FEATURES OVERVIEW

Joomla is so much more than just a powerful content management system. Here is a list of features "out of the box," but the true power of Joomla is in its extensibility.

User Management

Joomla has a registration system that allows users to configure personal options. There are nine user groups with various types of permissions on what users are allowed to access, edit, publish and administrate.

Authentication is an important part of user management and Joomla support multiple protocols, including LDAP, OpenID, and even Gmail. This allows users to use their existing account information to streamline the registration process.

Media Manager

The Media Manager is the tool for easily managing media files or folders and you can configure the MIME type settings to handle any type of file. The Media Manager is integrated into the Article Editor tool so you can grab images and other files at any time.

Language Manager

There is international support for many world languages and UTF-8 encoding. If you need your Web site in one language and the administrator panel in another, multiple languages are possible.

Banner Management

It's easy to set up banners on your Web site using the Banner Manager, starting with creating a client profile. Once you add campaigns and as many banners as you need, you can set impression numbers, special URLs, and more.

Contact Management

The Contact Manager helps your users to find the right person and their contact information. It also supports multiple contact forms going to specific individuals as well as groups.

Polls

If you want to find out more about your users, it's easy to create polls with multiple options.

Search

Help navigate users to most popular search items and provide the admin with search statistics.

Web Link Management

Providing link resources for site users is simple and you can sort them into categories, even count every click.

Content Management

Joomla's simplified three-tiered system of articles makes organizing your content a snap. You can organize your content any way you want and not necessarily how it will be on your Web site. Your users can rate articles, e-mail them to a friend, or automatically save a PDF (with UTF-8 support for all languages). Administrators can archive content for safekeeping, hiding it from site visitors.

On public Web sites, built-in e-mail cloaking protects email addresses from spambots.

Creating content is simple with the WYSIWYG editor, giving even novice users the ability to combine text, images in an attractive way. Once you've created your articles, there are a number of pre-installed modules to show the most popular articles, latest new items, newsflashes, related articles, and more.

Syndication and Newsfeed Management

With Joomla, it's easy to syndicate your site content, allowing your users to subscribe to new content in their favorite RSS reader. It's equally easy to integrate RSS feeds from other sources and aggregate them all on your site.

Menu Manager

The Menu Manager allows you to create as many menus and menu items as you need. You can structure your menu hierarchy (and nested menu items) completely independent of your content structure. Put one menu in multiple places and in any style you want; use rollovers, dropdown, flyouts and just about any other navigation system you can think of. Also automatic breadcrumbs are generated to help navigate your site users.

Template Management

Templates in Joomla are a powerful way to make your site look exactly the way you want and either use a single template for the entire site or a separate template for each site section. The level of visual control goes a step further with powerful template overrides, allowing you to customize each part of your pages.

Integrated Help System

Joomla has a built-in help section to assist users with finding what they need. A glossary explains the terms in plain English, a version checker makes sure you're using the latest version, a system information tool helps you troubleshoot, and, if all else fails, links to a wealth of online resources for additional help and support.

System Features

Speedy page loads are possible with page caching, granular-level module caching, and GZIP page compression.

If your system administrator needs to troubleshoot an issue, debugging mode and error reporting are invaluable.

The FTP Layer allows file operations (like installing Extensions) without having to make all the folders and files writable, making your site administrator's life easier and increasing the security of your site.

Administators quickly and efficiently communicate with users one-on-one through private messaging or all site users via the mass mailing system.

Web Services

With Web services, you can use Remote Procedure Calls (via HTTP and XML). You can also integrate XML-RPC services with the Blogger and Joomla APIs.

Powerful Extensibility

These are just some of the basic Joomla features and the real power is in the way you customize Joomla. Visit the Joomla Extensions Directory to see thousands of ways to enhance Joomla to suit your needs

EXTEND, LEARN AND SHARE JOOMLA!

How can you use the power of Joomla to its fullest extent? How can you make Joomla even better? Here are a few ways:

Browse the Joomla! Extensions Directory™

Joomla was made to be highly extensible and customizable to your needs. Thousands of extensions are available in the Joomla Extensions Directory™, many of which are free of charge. If you're a developer wanting to write your own extensions, there are a number of resources available online.

