Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Joomla 1.5
Issue 2
Matt Majeske
Joomla! for Professional Writers: Joomla! 1.5
The information in this book is subject to change without notice. The author shall in no event
be liable for any loss of business, loss of use or data, interruptions in business or for damage
of any kind arising from any defect or errors in this publication.
The Joomla! name and logo are registered trademarks of Open Source Matters, Inc. All other
trade names referenced in this book are the service marks, trademarks, or registered trade-
marks of their manufactures and belong to their respective owner(s).
This book may not be reproduced in any form without permission from the author.
Copyright © 2010, 2011 Matt Majeske. All rights reserved.
Acknowledgements
First and foremost, I would like to thank my wife, Laura, and daughter, Isabella, for their
patience and for allowing me to work on this book in my “spare time” over the last two years.
I would like to thank Don Miller, fellow Joomla wrangler, who, while tearing out his hair over
the enigmatic “module,” suggested I write about modules in a book on Joomla; thus, giving
me the idea to write this book. I also would like to thank Matt Bingham for introducing me to
Joomla and explaining how I could build a portable server with XAMPP Lite on a USB flash
drive. And last, but not least, I would like to thank Open Source Matters and the Joomla devel-
opment community for creating such a great publishing tool.
Notes
I missed my deadline for completing this book by twelve months. My job and family life
always took precedence. The result is that I am publishing a book on Joomla 1.5 as Joomla 1.6
nears completion. On the bright side, now that it’s written, I won’t need two years to update it
for Joomla 1.6.
I am self-publishing this book, which means every sentence is my own, raw prose. I spell
checked each chapter at least twice, and spent $50 to print a hard copy for proofing, but it has
not been reviewed by a professional editor. You will, most likely, encounter a few typos and,
possibly, a few sentences that leave you scratching your head. But, I have done my best to
ensure that it is free from glaring spelling and grammar errors.
I have also done my best to ensure the procedures in this book are technically accurate. I
installed every piece of software mentioned in this book numerous times and tested every
parameter to verify the results during the writing process.
In this issue of Joomla! for Professional Writers, I updated the instructions that explain how to
install Joomla 1.5, which changed when Joomla 1.6 was released. In addition, I fixed a few typos
that I noticed after uploading the first version. But the bulk of the book remains unchanged.
The purpose of this book is to teach you how build a publishing platform with Joomla 1.5. Joomla
1.6, however, was released for General Availability (GA) on January 10, 2011. It includes several
major feature enhancements that make this book obsolete. In fact, the enhancements, which I
describe below, include changes to the database that I believe will prevent anyone with a Joomla
1.5 system from being able to upgrade it to 1.6. At this point, I must caution you against installing
Joomla 1.5 and recommend doing so only for learning purposes.
1.For an official list of the enhancements in Joomla 1.6, see the feature list at the following address:
http://www.joomla.org/announcements/general-news/5348-joomlar-16-has-arrived.html
2.To learn more about the JA T3 Framework, see the JA T3 Framework wiki at the following address:
http://wiki.joomlart.com/wiki/JA_T3_Framework_2/Overview
Across the professional writing spectrum, we are rapidly transitioning from hard-copy publishing
to web-based publishing. Newspapers are failing with the advent of web-based news outlets, which
give readers more choices than they had with their local papers. Those that survive are moving
online while scrambling to determine how to remain profitable with an online distribution model3.
In the corporate world, many of us in the technical writing and instructional design professions
have long since abandoned the practice of printing manuals. To save money, we replaced them with
HTML and PDF-based documents, wikis, and eLearning tutorials that we publish on corporate
Internet and intranet sites. But, though our document distribution methods have changed, many of
us continue working with word processors and desktop-publishing tools that were developed for
hard-copy publishing and distribution.
While the companies developing our tools are aware of the shift to web-based publishing, and
enhance their products with features that allow us to convert our documents to more web-friendly
formats, the results are, generally, tools that output static, self-contained files that we must still
upload to web servers. And, when the web pages comprising a document require updates, we are
faced with the time-consuming, multi-step process of updating the original version in it’s native,
proprietary file format, exporting it as HTML, and re-uploading it to the web server.
This book explains how to build web-based writing and publishing platforms with a tool called
Joomla. For those of you already publishing documents on company Internet and intranet sites,
Joomla will eliminate the tedious document exporting, re-formatting, and general massaging many
of you face during the publishing process. For those you who would like to publish on the web, but
have never done so, Joomla is be best tool for getting started.
What is Joomla?
Joomla is a web-based content management system (CMS). Web CMSs are fully-functional, web-
based software platforms that non-technical users can install, configure, and administer
themselves. That is, you do not need to know HTML, or have any programming skills, to manage
a CMS. As a CMS, Joomla is endlessly flexible and can be used to build many types of commercial
websites, storefonts, and corporate intranet sites. But, at its heart, Joomla is an exceptional writing
and publishing platform.
3.Regan, Tom. “Newspaper failures are old news. It’s time to focus on solutions.” The Christian Science
Monitor, 11 March 2009: n. pag. Web.
and change, in general, can be intimidating. As professional writers, we have been working with
word processors and desktop publishing tools on our computers since we abandoned stand-alone
word processing machines in the 1980s. Now, we are moving from our computers to the Internet
and server-side data storage.
If you have ever written an article for a blog or wiki, you know that writing with a browser-based
text editor is different from writing with a word processor. I believe those of you who have never
written in this environment will find that, while the process is different, it is not difficult. The many
similarities between word processors and web-based text editors should allow you to easily
transition from one to the other. In fact, most web-based text editing tools are as sophisticated, in
terms of the text formatting options they offer, as our expensive word processors and desktop
publishing tools.
