And don't worry, you'll only make menu items pointing to the main pages and content groups—not to each and every page.. To be able to create a text hyperlink, you first have to explore t
Trang 1Have a go hero – try out some Menu Item Types
The extensive list of Menu Item Types looks inviting; why don't you have a go at the different types of menu items? Add a new menu link to the main menu and choose a menu item
type you haven't used yet Check out the Search, External Link, or the Separator menu item types; they're pretty straightforward Some others, such as the User link, are quite
complex and won't immediately make sense—but don't worry, they won't mess up your site permanently and you can easily delete unwanted menu items in them again In the course of this book, you'll learn to use many of these menu item types
Why do you have to create menu links manually, anyway?
You might wonder why you have to add menu links yourself—isn't that a boring job? Well maybe, but creating menu links gives you a huge amount of control Not only do you control the type of page the link points to, but also which links are displayed, in what order they appear, on what pages they show up, in which menu they appear, and so on Moreover, you can choose a menu structure that doesn't have be identical to the site structure If you want
to link from the home page menu straight to a registration page, you can do that (even if that page isn't part of your main site structure) This way, you can limit the number of clicks and lead your visitors through your site easily
And don't worry, you'll only make menu items pointing to the main pages and content groups—not to each and every page Menus usually point to overview pages, some selected articles, and special function pages (such as a login form, contact form, search page) Joomla!
will automatically create links to any amount of articles below the main levels, using
overview pages, as you've seen in Chapter 6
Creating plain text links
Sometimes you'll want to show hyperlinks that are not part of a menu, but are embedded in
an article text How do you create these? It's doable, but it does take quite a few steps
Time for action – creating text links
The SRUP website is in desperate need of an internal hyperlink from one page to another,
a link from the Mission Statement page to the Ugly Paintings overview page Let's create
this link:
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2 In the Link: field, select all of the text (press Ctrl + A) and copy it (press Ctrl + C).
3. Now create a link to the URL you just copied Navigate to Content | Article
Manager and open the article that needs to contain the link in the editor
In this example, we've selected the Mission Statement article.
4. Select the word or words that should be a hyperlink and click on the hyperlink icon
in the editor:
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Trang 35. A pop-up screen appears In the Link URL box, paste the target page URL and add a Title for the hyperlink The Title will show up when the visitor hovers the mouse pointer on the link In this example, we've entered Discover Ugly Paintings as link Title.
6 Click on Update The pop-up screen closes In the editor screen, click on Save and click on Preview to see the results on the frontend.
Check out the article on the frontend to see if the text is now a hyperlink:
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What just happened?
You've created a text hyperlink from an article to another page in the same site You can only create a link to a page that has a menu link pointing to it To be able to create a text hyperlink, you first have to explore the menu link of the target page and get the URL
information you need
In the previous screenshots, you can see the editor buttons and pop-up screens available
when Joomla!'s default text editor, Tiny MCE, is set to Functionality: Extended Although
the normal functionality setting will do in most cases, you might want to consider activating
these advanced options See Tip: Extending the text editor in Chapter 6.
If you often need to add text links to articles, it's much easier to use another
editor, the Joomla! Content Editor (JCE) Its approach is much more intuitive
and it allows you to just click and select the target page (without first having
to look up the target page URL) To know more about the JCE editor, see
Chapter 10
Pop quiz – test your menu knowledge
1 How many menus can you add to your website?
a Six Menus (the Main Menu and five other menus)
b As much as you want
c You can only have one Main Menu
2 How can you add submenu items to a menu?
a By creating "parent links"and "child links"
b By assigning a different Parent Item to a menu link than the default (Home)
c By creating a new menu
3 When you create a new menu link, why does Joomla! show such a big list of Menu Item Types?
a To enhance navigation
b To enable you to create new menus
c To enable you to create different types of target pages
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Trang 5In this chapter, we learned a lot about creating user-friendly navigation through Joomla! menus This is what we covered:
By default, new menu links are added to the bottom of the menu link list You can move menu links up and down in the Menu Item Manager
You can set up a second menu that functions completely independent from the main menu That way, you can move links that don't fit the main menu to a separate, less prominent position You can create as much separate menus on your website as you like
Menus can be more than one level deep By assigning a parent item to a menu link, you create a submenu item
You can also create interrelated menus, such as a main menu showing parent links and a secondary menu on a different page position that automatically shows child links
Submenus aren't the only way to make secondary content visible Main links can point to overview pages with (automatically generated) links to content from those sections or categories
To create hyperlinks in an article text, you first have to retrieve the URL of the target page and copy it when creating a hyperlink in the article text editor
You've now finished making a basic, functional, and easy to navigate website In the next chapters, we'll take things further—after all, dynamic database-driven CMS magic doesn't
stop at creating basic sites In the next chapter, you'll learn how to add extra functionality,
such as the ability for your visitors to contribute content or to register as site members
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Trang 7Opening Up the Site: Enabling Users
to Contribute and Interact
In the last few chapters you have set up a site for your client It's a very
up-to-date Joomla!-powered site, but there's still something old fashioned
about it After all, you're still the only person who has access to it and
who is allowed to add and manage content You haven't yet benefited from
Joomla!'s built-in tools to create a team of specially designated power users
who can log in to the site to add or edit content In Joomla!, you're allowed
to add as many content contributors as necessary and you can give them
permission to create or edit articles, or to do even more.
