Introductory: Learning Joomla! using Sample Data
All you need for this lesson is available in each Joomla! download
Written by Mark Dexter
Adding an Article
If you have an active, dynamic website, you will be adding new content frequently. Let's see how we might add a new article to the front page of the sample website. Press "Close" on the Module: [Edit] screen to return to the Module Manager. Select Content / Article Manager. The Article Manager screen will display as shown below:
First, notice that this screen is in many ways similar to the other "Manager" screens we have seen. For example, in the upper right is another set of filters that allows you to display only selected articles in the list. We're going to add a new article. To do that, press the "New" button in the toolbar.The Article: [New] screen will display as shown below:
Type in "My New Article" for the title, click "Yes" for "Front Page". In the Section drop-down list box, select "Uncategorized". This will automatically set the Category also to "Uncategorized". We'll talk about sections and categories a little later on. Type in some text for the article, and you're screen should appear as shown below:
Press the "Save" button in the upper right toolbar to return to the Article Manager. Now, go to the front end of the site and navigate to the Home page (which happens to be also a front page layout). Our new article should be the first article on the page, and the other articles will all be moved down one, as shown below:
Also, the article that used to appear last on the page (called "Only one edit window! ...) now appears as a link at the bottom of the page, under "More Articles...". We also get a set of navigation buttons ("Start", "Prev", and so on). These are shown below:
The front page and other blog and list layouts in Joomla! include functionality that makes it easy to put lots of content on pages with easy navigation. Also, as we saw, we can fine tune a lot of the functionality using the built-in parameters. Let's return to the back end and remove our new article. Find the "Front Page" column in the Article Manager for the new "My First Page" article. The green check indicates that this article is published to the Front Page. Click on the check icon and it will change to a red "X". This indicates that the article is not published to the front page.
In the front end, navigate to the Home page again (or refresh your browser) to see the change. The new article disappears and the other articles move up. Scroll to the bottom of the page and notice that the "Next" and other navigation buttons are gone, since they are no longer needed. If you think about it, you can see that Joomla! is doing a lot of cool stuff behind the scenes to make it very easy to manage the front-page articles.
Sections and Categories
Sections and categories can be very confusing to new Joomla! users. The first point to understand is that sections contain categories and categories contain articles. In other words, categories and under sections. The second point to understand is that they are optional. You can build a complete site without using sections or categories. So, why use them? There are two main reasons.
The first reason to use sections and categories is to able to use blog and list layouts. We just saw how the front page is a very handy way of presenting a dynamic group of articles. What if we want to have something like a front page, but limited to articles on one subject? Or what if we want to have more than one such page, like one for articles on dogs, another for cats? Sections and categories allow us to do just that.
To see this, let's go back to the Article Manager in the back end and click on "My First Article" to open it for editing. Recall that earlier we saw that the main menu item called "The News" used a "Category / Blog" layout for the category called "Latest" in the section called "News". Let's assign our new article to this section and category using the drop-down list boxes, as shown below:
Now, press the "Save" button and let's go back to the front end. What do you think should change? Navigate to the "The News" menu item in the main menu and, as you no doubt expected, our new article is the first one on the page. Note that blog layouts default to the newest article first, but the parameters allow you to choose a number of ways to order the articles, including ordering them manually any way you like.
What if you don't intend to use blog or list layouts to show articles on similar subjects? Should you still use sections or categories? If you will have a large number of articles, the answer might still be yes. If you go back to the Article Manager screen in the back end, you can see that there are filters for both Section and Category. Click on the "Select Category" filter and select "Latest" in the drop-down list box, as shown below:
Notice that now you only see the six articles (including our new article) that are assigned to this category. So sections and categories can be handy to help you keep your articles organized. Plus, using them gives you the possibility of using blog or list layouts in the future.
2008-11-06 13:20:49
2008-11-06 23:32:51
I also want to mention that we have had a remarkable development in JED. We started with 334 extension in March 2006. For one year ago we had reached 2299 extensions and yesterday we passed for the first time 4000 extensions.
2008-11-07 04:12:01
2008-11-07 11:52:24
2008-11-07 14:01:33
Take these away from the statistics and I would like to see the complete trend of genuinely new extensions to the directory. It would be more accurate.
Regards,
Joel
2008-11-07 21:22:56
2008-11-08 11:55:18
2008-11-09 01:32:50
Nick
2009-01-11 04:47:30
2009-03-05 11:06:49
2009-03-29 16:06:26
2009-03-31 17:19:12
2009-04-14 00:15:23
i want install a templete help me
2009-04-16 04:00:31
2009-04-22 14:27:57
2009-05-28 13:21:52
2009-05-28 16:30:39
2009-06-11 00:21:44
2009-06-22 21:50:12
My only reservation is that I have followed the Quick Start Guide to the word... and it told me not to install the Sample site. Now I'm stuck in gaining the best experience form this tutorial!
2009-07-04 13:40:55
2009-07-12 22:14:42
2009-08-23 02:38:29
How do I add a new position in the middle center of the page just below My First Article? Currenlty, the only spot there is "banner" and whatever I put there shows on every single other page. I downloaded JoomGallery and would like the gallery thumbnails to appear below My First Article and only appear on the homepage and no other pages. Please help!
Thanks,!
2009-08-26 13:49:13
2009-09-02 08:01:39
Your site is very useful for the beginning learner.
but now, I have trouble in joomla. I have error code 212..and so on ... I so very poor mind for this
2009-09-08 02:05:31
its a best solution and very easy to understand
thanks,
2009-09-10 11:01:03
Any recommendation on reading material for transferring data from Joomla 1.0 to Joomla 1.5 or one Joomla install to another.
Thanks once again
2009-09-11 10:07:44
In the Select Type filter i am getting only mod_mainmenu in the dropdown .. I am not getting anyother options as shown in the image .... Am i missing something here ????
2009-09-14 08:08:29
I'm new to Joomla! (1.5.14)
I'm reading many Joomla! literature before actually installing it to my pc and using Joomla!
I hope "Learning Joomla! Using Sample Data" will help me
2009-10-14 01:28:27
2009-11-03 14:22:16
Regards,
Kambar Farooq
A Beginner