4.You can find the Joomla secrets page at the following address on the Joomla documentation site:
http://docs.joomla.org/Joomla_secrets
During the evaluation process, I found that wikis are efficient, but they are not very good writing
platforms. Most lack chunking and pagination features and only include bare-bones text editors,
which means you either need to know HTML or you have to learn wiki markup to perform text
formatting tasks. And, as soon as you start writing an article with a wiki, it becomes available for
everyone to consume. There is no “drafting” mechanism. While it was not a problem for our
developers to leave articles in various incomplete and draft states on the wiki during the writing
process, I thought this would not be a good practice for a corporate publishing platform.
Next, I started learning about open-source CMSs. A coworker found a very helpful article, The
Open Source CMS Market Share Report5, which was written by Ric Shreves in the summer of
2008. In the report, Ric performed a market-share analysis on 19 of the most prominent open-
source CMSs. While Ric’s study was not intended to prove which platform was the best, it did
identify the ones that were leaders in rate of adoption, which he measured through statistics he
gathered on product downloads, installations, third-party support, and brand strength, which he
determined by looking at factors like search engine visibility, popularity, and reputation (quantified
via awards, ratings, and social bookmarking). From his investigation, Ric concluded that Drupal,
Joomla, and WordPress had the largest presence in the CMS market. Ric conducted and published
additional studies in 2009 and 2010 in which he arrived at similar conclusions about the top CMSs.
I also learned of the opensourceCMS site at http://www.opensourcecms.com, which houses over
250 CMS platforms for free evaluation. In one afternoon, I was able to test many types of web-
based systems; though, I focused mainly on Joomla, Drupal, and WordPress. I quickly ruled out
WordPress, because it seemed more geared toward blogging. And, when comparing Joomla and
Drupal, I thought Joomla’s writing environment, including its writing tool (the TinyMCE text
editor), was far superior to Drupal’s. Based on my research and limited comparisons, I decided
Joomla would make the best writing and publishing platform for our technical writing department.
At some point while I was researching and testing wikis and CMSs, I realized that if we chose one
as our writing and publishing platform, we would no longer need our desktop publishing tools,
which I thought was pretty exciting. If you adopt Joomla, I hope you will be as excited as I was to
transition from writing on your computer to writing and publishing directly on the web.
5.You can find the full PDF version of Ric’s 2010 report at the following address:
http://www.waterandstone.com/book/2010-open-source-cms-market-share-report
Part III, Writing and Publishing with Joomla!, tells how to write, publish, and organize documents
on your Joomla site and includes the following chapters:
Chapter 9, Switching to the Joomla Content Editor (JCE)
Install the Joomla Content Editor (JCE), which includes a more current version of the
TinyMCE text editor, as well as many advanced text formatting features.
Chapter 10, Writing and Publishing from the Back End
Understand how to perform writing, editing, and publishing tasks from Joomla’s administrative
back end.
Chapter 11, Working with Images
Learn how to manage the images in your articles and perform other tasks like adding image
maps and creating image rollover effects.
Chapter 12, Working with Tables
Insert tables into your articles and perform advanced styling tasks like applying table border
and background colors and using background images.
Chapter 13, Working with Links
Insert links to a variety of sources, including links to external websites, links other articles on
your site, links to other menus on your site, and links to author contact information.
Chapter 14, Writing and Publishing from the Front End
Learn how to write and publish documents from your site’s front end, as well as how to import
documents written in other tools.
Chapter 15, “Paginating and Chunking Articles”
Paginate long documents to help users quickly find information. And, learn how to chunk long
documents, like books, at the chapter and section levels.
Chapter 16, Managing the Archive Process
Remove outdated documents from your site while retaining them in the database by archiving
them. Enable users to access your archived articles for reference.
Part IV, Adding More Content and Navigation Features, covers additional features available for
enhancing your site, and comprises the following chapters:
Chapter 17, Enhancing Your Site with Modules
Add other types of navigation and content display features to your site.
Chapter 18, Advertising with Banners
For those of you who are building a corporate publishing platform, learn how to display
advertising banners for your own products. If you are building other types of publishing
systems, like marketing or news platforms, you can display advertising banners for paying
customers.
1.This list comes from the Technical Requirements page on the Joomla website at the following address:
http://www.joomla.org/technical-requirements.html
I built two Joomla systems for a technical writing department: one was the original system on
which I learned how to use Joomla, where I figured out how to customize templates, and on which
I tested extensions and other features before installing them on our main system. The other was our
main Joomla site on the company intranet, where we wrote and published our technical documents.
Both systems operated on fairly powerful PCs in our lab running on the Windows 2003 Server
operating system.
When I was getting started, I read a couple of articles that recommended using two systems. They
suggested that you use one as a staging environment, which you could use for learning purposes,
and where you could test new features and extensions. Your staging environment could also act as
your backup system. And the other, of course, would act as your main publishing platform.
However, if you have neither the time nor the resources, you don’t have to build two Joomla
systems.
Using a Server
If, after learning how to use Joomla, you decide it’s a good publishing solution, consider working
with your IT department to deploy a system on server-class hardware. Most IT departments will
want to install and configure the server software themselves, and possibly the Joomla software, to
ensure they provide a secure configuration. However, if you build a Joomla publishing system that
is to your liking on your own platform first, you should be able to easily re-create it on any Joomla
system installed by your IT department.
2.You can find the minimum software requirements for Joomla at the following address:
http://www.joomla.org/technical-requirements.html
3. Click the XAMPP icon on the Apache Friends banner to open the XAMPP home page.
4. On the XAMPP home page, scroll down to the XAMPP for Windows section.
5. Click the XAMPP for Windows section title, which is also a link, to open the XAMPP for
Windows page.
6. Scroll down the page to the Jump-off point section:
Figure 2-2. Click the EXE (7-zip) link in the XAMPP Lite section.
8. In the XAMPP Lite section, click the EXE link to download the self-extracting version of the
application. When clicked, the link opens the SourceForge.net site, which houses the
XAMPP Lite software, in a separate browser window.