Visit the Joomla Extensions Directory »
How you can write your own extensions »

Create and Find Translations

Joomla has been translated in many world languages and we're always looking to translate for more.

Find out more about Joomla in your language »
Didn't find Joomla in your language? How to easily create a localization »

Engage in the Joomla! Forums

The Joomla Forums are a vibrant community of users asking for help and giving expert advice. Whether it's a general question about what Joomla can do, a deeply technical question, or help with installation, you're likely to find the answers in our multi-lingual forums.

Join the Joomla Forums »

Attend a Joomla! Event or Local Joomla! User Group

Joomla User Groups meet regularly all over the world and provide an excellent opportunity for users to share ideas and experiences with using Joomla.

Check events in your area »
Check user groups in your area »
No user group in your area? How to easily form a user group »

Develop for Joomla!

Whether you want to contribute to core development, create an extension, or report issues the Joomla! development community provides you with many resources an opportunities for participation.

Joomla! Developer Network »
Development Mailng Lists »
Joomla! API »

Get and Create Help Documentation

The extensive documentation resources for Joomla are constantly being expanded and updated. You'll find many helpful sections on just about every subject imaginable and your expertise is welcome to make it even better.

Visit the Joomla Documentation Wiki »

Visit the Joomla! Community Portal™

The Joomla Community Portal™ is the ideal place to find a variety of resources for novices and experts alike. It's a launching point for everything community-related, from our Joomla User Groups™ to the JoomlaConnect™ the news source created by the worldwide Joomla Community.

Visit the Joomla Community Portal »

CONTRIBUTE TO JOOMLA!

Joomla is an open source project and contributions from the community are essential to its growth and success. Contributing to the Joomla Project is easy and you can give as little or as much time as you want. Anyone can contribute on any level, even newcomers can contribute to Joomla. Here are just a few ways you can get started:

Answer Questions in the Joomla! Forums

The Joomla community is well known for its helpfulness. Joomla forum users helping one another is one of the cornerstones of our community. Registering on the forum is quick and easy, and you can get started right away helping people just like you.

Write or Translate a Tutorial or Documentation

The Joomla Documentation Wiki is a living Web site for help documentation, tutorials, walkthroughs, and other helpful resources. You can help it grow by writing about anything you think might help other users, novice or expert. If you're not sure where to start, try looking in the Wiki Cookie Jar to see a list of things we need help with.

Joomla is translated into many world languages by members of the community. If you language isn't available, you can translate documentation, tutorials or even Joomla itself into your language. Visit our simple guidelines page to get started.

Develop an Extension or Template

One of Joomla's strengths is its extensibility and Joomla extensions provide users with specialized functionality. The Joomla Extensions Directory is a great place to get and overview of the types of extensions developers are writing. You can take an existing GPL extension and update it for the latest version of Joomla, fix bugs, or create a totally new component with cutting edge technology. The possibilities are limitless. See how you can get started.

If you're a designer and you don't know programming, you can design your own templates. Creating a slick template is easy and can be done in a simple text editor or Adobe DreamWeaver.

Test or Add a Comment to an Issue Report

We are always looking for more people to test patches, find and fix bugs, and help clarify issue reports on our bug tracker. Visit the bug tracker on JoomlaCode to help out. If you have programming skills, we recommend you inquire about joining the Joomla Bug Squad by contacting Ian MacLennan or Mark Dexter (or by posting in the JBS Google Group).

Join a Joomla! Working Group

Hundreds of community members contribute by participating in the Joomla Working Groups. Each group focuses on a specific aspect of Joomla essential to the Project's overall growth and all have formal expectations and goals. Anyone interested in helping Joomla grow is encouraged to join a working group where they feel their talents and interests lie. See the team pages and blogs below to find out more about each group and how you can help:

• Development Team
• Documentation Team
• Extension Directory Editors
• Sites and Infrastructure Teamp/Forum Moderators
• Translation Teams (Translations Forum)

Help Out at a Joomla! Event

Joomla events are held all the time around the world and are staffed solely by volunteers. You can contact your local Joomla User Group or check our Joomla Events page for upcoming events.