But opening up your site to the world doesn't end there; Joomla! offers some
powerful methods to engage your Web visitors and turn them into active users You can enable visitors to register and give them exclusive access to premium
content Also, you can allow them to rate articles, giving others a good
indication of must-read content.
In this chapter, you'll learn:
Creating and managing user accounts: enabling Web team members to log in and maintain the site contents
Configuring self-registration for site visitors and creating content for registered
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Creating user accounts for team members
After you've installed Joomla!, there's only one user: the Super Administrator When you
take a look at the User Manager (Site |User Manager), you can check the user details of the Super Administrator: the default Name (by default this is Administrator), the Username (admin), whether this user is currently Logged In, whether his account is Enabled, the user's E-mail address, the time of the user's Last Visit, and the user's ID (an identifying user
number that's only used by the system):
What different types of user accounts can you create?
In the User Manager you can create new users and assign them to a specific Group, granting
them various levels of access to the site There are five groups available, each with their own set of permissions:
1 Registered users
These are regular site visitors, except for the fact that they have registered and activated their account After they have logged in with their account details, they can view content
that may be hidden from ordinary site visitors ("guests") because the Access Level has been set to Registered The site administrator can select this access level for all kinds of content, from modules and menu items to individual articles (through Parameters (Article)):
Registered users may have special access rights, but they can't contribute content They're part of the user community, not of the Web team We'll discuss user registration later in this
chapter (see the section Allowing visitors to register).
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Trang 92 Frontend content contributors
Up to now, you've only experienced Joomla!'s backend editing capabilities However, it is also possible to log in to the frontend, to edit or add articles to the site We'll see how that works
in a moment The idea behind having frontend editing possibilities is to lower the threshold for non-technical content contributors They don't have to bother to learn the backend interface and can edit, and add, articles directly in an interface that they already know—the public frontend of the site
The following are the three types of frontend content contributors, each having their own permission levels:
Authors can submit new content for approval by a Publisher or someone higher in
rank, but they can't edit existing articles
Editors can submit new articles and edit existing articles A Publisher or higher must
approve their submissions
Publishers can submit, edit, and publish articles in the frontend.
Authors and editors can't publish content Only after approval by a Publisher
(or someone higher in rank) will the content they submit be visible Although this has its advantages—someone will be double-checking all content before it's published—having
to review all of the new articles can create an extra workload for those with publishing permissions, and it could possibly turn into a bottleneck impeding a steady flow of new content That might be a reason to instead assign Publisher permissions to your Web team members Publishers have the same permissions as authors and editors, but (as you might have guessed) they are the ones who can also publish content
Generally, assigning a user to the Publisher group will be a good choice when
you want Web team members to be able to individually add and publish
content, without you having to grant them access to the (more complex)
backend of the site Publishers can easily create new content without having
to learn their way around in the backend—or being able to create havoc by
changing things they shouldn't
3 Backend content contributors and administrators
Finally, there are three types of backend users They have all the permissions of the frontend group, but they are also allowed to login to the backend to add and manage content and to
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Administrators can do all that Managers can and have access to more
ad-ministration functions They can manage users, add or remove extensions,
and change the site template
Super Administrators have no restrictions They can do everything possible in the backend When Joomla! is installed, there's always one super administrator account created That's usually the person who builds and customizes the website In the current example website, you're the super administrator
Time for action – giving a user frontend authoring permissions
Suppose your client wants to create a Web team—a couple of people who should
become responsible for content maintenance—let's create user accounts for these
content contributors
1. Navigate to Site | User Manager, Joomla!'s backend manager where you can view,
edit, and create site users
2. There's just one user, you By default, Joomla! calls this first user Administrator (although this user belongs to the Super Administrator group) To add
anoth-er usanoth-er, click on the New button in the toolbar.
3. In the User: [New] screen, add User Details as desired In this example, we've entered Jim Van Gogh in the Name field In the Username field we've entered jvgogh Enter a valid E-mail address and a password for the new user.
4. In the Group box, select Author This will allow the new user to submit and edit
content (after logging in to the frontend of the site)
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