Managing Content in Joomla CMSPage 13 Joomla EBook is presented to you by Aim Internet. | Managing ContentThis chapter discusses one of the most important functions performed by a cms. This is, as you would have guessed, Content Management. The Content menu contains all content areas. Content is organized by the following structure
in Joomla!:
|  | This structure can be compared with the directory tree on your hard drive. You can create as many sections and categories, and as much static content as you desire. If you archive individual elements, then the structure is completely transferred to the archive. This fixed structure has advantages and disadvantages. The biggest advantage in my opinion is that a structure is predetermined and thus the administrator must keep a certain hierarchy. This makes it easier to grasp an overview of the website. The disadvantage is that the two-stage structure cannot be changed and some administrators thereby feel limited when individualizing their website. The Content menu makes different workspaces available in order to work on content and structures within the website design(Figure 5.1):
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| Figure 5.1: Content Menu
| Content by Section
Content is sorted according to Section. The next step in the structure is Category; the actual content then follows (Item).
Section
Underneath the Content by Section menu, all available sections are shown. You can add as many sections as you want.
Category Underneath each section you again find a listing of the existing categories, as well as the option to work on these categories.
Add/Edit Section Category
Here you can create a new category, by clicking New. Let us use the Joomlabook category as an example.
Category Title: The title of the category that appears in the title line of the browser.
Category Name: The name of the category that will be displayed on the site.
Section: The section in which the category is to be created, in our case, News.
Image: Here you can select a picture that will be displayed when the site is accessed. The picture has to be in the root directory of the Media Manager (/images/stories/). I have selected articles.jpg.
Image Position: Here you can select the orientation of the picture.
Ordering: Here the order of the category is determined. In this case it is a new element, which by default is integrated at the end. The sequence can be changed after it has been saved once.
Access Level: Who has access to this element?
Published: Should the category be published immediately?
Description: This is the description of the category. If you selected the WYSIWYG editor in Site | Global Configuration | Site (refer the Global Configuration section in Chapter 4), a basic word processor will pop up:
|  | Figure 5.2: New Category
| You can only specify parameters for this category after it has been saved once by clicking Save. You wind up in the Category Manager and will see the new Joomlabook category (Figure 5.3):
|  | Figure 5.3: Category Manager
| Content Item: After we have created a new category, we want to insert content into this category. Click Content | Content by Section | News | News Items. You are now put into the Content Items Manager and can see the four standard entries of the Joomla sample data. Click New in order to be transferred to the content item workspace using the cms:
|  | Figure 5.4: Content Item Workspace
| You will see a form consisting of several areas. Actual content is located in the left panel; in the right panel are several tabs with different parameters. It is sufficient to fill out the left side at this time in order to write information.
Title: Title of the item of information.
Title Alias: Alias of the title.
Section: Here you can select the section under which the message is to be displayed. Select News.
Category: Depending on the section selected, the existing categories are shown. Select Joomlabook.
Intro Text/Main Text: Here you enter your actual information. The intro text has to be filled out; the main text is optional. With one click on Preview, you can see a preview of your text in a separate browser window (Figure 5.5):
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| Figure 5.5: Content Preview
| In order to integrate the new information immediately into the Joomla_Book menu, you now click the tab Link to Menu:
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| Figure 5.6: Link to Menu
| You will see a list of the available menus.
If you select the Joomla_Book menu, enter Chapter 4 in the Menu Item Name field and click Link to Menu. The page is newly configured and you will see in the lower part of existing menu links that your information has been added to the menu. Click Save. If you look at your site, you will notice that the Joomla_Book menu has an additional entry. After a click on the entry you will see your information:
|  | Figure 5.7: The Created Information
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Joomla - Managing Content 