Joomla! 1.6

In Joomla! your content can have several statuses. Depending on the type of content there can be a minimum of three statuses: published, unpublished and trash. What does that mean? After saving your fresh content for the first time, it exists in the Joomla! database and depending on its status, it will appear (or not) in different areas of your website.

The usual life cycle of content in Joomla! is:

1. unpublished until you are finished with editing and reviewing
2. published or scheduled (and possibly featured on the frontpage)
3. still published but may be removed from the frontpage
4. archived

Sometimes it is necessary to unpublish content and sometimes you may put it into the trash. The content itself will, of course, continue to exist. It has not been deleted. You can filter most of the tables in the administration interface by the desired statuses and assign different statuses to your content as often as you would like.

Unpublished

No website visitor is able to see the content. It is the phase in which you edit and review your content.

Published

It depends on the users’ and visitors’ permissions whether they will be able to view the content but generally the content on your website should be visible because it has been published!

Featured

The featured 'feature' is a switch you can use for your most important and latest content and is usually shown at the frontpage. It is an additional status because it is only relevant to articles. This is why it is possible for an article to be unpublished and featured.

Archived

There will come a time when you'll start thinking about an archive for your articles. Just set the status to archived and you've almost created an archive. Joomla! knows the creation date of your articles and offers an archive module to be shown on your site. The archive module is included in the example data. If it is not available, just create one in Modules → New →Archived Articles. Your articles will then be shown like in Figure 1. Read more in chapter Modules.

Figure 1: Joomla! Archive

Trash

The second last status is trash. If a content item ends up here, it still exists and can be retrieved. You can place modules, menu items, categories, articles, contacts, and even more content in your trash. You can see the contents of your trash can by filtering it (Figure 2). In the filtered view the Trash icon changes to Empty trash. This is your opportunity to delete content.

Figure 2: Trash

Check-in

The Check In icon in Joomla! may not be the kind you know from Foursquare or other location-based services. It is a security feature for editing your content. As soon as a user starts editing content, Joomla! locks this content for all other users. The advantage of this behavior is that changes by another user cannot be overwritten. That's a very convient feature. One big problem, however, appears when the user editing the content accidentally closes the browser window, allows the session to expire or the power plant shuts off the power or ... you get my point :-).
Then the content is locked and no one else can edit it!

No one else (except a user with proper permission, e.g. you as the administrator) can check in the content again to allow others to edit it. Unfortunately, you will only notice unchecked content by a small lock being displayed near the title (Figure 2) or by a cry for help from one of your users :-).

Figure 3: Check In

With a contact form the following question arises: "Is this content?". I think it is, which is why I have written it as a sub chapter of managing content.

On a contact form it first becomes obvious that something like a CMS is being used. Manually created HTML pages cannot send emails as this requires a script language like PHP, for example, and a configured server. PHP scripts can be embedded as contact forms into HTML pages, but then that part of the website will often look different from the rest of the site. In Joomla! the contact form is already integrated and you "only" have to configure it.

Ususally, if your Joomla! is running on a web server at your provider, you won't have problems with sending emails. Locally, it's a bit more difficult because you would have to set up a mail server first. Generally, this is not a problem but it isn't really necessary. ;-)

Joomla! sends emails in different ways. You will see an overview of this in Global Configuration → Server (Figure 1). Naturally, you would use the standard activated PHP Mail function. (see chapter Website and content configuration).

Figure 1: Mail Server Settings

Creating a contact

In order to include a contact on your site you need at least:

• a contact category
• a contact
• a link in a menu

Maybe you still have a category from the example data (Sample-data contact). If not, go ahead and create one. In the next step you will create a new contact. To do so, open Components → Contacts in your administration area and click on the icon New. Then fill in the appearing form (Figure 2). I have labeled some areas in the screenshot for better orientation.

