Table of Contents
Joomla Denitions! Key Joomla Concepts!
Structure vs. Presentation!
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In Closing...!
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Joomla Denitions
3rd-Party
3rd Party is basically any plugin, module, component or other extension that is not part of the out-of-the-box Joomla core installation.
Access Level
Joomla allows us to classify users ranging from non-registered guest visitors all the way up to Super Administrator. This allows us to control which users are allowed to see and/or edit what content. For example, we could setup a section for registered users that is inaccessible to general site visitors. Users would then have to login to see the content.
Category
Categories are how article content is organized in Joomla. Articles belong to categories. Joomla allows users to create any number of nested categories. In Joomla version 1.5 and earlier, Categories could not be nested and must be assigned to Sections, or top-level categories. This limitation has been removed in Joomla 1.6 and beyond.
Component
Components are larger, more complex Joomla extensions that provide major new functionality to Joomla. Some of Joomlas core components include the News Feeds and Contacts components. Components like these provide a high level of functionality and often require their own menus in the backend to all us to manage them. Some 3rd party component examples examples include forums, paid membership site managers, etc.
Content
Content in Joomla is simply all of the text, pictures and other material that makes up the information on your site. Content is most often simply Joomla articles, but it can also mean images, videos, data in 3rd party components (like forum discussions) as well as any material inside of modules. Joomla and/or additional 3rd party components provide methods to manage all of this content.
Core
The Joomla core is simply the basic, out-of-the-box Joomla installation before any additional extensions like components, plugins or modules are installed.
Extension
The general name for any installable item. This can be templates, plugins, modules or components.
Featured Article
A Featured Article, formerly referred to as a Front Page article is any article content agged to appear on the front page of a Joomla site.
Frontend
The frontend (sometimes front-end) is simply what visitors see when they come to a website. Contrast this with the backend, which is the administrator console view.
Front page
The front page is the page found at / or the root of the a Joomla site. For example the page that appears when you visit http://www.StartLearningJoomla.com/ is the front page for the StartLearningJoomla.com Joomla install.
Media
Media is the name given to content managed within the Media Manager in the control panel. Media simply refers to image les in most cases, though it is possible for an extension to add additional types.
Menu
A menu is Joomla is the basic building block for designing the users view of a site. Menus allow users to nd and access content and control what modules appear in what positions for each menu item. Or, to put it another way, menus are the glue that connects all of the pages of a site together, dictate what will be on each page, and much of how it will look. Menus are displayed as modules and may be placed in any module position that a template permits. Menus are a complex topic and will be covered in detail on the Start Learning Joomla course.
Module
A module is a Joomla extension that provides useful information or interactive functions to the site visitors on the frontend. These are similar to widgets in some popular blogging platforms. Modules can be positioned anywhere that the template allows, making them very exible elements for your pages. Example modules include: All of a sites menus Whos online Login boxes Text boxes with custom HTML code Polls Ad Banners And thousands of 3rd-party modules
Module Position
Module or Template positions are specic locations in a template that are allocated for displaying modules. Positions are what allow us to take any module and display it anywhere that our templates support. This makes Joomla extremely exible when it comes to displaying what we want and where we want it. Common module positions that are available on most templates are: header top left right footer
A template does not have to display the left position on the left or the footer position on the bottom. In fact, template designers have complete control over where these positions appear. They can create an innite number of other positions like user1, user2, breadcrumbs, or whatever else they decide to do. Be sure to preview your template to see where those positions are actually located.
Nested Category
Nested categories refers to the the idea of placing article categories inside of categories, inside of categories, and so on.
Section
Sections no longer exist in Joomla 1.6 and beyond. Sections were the rst level of a three level Joomla content hierarchy in 1.5 and earlier. Articles belonged to categories and categories belonged to sections. Joomla did not allow sub-categories or for content to belong to more than one category.
Template
Templates are the design or blueprint of a site. Template developers decide on the general appearance of the site, what module positions names are available and where they will appear, as well as control the style or appearance of every other visual element on the site. In Joomla, we can actually assign different templates to different menu items, allowing us much more control over how different parts of the the site appears.
WYSIWYG Editor
Joomla allows us to use a basic What you see is what you get or WYSIWYG editor to edit articles on our sites. Joomla is also not tied to the use of a single editor, though it does provide 2 good options in the core installation. The default editor is set TinyMCE, which is a popular open source editor.
