Creating a small site like the examples previously shown simply means you'll skip a few steps, as there's no need to create any sections or categories.. Just select a few articles to dis
Trang 1This same simple one-level structure would be appropriate for all kinds of small sites with a dedicated subject matter, i.e a portfolio site for a one man company or an event site A copy writing company would have a Joomla! site structure similar to the following:
John Johnson Copywriting
For an event site—such as a site for a congress or seminar—a structure like the one shown in the following diagram would be fine:
Web Builders Seminar
Although you'll leave much of the built-in functionality for managing big, content-rich sites untouched, it's still worthwhile to use Joomla! for sites like these All the other advantages
of Joomla! still hold, such as the ability to add any extra functionality you like If your client wants a registration form for his seminar site, or a photo gallery for his portfolio site, you can add these using Joomla! extensions And, of course, your client will be able to manage and update content easily
How do you go about building a small site?
Creating a small site like the examples previously shown simply means you'll skip a few steps,
as there's no need to create any sections or categories These are the actions it takes:
1 Create the uncategorized content pages you need
2 Add menu links to the Main Menu In this case, you'll link directly to articles instead
of sections or categories
Trang 2An example is as follows, a three page site based on a "clean" Joomla! installation (without sample data) Creating the basic setup of a tiny site like this takes just a few minutes
In this example, in our
new and empty Joomla!
site we've created three
uncategorized articles
We've set them all to
display on the Front
Page, too
For each of the articles,
we've added a menu link in
the Main Menu (via Menus
| Main Menu | New).
This is what the visitor sees
The Main Menu contains
three links; the Front Page
shows intro texts to the
three articles with Read
more links.
Trang 3When the visitor clicks on a
link, the full article is shown
That's all there is to setting up a tiny one-level website in Joomla! You can write a few articles, and create links pointing to them After that, you can focus on the extras you want to add (see Chapter 10 on extending Joomla! ) and the design (see Chapter 11 on using templates)
Downsize the home page, too
For a very small site, you can still build the home page with Joomla!'s default Front Page tools Just select a few articles to display (fully, or only as intro text) on the Front Page However, you may want something simpler for this type of site You might want to consider showing just one article as your own, customized home page content You'll read more about this technique
in Chapter 6 on home page display options
Have a go hero – organize a site!
Imagine you've been asked to build an informative website for a small company you know How would you go about this? Think of what you want to achieve, create an outline of the main and secondary sections, and translate this outline to Joomla! What would be your sections and categories, where would you put uncategorized articles?
And how about creating a small website about yourself? Using the site structuring skills you've acquired in this chapter, go ahead and create a great structure that would be both realizable in Joomla! and appeal to your visitors
Trang 4Pop quiz – test your site organization knowledge
1 What's the best order in which to build Joomla!-based sites?
a Start with extensions, add content, add menu links, add content containers
b Start with menu links, add content containers, add content, add extensions
c Start with content containers, add content, add menu links, add extensions
2 What can you use uncategorized articles for?
a To display articles that have not yet been authorized
b To display articles that do not belong to categories
c To display articles that belong to a section, but not to a category
3 How can you get categories to display in the frontend?
a Categories are backend stuff; they're only displayed in the Category Manager
b A category can be displayed by adding a specific menu link that points to a category overview page
c Categories are automatically displayed on overview pages when added to the Category Manager
Summary
In Chapter 3, you've learned that Joomla! retrieves content from a database, block by block Together these blocks form a web page That's why you start building a site creating categories; you actually build a well-organized content database In this chapter, we've learned what it takes to create content categories and to build a future proof framework for site content
Specifically, you've learned:
Every website, big or small, requires planning It all starts with creating a logical site map reflecting the structure of the content you have in mind Keep it lean and clean Bear in mind that visitors will want to get to the content they're looking for as fast
as possible
To transfer your hand drawn site map to a working Joomla! site, first identify the different Joomla! content elements in it This will help you build the site step
by step
The main content containers are sections and categories You'll create these first
Trang 5 To show section and category contents on the site, you add menu links pointing
to sections or categories
At any time, you can rearrange and rename sections and categories or move
their contents
Small sites, with just a few content pages, can consist of uncategorized articles only
In the next chapter, we'll jump from organization to creating content We'll fill the containers we've just set up with different types of articles
Trang 7Creating Killer Content: Adding and
Editing Articles
Once you have created a framework of sections and categories, things can
move pretty fast There's nothing to stop you from creating a content-rich site
—whether you want to add a dozen, hundreds, or even thousands of pages
In this chapter we'll focus on adding and editing articles, the type of content
that's essential to most sites Later, you might want to add other types of
con-tent (such as image galleries or forums); we'll deal with those in Chapter 10
When creating the example site in Chapter 4, you've already seen how you
can create a new article using the default settings You've left all of the extra
function buttons and parameters alone But in real life, you'll probably want
more control You want to make your content look great, add pictures, and
spe-cify exactly how to display things and what details to display Joomla! allows
you to you edit articles and tweak article settings to fit your needs exactly.