Figure 2: Create contact

1. The first and last name of the contact person, or the name of the department or company if it is not a person. The contact can be connected with an existing user account. It has to be assigned to a category, should be public (State = Published) and presumably not appear on the frontpage (Featured = No).
2. The text area can be used for additonal information, e.g. opening hours or jurisdiction.
3. The Publishing Options relate to the user who can later make changes to that content, who created the content, and the timing for publishing. The latter is used rather seldomly for 'normal' websites.
4. In Contact Details there are numerous fields available, which you can choose to fill in or leave blank.
5. In Display Options you decide which fields will be displayed. This area is important as you specify here whether a contact form will be shown or not (Show Contact Form). You can also specify whether the sender should receive an email copy and you'll be able to configure some spam protection settings (Banned E-Mail, Banned Subject, etc). Against "real" spammers, however, this protection is rather "pathetic".
6. In the field Contact Redirect, you can enter another email adress to which the contents of the form should be sent.
7. The Metadata Options are, like the Publishing Options, available on each single page (see chapter Search engine optimization).

Creating a menu item

You now have a contact but still no form on your website. That is exactly what we are going to create in this next step. Due to the fact that you can link nestable categories to contacts, you may either have a single contact form or many of them. It is definitely possible to create a contact form for each employee of a big company like Volkswagen (approx. 370,000 employees). How does such a dynamic CMS display this on a website?

To manage this, Joomla! has its own Menu Manager with different layouts. In the Menu Manager, you get to decide whether you want to have a list of contacts or categories or just a single contact form. At first glance this may seem somewhat confusing but it is well thought out and helpful.

Let's link a single form in the menu for the contact we have just created. Open Menus - Top and click the New icon. You need three things for a menu link:

1. the Menu Item Type (type of link) for displaying the site and, depending on your choice, a contact or a category
2. a text displayed as a link
3. the menu, in which the link should appear

For number 1, click on the Select button next to the field  Menu Item Type. A window will open and you will see a choice of types. Click Single Contact (Figure 3).

Figure 3: Choice of menu types

The window will close again. Since you only want one contact, you will now have to choose the contact in Required Settings (Figure 4).

Figure 4: Choose contact

At last, insert the text for the link (Menu Title) and then save everything. The menu is already registered correctly by opening the form. On your website, an additonal link in the Top Menu should be appearing, which is linked to the corresponding contact (Figure 5). You can get to the actual contact form by clicking the plus sign in the right field. Now you can send messages via your website.

Figure 5: Contact at website

Figure 6: Contact form

The following items usually have to be taken into consideration when it comes to creating an article on your website:

1. a text with one or more images
2. a teaser text for list views with a read more link pointing to the full article page
3. the article should appear on the front page and needs no menu link
4. nice to have: a scheduled publication date
5. nice to have: a printer-friendly version for visitors who would like to print the article
6. nice to have: an option to forward the article by email

Start

The article should appear on the front page of your website. If you deleted, did not install or change your sample data, your Joomla! front page will look like the one in Figure 1. It is, of course, not a bad thing if posts should appear. :-)

Figure 1: Empty website

When you log into the administration area, you will see an icon called Add New Article.
You may either click on this icon or access the form via the main navigation Content → Article Manager → Add New Article (Figure 2)

Figure 2: Administration area

Article form

You are now in the article form, in which you will probably write all articles you will ever write in Joomla!. A very important place! The form is structured as in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Entry form for contributions

The minimum requirement for an article is a title (1), a category (2), and a text (3). If you look at the form more closely, you will notice the help texts that appear when you move the mouse across the description of a field. I have marked the areas in the form in Figure 3 with six digits.

1. Title

The most important part is the title or headline. The title appears as a headline on the website (usually in the biggest size of the HTML headline tags <h1>) and in the browser bar at the top (you can enable or disable this behavior). The title is the foundation for the alias field below. The alias is automatically generated by Joomla! when you save the article and and its appearance can be changed as well. Basically, the purpose of an alias is to have a simple, short and legible URL in the browser address bar, which can easily be used in e-mails or chats as well. In the example of http://example.com/first-article - first-article is the alias.

2. Category

This is about the classification or categorization of the article. Every item MUST be assigned to a category. If you explicitly do not want to categorize the article, you can assign the category uncategorized. This is especially useful for more static content pages like legal notices and the About Us page. In this area, other important attributes can be configured, including State (published or not), who has Access (Access, Permission depends on various settings), Language and Featured. Featured replaces the former attribute frontpage and ensures that the items are in a predefined blog layout for your website frontpage. The article ID is created after saving and consists of a serial number.