9. Depending on your browser, SourceForge.net may open a file download window, or display
a page where you must click to download the software. Save the file, which is named
xampplite-win32-1.7.3.exe at the time of this writing, to your USB flash drive.
10. When the file download process completes, close the file download window and exit the
SourceForge.net and Apache Friends websites.
2. Double-click the installation file. If a Security Warning message opens, click Run to
proceed. The self-extracting archive window opens:
Figure 2-4. Select your USB flash drive with the Brows For Folder window.
4. Click the drive representing your USB flash drive to select it. Please note that XAMPP Lite
cannot function properly if you install it in a sub-folder on your flash drive.
5. Click OK. The XAMPP installer populates the Destination folder field with the drive letter
for your flash drive.
6. Click Install. The XAMPP installer extracts the files comprising the server software to the
USB flash drive, which may take several minutes. Refer to the Installation progress bar to
determine the installation status. When the installation process completes, the XAMPP List
installation window closes.
7. Next, a DOS window opens displaying a message asking whether it should add a XAMPP
Lite shortcut to your desktop, as shown in Figure 2-5:
8. Because you are installing XAMPP Lite on a USB flash drive, you should not add a shortcut
to your computer’s desktop. Type n (for “no”) at the cursor’s location and press Enter. Next,
a message opens prompting you to confirm that you want the XAMPP installation process to
configure the paths correctly, as shown in Figure 2-6:
Figure 2-7. You must not associate a drive letter with XAMPP Lite on a USB flash drive.
You are installing XAMPP Lite of a USB flash drive, so you must type n (for “no”), which
means a drive letter is not associated with the paths configured for the server software.
10. Press Enter. The installation process displays several messages indicating it is relocating the
server software. When the path configuration process completes, a message indicates
XAMPP is ready for use, as shown in Figure 2-8:
12. Press Enter to complete the configuration process. An options window opens, as shown in
Figure 2-10:
Figure 2-11. Windows may try to stop the Apache web server from starting on the flash drive.
Click Unblock.
• The other message indicates that MySQL is attempting to start, like the example shown
shown in Figure 2-12:
Figure 2-12. Windows may try to stop the MySQL database server from starting on the flash drive.
Click Unblock.
4. To verify that the installation succeeded, start a web browser on your computer and go to
following address:
http://localhost
If running, the XAMPP splash page opens, like the example in Figure 2-13:
Figure 2-13. The XAMPP splash page opens the first time you access localhost with your browser.
5. Click the desired language under the XAMPP logo. The XAMPP Lite homepage opens:
Figure 2-14. You can perform administrative tasks from the XAMPP Lite homepage.
If you were able to access the XAMPP Lite splash page and console, you have successfully
installed and started XAMPP Lite on your USB flash drive.
6. Close your web browser.
7. Continue to Chapter 3, “Installing and Configuring Joomla!.”
2. Click the XAMPP icon on the Apache Friends banner to open the XAMPP home page.
3. On the XAMPP home page, scroll down to the XAMPP for Windows section.
4. Click the XAMPP for Windows section title, which is also a link, to open the XAMPP for
Windows page.
5. Scroll down the page to the Jump-off point section and click the XAMPP link to jump to the
XAMPP section:
Figure 2-16. Click the Installer link in the XAMPP for Windows section.
When clicked, the link opens the SourceForge.net site, which houses the software, in a
separate browser window.
7. Depending on your browser, SourceForge.net may open a file download window, or display
a page where you must click to download the software. Save the file, which is named
xampp-win32-1.7.3.exe at the time of this writing, to your computer.
8. When the file download process completes, close the file download window and exit the
SourceForge.net and Apache Friends websites.
To install XAMPP:
1. Navigate to the folder containing the XAMPP installation file.
2. Double-click the xampp-win32-1.7.3.exe file to start the installation process. If a Security
Warning message opens, click Run to proceed. XAMPP for Windows installation window
opens:
5. Next, a DOS window opens displaying a message asking whether it should add a XAMPP
shortcut to your desktop, as shown in Figure 2-18:
Figure 2-20. You must associate XAMPP with a drive letter on your computer.
8. By default, n (for “No”) is selected. However, because you are installing XAMPP on a
computer, you must associate it with a drive letter. Type y (for “Yes”) at the cursor’s
location.
9. Press enter. The installation process displays several messages indicating it is relocating the
server software. When the path configuration process completes, a message indicates
XAMPP is ready for use, as shown in Figure 2-20:
Figure 2-25. When you start MySQL and Apache, XAMPP shows their statuses as “Running.”
Click the close button in the upper-right corner to minimize the XAMPP control panel to the
task bar.
5. Next, start a browser and go to the following address:
http://localhost
The XAMPP splash page opens, like the example in Figure 2-26:
From the XAMPP homepage, you can configure security settings and launch phpMyadmin, which
is a web-based front end for the MySQL database server, among other applications. The XAMPP
installation process is now complete. To learn about the XAMPP security console, where you can
secure your XAMPP system, continue to “About XAMPP’s Security Settings.”
2. Click the Security link on the left side of the page. The XAMPP Security page opens:
If you installed XAMPP on a USB flash drive or on your personal computer for learning and testing
purposes, you do not need to enable these security settings. However, if you are deploying Joomla
on a company intranet, you should secure them. For instructions on securing XAMPP, see
Appendix A, “Securing XAMPP.”
3. On Joomla’s homepage, click the Download Joomla 1.5 link, as shown in Figure 3-1:
Figure 3-2. Download the Full Package version of the Joomla software.
5. Save the zip file to the computer’s hard drive. Where you save the file is unimportant, as long
as you remember where you put it.
