Building Websites with Joomla! 1.5 phần 5 pps

Section Title Linkable: Should the section name be displayed as a link to all articles in this section?... Category Title Linkable: Should the category name be displayed as a link to al

So, the text is there already Now we have to take care of the smaller details Firstly, the whole text should not be displayed, only a small hook Return to the back end,

put the cursor at the place where the teaser is to end and click on the Read more

button below the text field A red line that symbolizes the division between the two parts of the text is inserted in the window:

You can also use the editor tools to format the text After you click on Save, your

front page will look like the following:

Parameters

There are various parameter blocks here as well, just like in the creation of menus You can see general information about the article above the parameter blocks

Article ID: The dataset number of the article.

State: Current status (currently published).

Hits: How often this article has been accessed If you click the Reset button, the hits

are reset to 0.

[ 134 ]

Revised: In the beginning, the article has version number 1 Every time it is saved,

the version number increases by 1 (This provides a foundation for the planned version administration)

Created: Date of creation.

Modified: Date of editing.

Parameters—Article

The first block represents the base parameters:

Author: You can select the writer of the piece of news from a list All existing users

are displayed in this list

Author Alias: You can enter an author pseudonym that will then be displayed on

the website

Access Level: This option is used for providing access to the three user groups Created Date: At this point you can change the creation date of the article If you

click on the calendar icon, a graphic calendar will appear to help you with the input

Start Publishing: This lets you set a start date for publication By default, content

is published immediately If you click on the calendar icon, a graphic calendar will appear to help you with the input

End Publishing: Here you can enter an expiration date for the content By default,

content never expires If you click on the calendar icon, a graphic calendar will

appear again

In the Parameters-Advanced section you can overwrite the parameters that were

defined for this content These settings are only valid for request of the complete

article in Site | Global Configuration These settings are only valid for the call up of the complete article, in our case after clicking on the Read more link.

Show Title: Should the page title be displayed or hidden?

Title Linkable: Overwriting of the global settings.

Intro Text: Should the teaser text be displayed or hidden?

Section Name: Should the section name be displayed or hidden?

Section Title Linkable: Should the section name be displayed as a link to all articles

in this section?

[ 136 ]

Category Title: Should the category name be displayed or hidden?

Category Title Linkable: Should the category name be displayed as a link to all

categories in this section?

These seven parameters overwrite the global settings for this individual article:

Content language: The language of the article can be defined with this This new

feature offers interesting options with language control in conjunction with Alex Kempens' Joomfish (http://www.joomfish.net/) Depending on the content, the website could be displayed in one or another language

Key Reference: References for export into the DocBook (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook) format can be defined here At the moment this is only relevant for developers in connection with the help system

Alternative Read more: An alternative text can be entered here for the Read more

link This is relevant when creating a barrier-free website

Metadata Information

In this tab you can enter a specific description and keywords for every page section

as metadata The texts entered here are then inserted with the message in the meta tags into the HTML source code of the website in addition to the metadata specified

in the Global Configuration:

In the Robots section, search words for robots can be entered The respective meta

tag is then enabled

<meta name="robots" content="word1 word2" />

In the Author field you can also enter a special author name for the meta tags.

Images

How do images get into the content? The images issue is a recurrent theme in the CMS world The image has to be created (camera), transmitted (cable, WLAN), edited (image enhancement), loaded onto the server (FTP, PHP-Upload), and linked

to the article

Joomla! by default allows you to link images that are in the Media Manager into your article by means of a selection dialog

Position the cursor at the place within the text where you would like the image to

be displayed Then click on the Image button below the text window The following

screen should be observed:

[ 138 ]

You can link whichever image you want from the media section into any piece of content If the image isn't in the media section yet, you can upload it by clicking the

Upload icon while you are editing the content

Select a subdirectory and click on the image that you want to insert Click on the

Insert button Now you can add a title for the image and align it Your image now

appears in the text window as seen in the following screenshot:

The parameters of the image can, of course, be edited with the TinyMCE editor Mark the image by left-clicking on it Then click on the icon with the tree above the text window The image dialog box of the TinyMCE editor opens You can now define additional parameters like links, pop-up windows, attitude, and some other parameters Here a 15-pixel space has been defined around the image

After you have clicked on the Apply icon, check the result either on your website or

by clicking the Preview icon You can insert page breaks as easily as the Read more

link or the images Position the cursor where you want the page break to be and click

on the Pagebreak button below the text field The following screen should

be observed:

You can enter a Page Title for the next page with this In addition you can enter an

Table of Contents Alias for the table of content that Joomla! automatically produces For example, here the title of the article is My News and in the content directory there

is now a heading by the name of Everything you ever wanted to know about coffee Now

click on Insert Pagebreak The page break is displayed as a gray line in the

text window

Above the article text you can now see Page x of y, there is a Article Index top right

with the text that you entered and below the text of the article are the links Prev and

Next to navigate between the pages You can integrate as many images and page

breaks as you want into a text

[ 140 ]

Article Trash

Just as with the menu items, you cannot delete articles directly By clicking the Trash

icon in article management, the articles are dispatched into the trash basket Clicking

the Restore icon in the trash basket will restore the deleted articles, clicking the

Delete icon will irretrievably delete them:

Section Manager

The overview table of the section manager lists the information in the structured format that you have already seen in other lists In this case, it includes the categories that are contained in a section as well as a count of how many are active and how many are in the trash basket:

You can publish, copy, delete, and edit the existing sections and create new

ones here

Editing Sections

As an example, let us modify the already existing section News and link it to our

Joomla! 1.5 Book menu Put a check on the checkbox in front of News in the section

list and click on the Edit icon:

Title: Title of the section (also appears in the browser's title line).