3. Text

In this section you can write your text, which should be of value to your audience. Sounds really easy, doesn't it?! :-)
Technically, you are dealing with a WYSIWYG editor (What You See Is What You Get) here. The editor converts your written text into HTML text format. Joomla! uses the TinyMCE editor as default configuration. TinyMCE is an independent open source project, which has so many functions that you could write a separate book about it. (May not be a bad idea.)
It basically works like any other word processor: write text, highlight text, then click on a toolbar icon and the function is applied or a dialog box opens.
The buttons below the input area are unusual and can be confusing at times. These buttons are Joomla! specific and only have an indirect relationship with the editor. The Joomla! core comes with five of these very practical additional buttons.
You can add more buttons by adding Joomla! extensions:

1. Article: allows you to link to other existing Joomla! articles
2. Image: You can insert an existing image or photo from the Media Manager or upload a new image.
3. Pagebreak: inserts a pagebreak in your article
4. Read More: allows you to stipulate where to place the read more link
5. Toggle Editor: switches the editor on and off. If it is off, you will see the HTML code of your article.

4. Options

What was called Parameter in Joomla! 1.5, is now called Options since Joomla! 1.6, like, for example, the Publishing Options. Here you can specify who wrote the article (Created by). The user who created the article is usually allowed and responsible for making changes to the article later. Which name is really shown below the title at the webpage is configured in Created by Alias. The three fields below allow you to schedule the publishing. Simply enter the appropriate dates and Joomla! takes care of the rest.

5. More options

In this section you can configure many options by switching them on and off. You can change the article layout to suit the reader's and search engine's needs. Just start experimenting - it's the best way to learn.

6. Permissions

The sixth and final area concerns the permissions for this article. This selection will help us in many places in Joomla! 1.7 and I will cover this in chapter Users and permissions.

Sample article

Let's create the article outlined above together:

A text with one or more images

Just write your text. To add an image or images, there are numerous possibilities:

1. The image is already available online, for example, on Flickr.
In this case, click the image icon in the editor toolbar and copy the image URL to the dialog box.

2. The image is already in the Joomla! Media Manager.
In this case, click the image button below to select the image and insert it into your text (Figure 4).

Figure 4: Insert Image from media field

3. The picture is on your hard disk.
This is the most complex case. Basically, you will also use the image button below the text. There you will find an upload dialogue through which you can upload your image "easily". Remember that Joomla! will NOT resize the image. If you upload a photo from your digital camera, it will be displayed in its full original size (width > 3000 pixels). You have to resize the image before uploading.
If all goes well - congratulations!
If it doesn't work, this could be due to many things, such as lack of permissions in the directories of the media manager. At best, you will get an error message. If it still doesn't work, try posting a comment here. :-)

Once you have inserted the image from the media, you can select and format it by clicking the image icon in the editor's toolbar.

A teaser text for list views with a read more link to the full article

This is easy. Move the cursor to the position at which the read more link should appear and click on the read more button below the text area.

The article should appear on the frontpage and needs no menu link

Select Yes in the field Featured in Area 2.

A scheduled publication would be nice

Avoid this at first, so you don't have to wait for the article to appear on your website :-). If you would like to try it later with a different article, simply fill the fields Start Publishing and Finish Publishing with the appropriate information or select the dates by clicking the calendar icon.

A printer-friendly version of the article

If you do not know at this point where the global settings are located, have a look at the chapter Website and Content Configuration and verify the current settings. In area 5, you may switch the Show Printer icon to 'show'.

Forwarding of the article by e-mail

Simply set the options in area 5, switch the Show Email Icon to show.

Result

After saving you can reload your site and will see your article on the frontpage as in Figure 5.

Figure 5: Article on the frontpage

This book was a beginning. I hope you enjoyed reading it. My intention was to guide you through Joomla! 1.6. Not everything was covered because that would have been too much.

I think we could use a developer book and a template designer book to dip deeper into these topics.  Nobody knows what the future holds in store!

What kind of useful resources are there for you to learn more about Joomla! or to get in touch with the Joomla! community?

Community

As it is written on the back of this book, Joomla! is backed by a worldwide community.  If you like this idea, come and join us!

