a closer look at the above screenshot you’ll see after choosing Weatherbit, you need to put related information like your API key. Then choose how you want to show the data. You can choose from: city name, latitude/longitude, and IP address. I personally choose latitude/longitude for making a precise selection. You can use this website for getting the values.
The rest of the functions are pretty self-explanatory, you can customize your own way. The most important setting though, you need to set a position where you’d like to show the weather data. The whole job is pointless if you forget to set a position.
The next thing is to set the design. SP Weather has a few layouts for showing weather forecast. You can choose a block layout or list layout from the module tab. For getting a flat design, you need to browse to the “Advanced” tab and select “flat” from “layout”.
So this is what your final outcome may look like. The importance of weather forecast is invaluable for those who need it. I hope you got a perfect solution for showing weather data on your Joomla website today. If you are having trouble finding a solution for anything in Joomla, write down your queries in the comments below and we’ll try to the best of our ability to come up with the solution for you. So folks, happy developing :)
Your guidance is an easy way to understand and implement them for my client website the weather forecast.
Thanks.