Contribute in Other Ways

There are a number of other ways both individuals and companies can contribute to the Joomla Project. To discuss these options, contact Open Source Matters, the non-profit organization that manages financial and legal issues for the Joomla Project.

J1.5:Understanding sections, categories and articles

Articles

Let's start with some definitions. In Joomla!, an Article is some written information that you want to display on your site. It normally contains some text and can contain pictures and other types of content. For many Joomla! sites, articles form the majority of the information presented in the website.

It is important to understand that, with Joomla!, the content of the site (for example, Articles) is totally separate from the formatting of the site -- the way it looks on the page. So it is best to think of articles as pure content, independent of the way it might be presented. For example, the same Article might be shown with different fonts, colors, headings, and background, and might be shown in different locations on the page.

Sections and Categories

Sections and categories in Joomla! provide an optional method for organizing your articles. Here's how it works. A Section contains one or more categories, and each Category can have articles assigned to it. One Article can only be in one Category and Section.

For example, you might have a Section called "Pets", and categories called "Dogs" and "Cats". Articles about dogs would be assigned to the "Dogs" Category, ones about cats to the "Cats" Category. So an Article about dogs would be in the "Pets" Section and the "Dogs" Category. You cannot have one Article that is in both the "Cats" and "Dogs" categories. To work around this, you could either (1) create a new Category called "Cats and Dogs" or (2) create a second Article to put in the second Category.

Why Use Sections and Categories?

There are two main reasons you might want to organize your Articles in sections and categories.

List and Blog Layouts

First, there are built-in Menu Item Types in Joomla! that take advantage of this organization. These are the Section Blog, Section List, Category Blog, and Category List. These Menu Item Types (also called "layouts") make it very easy to show articles that belong to sections or categories. As new articles are created and assigned to sections and categories, they will be automatically placed on these pages according to the parameters you set for each page.

For example, say you have a Section Blog layout for the "Pets" section, and say you have it set to order articles starting with the most recent one first. When you add a new Article to the "Pets" Section, it will automatically show on the "Pets" blog page as the first Article. You don't have to do anything other than add the Article and assign it to the "Pets" Section.

Organizing Articles in Article Manager

If you will have a large number of articles on your site, a second reason to use sections and categories is to simply group the articles so you can find them. For example, in the Article Manager, you can filter articles based on Section or Category. So if you have 200 articles in your site, you can find an Article more easily if you know its Section or Category.

Sections and Categories vs. Menu Organization

It is important to understand that, just because Joomla! uses a 3-tier organization level for articles (Section → Category → Article), this has nothing to do with the structure of the menus on your site. For example, your site could have one menu level or six menu levels.

Other Types of Categories

There is also a potential for confusion about categories. Sections are only used for articles. However, categories are also used for other components, including Banners, Contacts, News Feeds, and Weblinks. These categories are completely different from Article categories and are set up in different screens in the back end of Joomla!. So when you see something about categories, it might refer to Article categories or it might refer to categories for these other components.

Moving the site among directories/sub-directories

Many times you install Joomla in a sub-directory and then want to move it to a higher level directory, here's a short tutorial on how to do it.

Say you have installed Joomla in the following folder: public_html/tryjoomla. Now that you are satisfied with the site, you'll want to move to public_html.

1. Move all the files from the sub-directory (i.e., public_html/tryjoomla) to the upper level directory (i.e., public_html). You can use your favourite FTP client or the control panel that your hosting service provides.

2. Download and open the configuration.php file in a text editor.

3. Simply remove the tryjoomla folder name from the path. Look for the following lines

var $live_site = 'http://www.yoursite.com/tryjoomla';
var $log_path = '/home/username/public_html/tryjoomla/logs';
var $tmp_path = '/home/username/public_html/tryjoomla/tmp';
var $ftp_root = 'public_html/tryjoomla';

Change to:

var $live_site = 'http://www.yoursite.com';
var $log_path = '/home/username/public_html/logs';
var $tmp_path = '/home/username/public_html/tmp';
var $ftp_root = 'public_html';

4. Check your .htaccess. The subfolder should be removed there as well.

If you have cache enabled, login to the administrator backend (which will now be at http://www.zootemplate.com/administrator and not http://www.zootemplate.com/tryjoomla/administrator). Go to Tools -> Clean Cache and delete all cache files.