6. Close your browser when the download completes.
• If you are installing Joomla on a USB flash drive, navigate to the following folder
(where X represents the drive letter assigned to your USB flash drive):
X:\xampplite\htdocs
3. Create a folder named joomla in the htdocs folder. Figure 3-3 shows the joomla folder I
created in under the htdocs folder in the XAMPP file system:
5. Extract the contents of the zip file into the joomla folder you created in step 3. When the
extraction process completes, the joomla folder looks similar to the example in Figure 3-4:
Figure 3-4. The contents of the joomla folder after extracting the zip file.
6. Continue to “Installing the Joomla Software” on page 33.
2. On Joomla’s homepage, click the Download Joomla 1.5 link, as shown in Figure 3-5:
Figure 3-6. Download the Full Package version of the Joomla software.
5. Save the zip file to the computer’s hard drive. Where you save the file is unimportant, as long
as you remember where you put it.
transfer speed depends on variables like the speed of your Internet connection.
3. When the transfer process completes, disconnect and exit the FTP client.
4. Continue to “Installing the Joomla Software” on page 33.
To install Joomla:
1. For a local installation, start a web browser and go to the following address:
http://localhost/joomla
For example, if domain name for your remote server was publisher.net, you would type the
following:
http://publisher.net/joomla
The Joomla installation wizard launches in your browser and opens to the Language
selection page:
Figure 3-8. Select your desired language on the Choose Language page.
2. After selecting the desired language, click Next to continue. The Pre-installation Check page
opens:
Figure 3-9. The pre-installation check verifies that you have a compatible version of the PHP engine.
The pre-installation check verifies that the PHP engine in your server environment is
compatible with the version of Joomla you are installing. It also checks how your PHP
engine is configured, which you can compare to the recommended PHP settings for Joomla.
If you installed the most current version of XAMPP, and you didn’t manually enable safe
mode, your system should be compatible and configured appropriately for Joomla.
5. Click Next to continue. The Database Configuration page opens. Figure 3-11 shows how I
completed the Basic Settings section for a local Joomla system:
Figure 3-11. Supply credentials for the root MySQL user and a name for your database.
6. Complete the fields in the Basic Settings section:
• Database Type: Whether you are installing Joomla on a local, XAMPP-based computer,
a USB flash drive, or on a hosted server, the database type will always be mysql, which
is selected by default.
• Host Name:
• If you are installing Joomla on a local, XAMPP-based computer or USB flash drive,
type localhost in this field.
• If you are installing Joomla on a hosted server, type the database server’s host name
in this field. For example, your hosting provider might provide a host name like
db12345.yourprovider.net, which you would type in this field.
• Username:
• If you are installing Joomla on a local, XAMPP-based computer or USB flash drive,
type root in this field
• If you are installing Joomla on a hosted server, type the root user name for the
database created by your hosting provider in this field.
• Password:
• If you are installing Joomla on a local, XAMPP-based computer or USB flash drive,
and you did not secure your MySQL database by setting a password for the MySQL
root user account, leave this field empty. If you did set a password for the root user
account, type it in this field.
• If you are installing Joomla on a hosted server, type the password for the root user
account in this field. Note that this is the password for the user name you typed in
Username field.
• Database Name:
• If you are installing Joomla on a local, XAMPP-based computer or USB flash drive,
type a name for the database in this field. I recommend using a database name like
“joomla,” which is easy to find in the MySQL database server. Joomla creates the
database during the installation process.
• If you are installing Joomla on a hosted server, type the database name provided by
your hosting provider in this field. For example, your hosting provider could name
your database something like db12345, which you would type in this field.
7. Click Next to continue. The FTP Configuration page opens:
Figure 3-12. You can skip the FTP Configuration page as it does not apply to your configuration.
As the note on the FTP Configuration page indicates, if your server platform is running on
Windows, or on a USB flash drive attached to a Windows-based computer, you do not need
to enable the FTP layer. That is, do not select Yes in the Basic Settings section.
Figure 3-13. Specify a name for your site and credentials for Joomla’s administrative user.
Figure 3-14. Click OK to acknowledge you are not installing sample data and proceed.
Figure 3-15. You must move the installation directory from the Joomla file system.
On the Finish page, the installation wizard indicates Joomla is installed and the installation
process is complete. Notice that the Administration Login Details section shows the user
name for Joomla’s administrative user account is admin. However, before you can access the
administrative back end, or your homepage, you must remove the installation directory from
Joomla’s file system. Continue to “Removing the Installation Directory” on page 41.
Figure 3-16. Move the installation folder out of your web server’s directory.
2. Cut and paste the installation folder to a location outside of the XAMPP directory structure.
Please note that you do not need this folder or its contents in the future, and I recommend
deleting it.
3. Close Windows Explorer and return to the Finish page you left open in your web browser.
4. Click the Site button located near the upper right corner of the page to access the homepage
for your Joomla website:
If you or your IT department assigned a static IP address to the computer on which you
installed Joomla, you can access your Joomla site with its IP address from any computer on
your company’s network. For example, if you assigned 169.254.240.210 to the computer on
which you installed Joomla, you could access your Joomla site at the following address:
http://169.254.240.210/joomla
If your IT department mapped the static IP address assigned to the computer on which you
installed Joomla to a domain name, you can access your Joomla site with the name instead
of the IP address. For example, if your IT department mapped your computer’s static IP
address to “docs.yourcompany.com,” you could access your Joomla site at the following
address:
http://docs.yourcompany.com/joomla
5. The installation process is complete. Continue to “Accessing the Administrative Back End”
on page 45.
3. Locate the installation folder in the Joomla file system on the remote server, like the example
in Figure 3-18:
Figure 3-18. Locate and delete the installation folder from the Joomla file system.
4. Click the installation folder to select it and then press Delete. If your FTP client displays a
message asking you to confirm that you want to delete the installation folder, as well as all
child folders and files, click Yes.
5. Start a browser, go to the registered address for your website, while adding “joomla” at the
end of the address like the following example:
http://yourdomain/joomla
For example, if the registered domain name for your site was docs.com, you would access
your Joomla site at the following address:
http://docs.com/joomla
The homepage for your site should look similar to the example in Figure 3-17 on page 43.
