Hi Talklan,

yes, this is a design limitation of the basic MetaMod module. A Joomla module cannot completely turn itself "off" dynamically, so the best you can do (without MetaMod Pro) is to make it produce as little output as possible, don't have the title showing, and work with your CSS rules and template code to try to work around it.

MetaMod Pro takes a different approach to solve the problem. You set up the modules with MetaMod as usual, but the MetaMod Pro plugin works behind the scenes to completely remove the MetaMod module from the list of modules displayed (unless it has any direct HTML output of its own). Any modules that MetaMod includes are therefore placed onto the page without being "inside" the MetaMod, which also helps with any CSS issues caused by the modules-inside-module design.

There are lots of templates out there that don't actually have a problem with empty modules "reserving space", but most of the modern ones do (depending on which module position you are using). Left and Right module positions most often have this issue.

You can read more about it in the FAQ:

http://www.metamodpro.com/support/faq/2 … etamod-was
http://www.metamodpro.com/support/faq/2 … th-matamod

Hope this clarifies things,
Stephen