In this chapter you'll learn:
Creating, editing, and formatting articles
Split an article into intro text and body text
Dealing with long articles: splitting them into a series of pages
Adjusting general article settings
So let's get it started!
Trang 8Articles, content pages, what's the difference?
You might be tempted to think an article is the same as page Strictly, it isn't You've read before that Joomla! doesn't think in terms of pages Joomla! figures any web page is constructed of a whole lot of database-driven bits and pieces—and almost any combination
of those bits and pieces can turn up on the visitor's browser as a web page
Although the article will certainly be at the center of a content page, there's bound to
be much more to that page Around the article there will be all kinds of other dynamic content—yes, those bits and pieces again Be that as it may, for the sake of simplicity we'll just use the word page (or content page) for articles now and then As long as we're aware that content pages may contain more than articles, that's OK, isn't it? Don't tell Joomla!; it will be our secret
Creating and editing articles: Beyond the basics
Over the last few chapters, you practiced adding and editing articles Let's recap the
steps involved:
To create a new article, navigate to Content | Article Manager and click on New.
To edit an existing article, navigate to Content | Article Manager Click on the title
of the article to open it in the Article: [Edit] screen.
Another way to achieve the same results is to select the article (select the checkbox on the
left-hand side of the article title) and click on the Edit button in the toolbar The Article: [New] and Article: [Edit] are identical You're already familiar with some of the most
important functions; in this chapter, we'll boldly go to sections we haven't explored yet
Trang 9The Article Editor is shown in the following screenshot:
The article editing screen consists of three sections:
1 The actual text editing area offers you a simple word processor like interface for
entering and formatting text Above the actual article text you add the Title, select the appropriate Section and Category, and so on.
2 The toolbar buttons allow you to preview the article, save or apply changes, or cancel changes
3 The Parameters allow you to set up the article to display and behave just as you
need it to You'll learn more about them in the Adjusting article settings section later
in this chapter
Let's now explore the power of the Joomla! article editor We'll find out how we can tweak articles to get them to display exactly as we want them to
Making it look good: Formatting article text
Your client, the SRUP society, wants to add some new content to their site explaining the characteristic qualities of ugly art You've been sent a text file and have been asked to turn
Trang 10Time for action – add styling to article text
Let's create a new article and see how we can format it adequately
1. Navigate to Content | Article Manager and click on New.
2. In the Title box, enter Just What is Ugly Art? This is the type of factual content that fits the Facts category, so let's select the Ugly Paintings section and the Facts category:
3. By default, Published is set to Yes Let's set it to No This way the article will
remain invisible to your site visitors until you're finished with it (and publish it)
4. We don't want this article to show up on our home page so leave Front Page set to No.
5. In the text editor screen, add some article text If you want to copy text from
a word processor document, first strip out all of the formatting That way you avoid invisible word processor tags messing up your article text To do this, open the Notepad application on your PC (or TextEdit on a Mac) and paste
the text from the word processor into the Notepad or TextEdit document
This will give you a clean text-only file that you can copy and paste into the
Joomla! editor window Right-click and select Paste from the pop-up menu.
6. In this example we've added five paragraphs: a short introductory text and four separate paragraphs Type a subheading above each of the four paragraphs In the
example we've used the subheadings Abstract Chaos, Poor Anatomy, Too much detail, and Hideous Colors.