• If you have a hosted server, open a browser and go to an address like the following:
http://yourdomainname/joomla/administrator
Figure 3-19. The login page for Joomla’s administrative back end.
Figure 3-20. Manage your site from Joomla’s administrative back end.
Figure 3-21. Configure server settings from the Global Configuration page.
3. Select the appropriate time zone for your server from the Time Zone list in the Local Settings
section.
4. Click Apply to save your settings.
5. To connect your system to a mail server, continue to “Connecting to a Mail Server.”
Otherwise, you can log out of the administrative back end and close your browser.
Figure 3-22. Connect Joomla to a mail server in the Mail Settings section.
3. Complete the following parameters:
• Mailer: The PHP Mail Function option is selected by default. To use sendmail, select
Sendmail from the list.
• Mail from: This field is pre-populated with the email address you supplied when
installing Joomla. When Joomla sends email, it uses this as the sender’s email address.
You can change this address.
• From Name: This field contains the name of your Joomla Site, which means messages
appear to originate from it. You can change this name.
• Sendmail Path: If you selected either PHP Mail Function or Sendmail, ensure the path
to sendmail on your hosted server is accurate. If not, type the correct path for sendmail
in this field.
4. Click Save to save your settings and exit the Global Configuration module.
You can leave the default setting in this field, which does not affect the mail system.
• SMTP Authentication: Select Yes if the SMTP mail server requires authentication, or
No if it does not.
• SMTP Username: If the SMTP server requires authentication, type the user name for an
account with privileges for accessing the server in this field.
• SMTP Password: If the SMTP server requires authentication, type a password for the
SMTP user account in this field.
• SMTP Host: Type the SMTP server’s host name or IP address in this filed.
4. Click Save to save your settings and exit the Global Configuration module.
Joomla Templates
Most desktop publishing tools allow you to create custom page layout and paragraph styles for
your documents. For example, you can set page size and orientation, margin widths, create headers
and footers, set pagination (single or left and right) and page numbering (consecutive or chapter-
by-folio). And, you can create paragraph styles with custom attributes for indentation and spacing
as well as font type, size, and color, to name a few. You can save your custom layout and paragraph
styles in a template, which you can then apply to other documents so they have an identical
appearance. If you are a professional writer, you probably have experience applying templates to
your documents and you may have experience creating templates.
Joomla templates are similar in concept to document templates. They determine web page layout
and paragraph styles for an entire Joomla site. Many Joomla templates have headers and footers,
page margins, and a body for content. The layout of the body is usually more similar to a
newspaper’s layout, where information is partitioned in columns. While some product-oriented
sites organize content as a single page of data, many Joomla sites present information in two and
three columns.
Figure 4-1. A two-column layout includes a navigation column and a content column.
Figure 4-2 shows a three-column layout:
Figure 4-2. A three column layout includes two navigation columns and a content column.
Joomla comes pre-packaged with three templates: rhuk-milkyway, beez, and JA_Purity. By
default, Joomla is associated with the rhuk-milkyway template. When you accessed your site for
the first time after installing the Joomla software, you saw Joomla as it looks when formatted with
the rhuk-milkyway template.
2. Select Templates from the Extensions menu on the menu bar. The Template Manager opens:
5. Access your site’s homepage to see how it looks. Figure 4-7 shows a site formatted with the
JA_Purity template:
When you set the Logo type parameter to Text, Joomla displays the entries from the Logo
text and Slogan fields in the logo position, as shown in Figure 4-10:
• Header Themes: The Use Default option, which displays a black background for the
header and horizontal menu bar is selected by default. When you select blue, Joomla
applies a blue background to the header and menu, as shown in Figure 4-12:
When set to lighter or purewhite, the background highlighting becomes brighter. Figure
4-15 shows the mouseover background on a link when the Background Themes
parameter is set to lighter:
• Right modules collapsible function: By default, any module you position in the right
column of your site is collapsible. Users can click the collapse arrow to collapse the
module, as shown in Figure 4-17:
Figure 4-18. When you collapse modules by default, users must expand them.
• Exclude Modules: To prevent Joomla from allowing users to collapse specific modules,
type the module ID in this field, separating each with a comma. You can find module
IDs in the ID column on the Module Manager.
5. Click Save to save your changes and exit the Edit Template page.
6. Access your site’s front end to see how your template changes look.
Figure 4-20. You can create visual content hierarchies with Joomla’s menu system.
Think about how you would like to organize the content of your site before creating sections,
categories, and menus. A little planning can help you avoid the pain you will face if you have to
delete, change, and re-create poorly-thought-out sections, categories, and menus, which, as I found
while learning Joomla, will be your site development method if you just wing it.
You should also decide what content you want to be publicly available and what content you want
only to be available to registered users, which means users must have user accounts and log in to
your site to see it. Our Joomla documentation site was on the company intranet, so the content in
almost all sections and categories was publicly available. Only technical writers had user accounts,
which we used to access Joomla’s writing and publishing features. If your Joomla documentation
site reside on the Internet, you may not want to make all content available to everyone.
Figure 4-21. You can create different document categories for each type of product.
If your company sells product suites, each of which contains multiple products, you may want to
create a section for each product suite and a category for each product in the suite.
Figure 4-22. You can create categories for each product in a product suite.
Creating Sections
If you did some planning, you may already have a list of sections you want to create for your site.
If you decide you need additional sections after working with Joomla for a while, you can create
them later, or you can modify existing sections to fit your needs. Please note that you don’t have
to create sections in a specific order. You can re-order sections after creating them.
To create a section:
1. Log on to Joomla’s administrative console.
2. Select Sections from the Content menu. The Section Manager opens:
Figure 4-24. Create and update sections with the Section Manager.