Category
sub-category
sub-category
sub-category
sub-category
Articles
Lets look at some specic examples: Suppose our site is going to be for a small software company providing 3 different products for private medical practices. The site will need to present information about the company, its products as well as provide a technical support area for existing customers. This is a common pattern for a small business site, so its a great example to get started with. Regardless of how the site will look and where users will click to see what content, we may already have an idea about what kind of articles and pages we want to present. Heres a list of what we want:
Support how-to documents for installing and managing our products Pre-sales FAQs for potential customers Post-sales FAQs for existing computers A download area for product updates The CEOs blog About us, contact us, directions, careers and other company info pages Product information pages A front page with ever-changing content Some miscellaneous or uncategorized content
Now, we can break this up into some major top-level categories: Support Support how-to documents for installing and managing our products Post-sales FAQs for existing computers A download area for product updates Product Product information pages Pre-sales FAQs for potential customers Company The CEOs blog About us, contact us, directions, careers and other company info pages Uncategorized A front page with dynamic content Misc or uncategorized content For some sites, this may actually be as much organization as we will ever need. For our site, however, we need to be a little more specic. Well create some categories under these main top-level categories to help us organize the content a little better. So, we have decided to break the content organization down further into some sub-categories: Support How-to Support how-to documents for installing and managing our products FAQs Post-sales FAQs for existing computers Downloads A download area for product updates Product Product Pages Product information pages Pre-sales Info Pre-sales FAQs for potential customers Company CEO Blog The CEOs blog posts Company Info
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About us, contact us, directions, careers and other company info pages Uncategorized Misc or uncategorized content
Support Category
Product Category
Blog Category
Uncategorized
Howto Articles
FAQ Articles
Individual Articles/Pages
Individual Articles/Pages
This new structure allows us to use some of the Joomla special category-based layout views down the road if we choose to do so. Most importantly, it just provides us with a simple way to organize our articles. As our site grows, having a simple structure like this will make it much easier to manage a large number of articles efciently. In our Start Learning Joomla! course program, we will use Joomla menus to link all of this content into a functional website for our visitors.
Because this is a relatively simple site, well organize the content in a simple way. The main sections of the site appear to be the private client area, the blog, public articles, services, and about. We could simply this further and group services and about together if we chose to. There are no hard and fast rules here, so its completely your choice as to what seems best for your site. The category layout may look something like this: Private Category Downloads Category Articles for each set of Slide Articles for other training material Articles Category Private Articles Blog Category Blog Entries Category Articles for the blog Articles Category
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Management Topic 1 Category Articles related to this topic Management Topic 2 Category Articles related to this topic Services Category Service Description Category Consulting services pitch page Details about other services Schedule an appointment About Category About Category About me page Contact me page Testimonials Category Articles containing testimonials.
Private Category
Blog Category
Articles Category
Services Category
About Category
Slide Downloads
Private Articles
Blog Entries
Individual Articles/Pages
This site has a special private area for our management consultants clients. In order to make this work, we will set the access level on that category to Registered. We will disable allowing users to register themselves so that the general public cant register and gain access to this section. When a new client needs access, our management consultant will simply add the clients account in the backend and make sure they receive the login information. So, this allows us to create a private section using only the core features in Joomla. Powerful indeed!
The site will have: Standard company about us, contact us, careers, etc pages A front page with featured content and special promotions 10 contributing editors writing travel blogs and reviews Reviews for thousands of hotels, restaurants, etc user-contributed reviews, ratings and comments
This site seems pretty complex, but the content organization isnt going to be too difcult. Actually implementing the site means that we would need to use a few extensions to add some functionality to the Joomla core, but it doesnt change the organizational structure of the sections and categories. Well go over how to actually build sites like this later on in the course. Hotels Category London Articles for each hotel Paris Articles for each hotel ...etc Articles for each hotel Restaurants Category London Articles for each restaurant Paris Articles for each restaurant ...etc Articles for each restaurant Activities Category London Articles for the activities ...etc Company Category About Us page Contact Us article ...etc Uncategorized Submit a Review
Hotels Category
Restaurants Category
Activities Section
Company Category
Uncategorized
Contact Us ...etc
Individual Articles/Pages
Now we have a structure that can accommodate a near innite amount of content related to European travel. Adding new topics is as simple as adding a new top-level category. If we nd we want to organize things at the country level as well, we can add a category level between above the individual city. The nested category method gives is a clear way to organize the content in a way that makes sense for our business. We use this structure (and extend it!) to create and organize a large amounts of content. Later, we may choose to use a tagging or some other 3rd party extension to group and relate things even better, but this will work as a basic organizational structure.
Local Newspaper
Our last example is a local newspaper site. While there is going to be an incredibly large amount of content in the form of articles and news feeds, the structure is, again, quite simple to setup. Heres what the site needs: Standard company about us, contact us, careers, etc pages A front page with up-to-the-minute top stories, etc Local, National and World news articles Submit a story page for readers to contact journalists about a possible story Many contributing authors writing articles Journalists blogs Editors to review, improve and approve articles User registration required to read editorial articles
Again, while this seems complex, it should be quite easy to layout the structure. Well use the natural breakdown of content according to local, national, and world news sections. Local News Category Politics Articles Business
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Articles Weather Articles etc... National News Category Politics Articles Business Articles Sports Articles etc... World News Category Politics Articles Business Articles etc...
Company Category Sales Post a Classied ad page Ad Sales Company About Our Newspaper Contact Us Careers etc.. Uncategorized Misc pages: report a story, etc.
Local News
National News
World News
Company
Uncategorized
Politics
Sports
...etc
Politics
...etc
Sales
Company Pages
Individual Articles/Pages
Here we can see that the category structure correspond perfectly to the core mission of the newspaper, namely to deliver Local, National and World news to its readers. Again, we may want to have a more complex structure with more in-depth organization, but this structure suites the overall goals of the organization as we can envision it now. The structure can be enhanced later if necessary. Joomla backend Authors can write articles into these actions and Editors can nd and improve them. The editor responsible for the front page can easily easily pick content from any of these sections and categories to include on the front page.
In Closing...
This completes the material for our video companion guide. We hope youve enjoyed it and have learned a lot from the combination of this and the introductory video located at http:// www.StartLearningJoomla.com/. Thanks for choosing us to be a part of your Joomla training experience... were happy to have you onboard!