• Become a member of http://community.joomla.org/.
• Read the community magazine at http://magazine.joomla.org/.
• Maybe there is a Joomla! user group near you that you can join.
  http://community.joomla.org/user-groups.html
  If not, start one yourself!
• Twitter: http://twitter.com/joomla
• Facebook Group: http://www.facebook.com/joomla
• Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/groups/joomla/

Documentation

• http://docs.joomla.org/

Security Checklist

• http://docs.joomla.org/Security_Checklist_1_-_Getting_Started

Joomla! Extensions

• The Joomla! extension directory provides more than 6,000 extensions - http://extensions.joomla.org/.

Joomla! Templates

• There is no central directory for free templates.
• There is no central directory for commercial templates.

Anyway, there are a lot of template clubs and professionals that provide Joomla! templates. Just search the web and you will most certainly find something that suits you.

Events

• Joomla! is known for its Joomla! days.
  A Joomla! day is a one- or two-day event organized by and for the community. A list of Joomla! days can be found here - http://community.joomla.org/events.html
• There is an international Joomla! conference in Europe called jandbeyond. Go to http://jandbeyond.org/ for more information.

The Future

• The community plans a six month release cycle, based on the ideas people post in the Joomla! idea pool.
• The next releases will be Joomla 1.7 in July 2011 and Joomla! 1.8 in January 2012, but of course, it depends on how the community will support implementing these ideas!
• The Joomla! developer network is always looking for people like you :-) http://developer.joomla.org/

Training

• http://resources.joomla.org/directory/support-services/training.html

Commercial Support

• http://resources.joomla.org/

Hosting

• http://resources.joomla.org/directory/support-services/hosting.html
   

Certificates

At the moment there is no possibility to get certified in Joomla!.

You see, there is enough work left for you, your friends and the rest of the world :-).

Every website owner usually wants to be seen on the first search results page in search engines like Google and social networks like Facebook. Unfortunately, there is not enough space on the first search results page for all the websites and businesses in the world, and users would quickly lose trust in search engines if it were possible to appear on the first page just by optimizing the site for search engines. 

Around this topic, an industry of consultants has grown offering search engine optimization services.

I see two possibilities for optimizing a website. The first is to help the search engines by using 'HTML standards' and telling the 'truth' about your site and the second is to find other ways :-). This chapter covers the first possibility.

You have already created a style, changed the CSS files and the main page of your template and you are still unhappy with the result? :-) Then this is the perfect time to discuss overrides. In Joomla! there are two kinds of overrides: template overrides and alternative layouts.

Template overrides

Let's assume you want to change the layout of the search result page. A component like the search component has a default template layout, which is stored in the file /httpdocs/components/com_search/views/search/tmpl/default.php. This file makes the search page look the way it looks. Add a few words to the file, save it and you will immediately see the result! For example, add

<strong>I have changed something :-) </strong>

in line 13 and see what happens (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Changes in the HTML output

The result is good for your motivation because it was so easy and is displayed in every template. However, it is not good for your reputation because you have just changed core code. With the next Joomla! update, your changes will be gone!

A better alternative would be to use template overrides in each template. Copy the changed file to your template folder to /httpdocs/templates/[template_name]/html/com_search/search/default.php and remove the changes in the original file. The result on the webpage is the same but, behind the scenes, you have overridden the original .../default.php file with your desired content layout - without changing core code - well done!

This system was introduced in the year of 2007 with the release of Joomla! 1.5 and still works very well today.

Alternative layouts

In Joomla! 1.6 the overrides have an enhancement called alternative layouts. I am sure you have already seen the Alternative Layout field in the edit form of articles, modules and categories (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Alternative layout in an article

Why do we need alternative layouts? Imagine, you are an administrator or webmaster and a template comes with three alternative layouts for an article. Sometimes it is a 'normal article', sometimes it should look like a product, and sometimes like a book page. You only have to choose which layout you would like to use. That sounds like a great feature and, of course, it is.

The technique is the same as with template overrides. You have to create a folder with the same name as the component or module and a subfolder for the view. There are two differences:

1. Obviously the file name has to be something other than default.php as this one has already been reserved for template overrides.
2. The alternative layout is, of course, not automatically selected.

Additionally to the alternative layout, menu item types can be added to the layout and the option items of that article can be controlled by defining them in an xml file with the same name as the alternative layout file (Figure 3).

Figure 3: Additional menu item types

The creation of these files are no beginner's topic but I am sure third-party templates will soon make use of these new possibilities (Figure 4).

Figure 4: Additional layouts in an article