3. Click New. The New Section page opens.
4. Complete the Details section:
Figure 4-25. Identify your section and make it available to users with the options in the Details section.
• Title: When users access each section of your site, they see the title you type in this field
at the top of the page. Section titles help users get their bearings in a website.
• Alias: Joomla automatically creates an alias based on the section’s title, so leave this
field empty.
• Published: By publishing a section, you are enabling people to see and access it on your
site. Unless you want to make the section unavailable for some reason, you should
publish it. Unpublished sections aren’t available to anyone, even registered users.
• Order: This determines the section’s order in the section list on the Section Manager,
from the top to the bottom of the list.
You cannot specify a section’s order when creating it (notice there are no ordering
options to select). Each time you create a new section, Joomla adds it to the bottom of
the section list on the Section Manager. However, you can order sections with the Section
Manager after you create them. The order of the sections in the list determines the order
in which they display when you assign them to other components of your Joomla site,
like categories and articles. Section ordering should become more clear when you assign
categories to sections.
• Access Level: The section’s access level determines who can see the content you
publish for the section. The Public option allows anyone who can access your website to
see the section. The Registered option only allows users for whom you have created
user accounts and who can log in to your Joomla site see the section. The Special option
only allows users with “authoring” privileges to see the section.
In Chapter 6, “Managing User Access,” I go into more detail on why some content should
only be available only to registered and special users. However, if you planned ahead,
you may have already decided which sections you want to make publicly available and
which you only want to make available to registered users.
• Image: You can display a graphic on each section’s landing page. For example, if you
are organizing your site by product, you could display a product logo on each section’s
landing page. However, while Joomla’s developers provide a few generic images that
you can select from the Image list, any image you want to assign to a section must
reside on the server. If you want to skip ahead, you can find instructions on how to
upload images to the server in Chapter 7, “Managing Media Folders and Files.”
However, I recommend that you save this task for later.
• Image Position: If you select an image from the Image list, you can specify where it
displays on the section’s landing page by selecting a position from this list.
5. Next, provide a description of the section in the Details section:
Figure 4-26. Type brief, to-the-point descriptions of your sections in the Description editor.
Type a brief description of the section using the text editor in the Description section. The
explanation you type here displays on the section’s landing page. For instance, if you are
creating a product-specific section, you might type a brief explanation of the product and the
types of documents you are writing for it. Please note that you don’t have to provide a section
description. You can configure your system to automatically list category content on a
section’s landing page.
Usability expert Steve Krug advises that whenever you include introductory text on your site
to keep “happy talk” (which he says often consists of “self-congratulatory promotional
writing” that doesn’t convey useful information) to the bare minimum.1 Readers want to go
directly to the content they’re seeking and won’t waste time reading verbose section
descriptions.
6. Click Save to save the new section and return to the Section Manager. The new section
displays in the Section Manager list. Joomla also displays a message indicating it saved the
section, like the example shown in Figure 4-27:
Figure 4-27. The Section Manager lists all sections you have created for your site.
Creating Categories
I mentioned previously that all categories are parallel in hierarchy under the section to which you
assign them in Jooma 1.5. However, this should not be a concern, because you can create
cascading, nested menus. That, while all categories have an equal hierarchy in the database, you
can nest them in your menus to create visual hierarchies.
1.In his book Don’t Make Me Think! A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, Steve Krug says you can
find happy talk in the following places: “It’s the introductory text that’s supposed to welcome us to the site
and tell us how great it is, or to tell us what we are about to see in the section we just entered.” (Krug, 2006,
p. 46)
To create a category:
1. On Joomla’s administrative console, select Categories from the Content menu. The Category
Manager opens:
Figure 4-28. Create and update categories with the Category Manager.
2. Click New. The New Category page opens.
3. Complete the Details section:
Figure 4-29. The options in the Details section are similar to the ones you completed for Sections.
You must associate each category with a section. Select the desired section from the Section
list. All other options in the Details area are the same as those for which you provided
information when creating a new section - they simply apply to categories in this case.
4. You can provide a brief description of your category in the Description section. Keep your
category description brief and to-the-point like your section descriptions.
5. Click Save to save the new category and return to the Category Manager. The new section
should display in the Category Manager list. You should also see a message indicating
Joomla saved the category.
Figure 4-30. The Category Manager lists all categories and the sections to which they belong.
Figure 5-1. A single menu system for all menus on your site.
In this scenario, all menus you create for the menu system are bound to the menu module’s position
on your site. For example, if you were to position the menu module in the right navigation column,
all menus associated with it would only display at that location. With the single-menu-system
configuration, you don’t have the flexibility of placing menus at other locations on your site.
The other approach, which is the one I prefer, is to create separate menu systems (and, therefore,
separate menu modules) for each section of your site. This allows you to freely position menu
modules (and menus associated with them) at any of the module positioning locations on your site.
Figure 5-2 shows separate menu modules and menu systems:
Figure 5-2. Separate menu systems for each section of your site.
If you follow this approach, you could position one menu system on the horizontal menu bar at the
top of your site, another in the right navigation column, and a third in the left navigation column.
Or, you could position all on the horizontal menu bar, or all in the right or left navigation columns.
In the following sections, I explain how to create menu systems and configure their supporting
menu modules. And, later, I explain how to create the menus that display on your menu systems
for each section and category in your site. To organize your menu system like the example in Figure
5-2, you should start by creating separate menu systems for each section of your site.
Figure 5-3. Create and manage menu modules and menu items from the Menu Manager.
Notice the Menu Manager already includes a menu system named Main Menu. This menu
system includes a single menu that links to your site’s home page.
2. Click New. The New Menu page opens.
Figure 5-4. Complete the fields on the New Menu page to create a menu system.
3. Complete the fields on the New Menu page:
• Unique name: Type a unique name for menu system in this field (the name must be
“unique” in that you cannot reuse it for another menu system). Use lower case letters
and insert either a hyphen or underscore between words. If you use spaces and initial
caps, Joomla automatically inserts hyphens and converts the capital letters to lower case
when you save the module.