Alias: The name in Joomla!'s internal register.

Published: Whether the section should be published immediately or not.

Order: The sorting of the sections is defined here

Access Level: Who has access to this element?

Image: With this you can select an image that will be displayed on the website when

the category is requested This image has to be in the root directory of the Media Manager—here it is articles.jpg

Image Position: You can define the alignment of the image here.

Description Window: This is the description of the section If you have selected

a WYSIWYG editor in Site | Global Configuration, you will be offered a basic text

editor here

[ 142 ]

The only thing missing now is a link to the Joomla! 1.5 Book

You can link this section using Menus | Main Menu Here you can specify Joomla! 1.5 Book in the Display in option

Go to Menus | Main Menu and click on the New icon Then click on the Articles

menu item type

You have a lot of options for the type of display format What we want to do is display the News section, and we have a choice between the following two layouts:

Section Blog Layout

Default Section Layout

You can link articles as lists or as so-called blog displays (just like that on the current front page)

The display format list shows all the categories that are assigned to this section The header comes from the section that we have just changed In our case, this includes

only the two categories, Latest News and Newsflash These wound up in the table

display of the content by simply clicking on the category link

The blog display with Joomla! is a list of items with their intro texts (hooks,

teasers) and depending on the article, a Read more link In both cases, there is an

orange-colored button in your browser, behind which you can find a news feed for

the respective items The Archive Blog display format is exactly like the blog view,

but the content in this case comes from the archive (you can archive articles in article management)

It is best to try both versions After you click on your choice of display type, you land in the edit screen for that link You have dozens of what are hopefully self-explanatory parameters that you can change and try out

•

•

[ 144 ]

Category Manager

You can edit categories the same way as sections You can see the information structure in the overview table that you are already familiar with from the section display, but this time it is expanded by the assigned section, the number of articles it contains that are active, and those that are in the trash basket:

When you assign your newly created articles by means of the menu item

Content | Article Manager | Edit to the Latest News category and the News

(or Newsflash) section, they automatically appear in the newly created section lists.

Front Page Manager

The Frontpage has a special mission The front page is the title page of your website

Joomla! suggests that it should contain the articles that you would like to have there.Sometimes, such as with a simple website, you may not want that type of a start page A single article may be enough under certain circumstances This brings us to the question: 'What should my website look like later?'

If you will want a start page with several articles later, then the selected content should be in a blog display format When you are editing the individual articles,

you can activate the Front Page switch The article is then shown in the Frontpage

Manage The construction of the list is similar to that of the articles list You can sort the articles within the front page here You can see the title, section, category, and

author of the article uncategorized articles are called Static Content here You can

limit the list with the filter options If you have more articles than will fit on the front page, navigation links are activated on the website below the front page articles

[ 146 ]

You can change the layout of the start page in the link menu

(Menu | Main Menu | Home | Edit).

Editing Content from the Front End

If you log on with a user name, you should use the user admin the first time; that user has rights to change content You will see a pencil symbol next to the articles

If you click on this pencil symbol, you can edit the content in a fashion similar to how you did it in the back end.

The edit screen contains selected additional parameters from the editor and

also permits image uploads and image selection just like that in the

administration interface

Summary

In this chapter we learned about customizing the Content menu In the next chapter

we will learn about the Component menu

Components Menu

In software development, a component is usually a program or a piece of

programming code that contains business logic, that can be accessed over

defined interfaces, and that may possibly also have a user interface

Simply think of a component as a black box You put something in the front and

something comes out of the back: you don't have to know what happens inside; what matters is that you can use the black box for various completely different purposes Components can be designed in a generic way and bundled into handy packages The idea of a software component is similar in Joomla! Business logic, such as banner administration or a forum, is written in a generic way and then works in Joomla! in concert with all of the templates and with the Joomla! administration

A module often assumes the display of a website and a plug-in adds additional functionality to existing text (similar to a scripting language) By now there are over 2,000 supplemental components for Joomla! 1.0, and bit by bit more and more are being readied for Joomla! 1.5 But first take a look at the components that are shipped with Joomla! 1.5

Banner

Banner consists of Banners, Clients, and Categories

Banners

The banner component makes the display of advertising banners on your site

possible Banner switching with Joomla! is accounted for on the basis of purchased banner impressions A banner can consist of graphics or text Just like the wildly successful Google model, Joomla! websites can also sell advertising links Every time that your site is accessed, a different banner is displayed from your banner administration Every display counts as an impression The text link is clickable and

Before you can switch a banner, you need a customer Click on Components |

Banners | Clients | New, open a new customer account, and save it by clicking on

the Save icon:

The Banner Client Manager, where you wind up after saving, now displays your

new customer as well as the number of active banners for this customer

Manage Banners

Now you have to enter the banner and/or the text link of this client Click on

Components | Banners | Banners You can see the overview of the existing banners:

You will see the following categories:

Name: Name of the banner

Client: Client of the banner

Category: Category assigned to the banner

Published: Banner published or not

Order: Defines the order in which the banners are switched

Sticky: Sticky banners are preferred or not

Impressions: The number of successful impressions and the number of

remaining impressions

Clicks: Clicks on the banner in numbers and as a percentage of impressions

Tags: Tags (categories) for the banner can be assigned with this The display of the

banners can be controlled with these tags

ID: Dataset key