Entering search engine meta-data

Meta-data is information about the website in the header portion of the webpage. This information is used by search engines to determine the relevance of the give page to the search request it is processing at any given time. This data is constantly collected by various means by all search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Ask and others. The following list is a partial list of things to consider when building and publishing a web site.

GoDaddy hosting has a web site analysis tool to examine your site and report how each of these rules is violated. The report is shaky at best but it helps in identifying your website's weaknesses.

Title Tags

Well-constructed title tags contain the main keyword for the page, followed by a brief description of the page content. It will be less than 65 characters and avoid using stop words such as: a, if, the, then, and, an, to, etc. Your title tag should also be limited to the use of alphanumeric characters, hyphens, and commas.

Description Tags

Good description tags contain information about the page's content and persuade search engine users to visit your web site. They should be between 25 and 35 words in length.

Keywords Tags

Your keywords meta tag should contain between 5-10 keywords or keyword phrases that are also found in page content.

Heading Tags

Each page of your site should use at least the H1 heading tag for the search engines that examine it when crawling your site.

Page Content

Pages should have between 300 and 700 words of descriptive content that contains the keywords specified in the keywords meta tag for the page. A page's meta tag keywords should also be those that occur most frequently on the page.

Proper Navigation

Each page of your site should contain links to every other page so search engine spiders can find every page. This is a critical step for the proper indexing and page rank distribution of your site.

Proper Sitemap

It's important to use two site maps for your website--an XML version and a static version. The XML table protocol is explained in detail on http://www.sitemaps.org. The static version should sit on a static HTML page and contain links to every other page.

Controlled Crawling

It's important that search engine spiders find your Robots.txt file that guides spiders to pages and directories you want crawled and denies them entry to protected areas of your site.

Duplicate Content/Tags

Because search engines treat web sites as a grouping of pages and not a single entity, each page on your site should be unique so that the tags and content differ between each page. Doing so increases the number of pages that will rank.

Word Density

Pages should contain 300 to 700 words of unique and descriptive content.

J1.5:Getting Started with Templates

What is the purpose of a template?

A template controls the overall look and layout of a site. It provides the framework that brings together common elements, modules and components as well as providing the cascading style sheet for the site. Both the front-end and the back-end of the site have templates.

When Joomla! is first installed several templates are automatically included. You can find many more templates at other websites. Some are available without charge under various licenses, and some are for sale. In addition, there are many developers available who can make custom templates. You can also make your own template.

Templates are managed with the Template Manager, which is located on the Extensions menu in the back-end (administrator) area of your site.

Why does Joomla! use templates? [A real beginners guide!]

The way Joomla! is designed separates out the key tasks involved in producing a website for efficient maintenance of the software. One of these tasks is to create the aesthetic (the look, feel and layout) of the site. This includes making decisions such as which content elements (components, modules and plugins) you may want to place in any given page.

When producing a web page, the location of most elements will stay the same (menus, banner locations, sidebars etc.). Additionally, you will want to create the same look (fonts, header styles, colour scheme etc.) for every page. For some parts of the site you may want to alter the general feel to indicate a different purpose for those pages (such as a blog section). A little planning is required for this, but once you have settled on the overall layout for your site, you then have the task of producing each page of content.

And that’s where the template comes in. You can either write all the code for each page separately, or use a template for each major section of your site so that when you want to create a new page you simply “fill in the blanks”. Okay, perhaps it's not that simple, but this tutorial is designed to give you a step by step guide for effective template use, starting with how to use one and ending with how to create one for yourself.

1. Use one of the templates supplied with Joomla!
2. Download one of the many free offerings from the Internet.
3. Pay for one to be modified or produced from scratch if your needs cannot be met any other way.

Summary – a template controls the look of your site and makes your life a great deal easier when creating new pages.

For further details on what you can achieve with templates go the next section, “What can you do with a template?”

What can you do with a template?

A template is used to manipulate the way content is delivered to a web browser or screen reader. Here are some ways you can employ this on your Joomla!-powered site.