• Title: Consider duplicating the title of the section for which you are creating the menu
system. You can use initial caps and spaces in the title. Naming a menu system for a
specific section allows you to easily determine which menu systems contain the menus
for each section of your site.
• Description: If desired, type a brief description of the menu system’s purpose in this
field.
• Module Title: When you save the menu system, Joomla automatically creates a
supporting menu module, which it names according to what you type in this field. I
recommend using the menu system’s name as its module title (that is, you would
duplicate what you typed in the Title field in the Module Title field). This naming
convention allows you to easily determine which menu system the menu module
supports.
4. Click Save to create the new menu system. The Menu Manager lists the new menu system
and displays a message indicating Joomla created it successfully:
Figure 5-6. Update and enable menu modules with the Module Manager.
2. In the Module Name column, click the title of a menu module you want to enable. The Edit
Module page opens.
In the following steps, I explain how to use every parameter in each section of the Edit
Module page. However, it is only necessary to set the following parameters:
• In the Details section, set the Enabled, Position, and Access Level parameters.
• In the Module Parameters section, set the Always show sub-menu items parameter.
You can accept the default settings for all other parameters.
3. Complete the Details section:
Figure 5-9. By default, the menu you are creating is accessible from all other menus on your site.
Leave the All option selected if you want the menu module and its menus to be accessible
from all other menus on your site. To hide it from other menus, select one of the following
in the Menus section:
• None: If you select None, the menu you are creating will not display anywhere on your
site. Use this option to create a “hidden” menu.
• Select Menu Items: When you select a menu on the menu bar, Joomla displays the menu
landing page. By default, you continue to see all other menus on the menu bar from a
menu landing page. For example, if I created a Joomla menu and a XAMPP menu, and I
selected a child menu named Technical Documents from the Joomla menu, I would still
see the XAMPP menu on the menu bar from the Technical Documents landing page.
However, you can limit a menu to only display on the menu bar for specific menu
selections. For example, I could prevent the XAMPP menu from displaying on the menu
bar when users select the Technical Documents menu. To enable a menu to only display
on the menu bar for specific menus, select the Select Menu Items option, and then select
the desired menus in the Menu Selection list.
Note that when you are configuring the first module for your site, mainmenu is the only
other option available in this list.
5. Complete the Module Parameters section:
The process of creating custom menu layouts is beyond the scope of this book and I
recommend leaving this field empty. If you’d like to learn how to do this later, you can
find a good tutorial at the following address on the Joomla documentation site:
http://docs.joomla.org/Tutorial:Using_Class_Suffixes_in_Joomla%21_1.5
• Module Class Suffix: I recommend leaving this field empty for now. To apply custom
styling to the menu module, you would perform the same tasks required to style a menu,
typing the module’s CSS class name in this field. See the explanation of the Menu Class
Suffix parameter for more information.
• Maximum Menu Depth: By default, this parameter is set to 10, which means you can
create menus up to 10 levels deep. To enforce a shallower menu hierarchy, type a
smaller number in this field, and to enable a deeper menu hierarchy, type a larger
number in this field.
7. Complete the Other Parameters section:
• Show Menu Images: When set to Yes, Joomla can display images on the menu system
you create and assign to the menu module. Figure 5-13 shows an example of a menu
image on a section menu:
Figure 5-13. A menu image located to the left of the menu text.
• Menu Image Alignment: This parameter allows you choose where images appear on the
menu system assigned to the menu module, as well as text alignment (this is only
applicable when you set Show Menu Images to Yes). The default selection is Left,
which means Joomla left-aligns the menu images and text, like the example in Figure 5-
13. When you select Right, Joomla right-aligns the menu images and text. And, when
you select None, Joomla left-aligns the menu images, but allows the text to wrap
beneath the menu, like the example in Figure 5-14:
Figure 5-14. When you select None, menu text for long titles wraps beneath the menu image.
• Menu Image Link: If you set this parameter to Yes, Joomla hides the menu title text and
shows only the menu image. Figure 5-15 shows a menu image I created to replace the
menu title text:
Figure 5-15. When you set Menu Image Link to Yes, Joomla hides the menu text.
Consider using this parameter when you want to create a more-stylized menu showing
custom graphics in place of the menu title text.
• Expand Menu: When set to Yes, this parameter ensures that Joomla automatically
expands sub-menus when users mouse over a parent menu.
• Activate Parent: Use this option when applying custom menu styling to a menu via
CSS. Unless you are creating custom menu styles, which I don’t explain how to do in
this book, leave this parameter set to No.
• Full Active Highlighting: Please note that this parameter is also related to custom menu
styling. You should leave it set to No unless you are styling a custom menu with CSS.
• Indent Image: This parameter is only applicable if you selected the Legacy - Vertical
option from the Menu Style list in the Module Parameters section. Select one of the
following:
• Template: This option, which is selected by default, uses the images specified in
the Joomla template associated with your site for indenting menus.
• Joomla! default images: Select this option to enable Joomla to use the images
provided with a Joomla installation for indenting menus.
• Use parameters below: Select this option to enable Joomla to use the images
selected in Indent Image 1 - 6 options to indent menus.
• None: Select this option if you do not want to use images to indent vertical menus
• Indent Image 1 - 6: This parameter is only applicable if you selected the Legacy -
Vertical option from the Menu Style list in the Module Parameters section. If you
selected Legacy - Vertical option, and you want Joomla to use images as spacers to
indent each menu item, select the desired images for each menu level from this list.
• Spacer: This parameter is only applicable if you selected the Legacy - Horizontal option
from the Menu Style list in the Module Parameters section. If you selected the Legacy -
Horizontal menu style, and you want to insert a spacer above menu items, type the
desired spacer character in this field.