Layout

The template is the place where the design of the main layout is set for your site. This includes where you place different elements (components, modules, and plugins), which are responsible for different types of content. For example: The various menus (you can chose from existing options and create your own) Advertising banners Polls The main body of the page (you can select from different styles such as typical blog layout, a news article, etc.)

If the template is designed to provide choices, you can also "dynamically" alter the content placement on your site, perhaps putting the main menu on the right or left side of the screen.

Color Scheme

Using CSS within the template design, you can change the colors of your backgrounds, text, links or just about anything that you could within your ordinary (X)HTML code.

Images and Effects

You can also control the way images are displayed on the page, and even create flash-like effects or include AJAX applications such as drop-down menus.

Fonts

The same applies to fonts. The designs for these are all set within the template's CSS file(s) to create a uniform look across your entire site, which makes it fantastically easy to change the whole look just by altering one or two files rather than every single page.

Browser Specific Solutions

A template can be designed to alter how it displays on different web browsers, allowing you to take full advantage of the latest developments without making your site inaccessible to those who are not able to run "up-to-the-minute" system upgrades (such as certain companies who limit what software their employees can use).

Templates supplied with Joomla!

The following templates are supplied with a default installation of Joomla! 1.5:

• Milky Way (this is the default template).

  See also: Customising the Milky Way template

• Beez

  See also: Customising the Beez template

• JA Purity

  See also: Customising the JA Purity template

Switching templates

This article is for Joomla! CMS Version(s) 

To change the default Template for the Site (Front-end) or Administrator (Back-end), follow these steps:

• Log in to the Administrator (Back-end). If you are not sure how to do this see: To log in to the Administrator (Back-end)

• Click on: Extensions -> Template Manager

You will now see the Template Manager screen.

Note: If you do not see Template Manager listed as an option on the Extensions menu, then it is most likely because you are not logged in as a Super Administrator. Only Super Administrators will see this menu item.

From here you manage your templates for Front-end and Back-end. The default view shows your installed Front-end templates. The default template for the Front-end is marked with a star; in the image below it is rhuk_milkyway.

To change the default template to beez:

• click the radio button left from the template name to select it;
• click "Default" on the toolbar;

the star changes from rhuk_milkyway to beez and you are done.

Assigning more than one template for the Front-end

Joomla! gives you the option of switching between two or more templates on the Front-end. This is done with "Menu Assignment", so you can set different templates for each menu or only a menu item.

Click on: Extensions -> Template Manager

You see your installed templates, now choose a template which is not set as your default one. Click on the template name or hit the radio button to the left of the template name, and click "Edit" on the toolbar. You now see the page "Template: [ Edit ]", click the radio button "Select from List" in the "Menu Assignment" block and choose the menu items on which the template will be shown. Click "Save" on the toolbar and you´re done.

Installing a template

This tutorial is for Joomla! CMS Version(s)   

Install via Admin Panel (packed template file)

Log into the back-end of your site (www.your-site.com/administrator/)

Click on: Extensions -> Install/Uninstall

You see the page "Extension Manager"

From here you can install your Templates, Plugins, Modules, Components and Languages. You have three options:

• Upload Package File - (select a package from your PC, upload and install it)
• Install from Directory - (enter the path where the package is located on your server)
• Install from URL - (enter the URL to the package)

Here, we choose the first method: Upload Package File

Select the package from your PC and click the button "Upload File & Install"

If the package contains no errors you are done and get a success message like the one below.

Install via FTP (unpacked template file)

Templates can also be installed via FTP without packaging them. Simply select the template folder on your PC and upload it to your server, using your favorite FTP software. Be sure you upload the template folder to the directory: /path_to_joomla/templates/ - where /path_to_joomla/ is the location of your Joomla! installation on the server. This method is mostly used when you have created a template yourself, and do not want to have to package it to install the template, or if you want to upload more than one template at once.

Note: Do not try to use FTP to install Components, Modules and Plugins if you are a beginner/novice. These items need database entries which have to be inserted manually if you bypass the package installer.

Install Content From A Template

Joomla Version 2.5 and above can import content along with templates. This is a means to develop content locally with programs like Artisteer so you can import your whole site in one go. To import your content; Install the template as above, then from the Template Manager: Styles page (Extension > Template Manager) Select your template name in the left hand column (with the heading style) and then import content from template.

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