• End Spacer: This parameter is only applicable if you selected the Legacy - Horizontal
option from the Menu Style list in the Module Parameters section. If you selected the
Legacy - Horizontal menu style, and you want to insert a spacer below menu items, type
the desired spacer character in this field.
8. Click Save to save your settings and close the Edit Module page. Notice that the Enabled
column now includes a green check mark.
9. Repeat steps 2 - 8 to enable the remaining menu modules.
Figure 5-16. An expanded menu system created for a section and its categories.
Joomla provides two layout options for section landing pages: Section Layout and Section Blog
Layout. If you are building a corporate publishing site, your audience won’t be looking for leisure
reading material. Instead, they will be looking for specific articles on specific products. The
Section Layout displays each category assigned to the section on the section landing page. With
this layout style, readers can quickly locate a desired article. Figure 5-17 shows an example of a
section landing page formatted with the Section Layout option:
Figure 5-17. A section landing page formatted with the Section Layout.
The Section Blog Layout is a common layout style for online journals and news sites. It displays
all articles on the section landing page. With this layout, readers can skim titles and introductions
to decide which articles they want to read. Figure 5-18 shows a section landing page formatted with
the Section Blog Layout:
Figure 5-18. A section landing page formatted with the Section Blog Layout.
The following section explains how to create a section menu using the Section Layout format,
which means the section landing page will look similar to the example in Figure 5-17. If you follow
these steps and decide later that you would rather use the Section Blog Layout, you can easily edit
the menu and change its layout style.
Figure 5-19. Create and update menus with the Menu Item Manager.
2. Click New. The New Menu Item opens:
Figure 5-20. Create menus with the New Menu Item option.
3. Click the Articles link to expand it and then click the Section Layout link, as shown in Figure
5-21:
Figure 5-21. When creating section menus, use options under the Section heading in the Articles section.
4. The New Menu Item page opens. Notice the Menu Item Type section identifies the layout
option you selected for the section landing page:
Figure 5-22. The Menu Item Type section identifies the layout style.
Figure 5-24. Name your menu after the section for which you are creating it.
• Alias: Joomla automatically creates an alias based on the menu’s title, so leave this
field empty.
• Link: Contains the internal link associated with the menu item (in this case, it is a link
to a specific section).
• Display in: Select the menu module that contains the section menu you are creating.
• Parent Item: Since you are creating a menu for a section, it is a top-level item. When
you create category menus, you make them children of the section menu, or other
categories, in this list to create the menu hierarchy.
• Published: Select Yes, unless you do not want the menu to be accessible to users.
• Order: Joomla places all menus at the bottom of the menu list by default. You can
rearrange the menu order after creating them.
• Access Level: The Public option allows anyone who can access your website to see
the menu. The Registered option only allows users for whom you have created user
accounts and who can log in to your Joomla site see the menu. The Special option only
allows users with “authoring” privileges to see the menu.
• On Click, Open in: Generally, you should select the Parent Window with Browser
Navigation option, which means that when a user clicks the menu you are creating, the
content displays in the same browser window. To launch content in a separate browser
window on top of the main window, you can select either of the other options.
6. Select values for the parameters in the Parameters (Basic) section, as desired, for the menu:
• Description Image: This parameter is set to Hide by default. If you associated an image
with the section, and you want it to display on the landing page, like the example in
Figure 5-27, select Show:
• Category Description: By default, this parameter is set to Show. If the Category List -
Section parameter is set to Show, Joomla displays the category descriptions you wrote
for each category on the landing page, like the example in Figure 5-30:
When users click the feed link, Joomla allows them to subscribe to content on the
section menu.
8. If you applied the Section Layout style to the menu in step 4, you do not need to select values
for any of the parameters in the Parameters (Component) section, because they do not affect
the layout of the section landing page. That is, leave the parameters in this section set to “Use
Global,” as shown in Figure 5-33:
Figure 5-32. Leave the parameters in this section set to “Use Global” for the section menu.
The parameters in this section are only applicable when you select the Section Blog Layout
style. The blog layout style enables Joomla to display articles directly on the section landing
page. And, the parameters in Parameters (Components) section enable Joomla to display
metadata like author names, creation dates, etc. with your articles.
Please note that the parameters in this section are also available on the articles themselves,
as well as in the global article configuration manager (which is an article management tool
available through the administrative back end). If you apply the Section Blog Layout style
to a section menu, I recommend leaving the parameters in this section set to “Use Global”
until you are familiar with how to use them in conjunction with the parameters in the other
configuration locations. I explain how all parameters work together in Chapter 8,
Figure 5-34. The page title displays in the upper-left corner of the section landing page.
Please note that a title on the section landing page that differs from the menu title could
be confusing for your users. Steve Krug stresses the importance of clearly identifying site
content with the following statement: “It’s a fact: People won’t use your Web site if they
can’t find their way around it.” (Krug, 2006, p. 51) Even if your site only resides on a
company intranet and is only used by fellow employees, I encourage you to make it as
easy to use as possible.
• Show Page Title: This parameter is enabled by default, which means Joomla displays a
page title on the landing page (see the explanation of the Page Title field above).
• Page Class Suffix: You can format each section’s landing page with a unique layout
style. However, you would have to first add the desired styles to the template.css file,
then create a unique CSS class, and, finally, type the CSS class name in this field. The
process of creating custom page layouts for section landing pages is beyond the scope of
this book and I recommend leaving this field empty for now. If you’d like to learn how
to do this later, you can find an excellent tutorial on the Joomla documentation site at
the following address:
http://docs.joomla.org/Tutorial:Using_Class_Suffixes_in_Joomla%21_1.5
• Menu Image: You can display images next to the section menu title text, like the
example in Figure 5-35:
2. Though you haven’t written any articles yet, you can still click the menu to see the section
landing page. If you wrote a section description, it displays beneath the page title, like the
example in Figure 5-38:
Figure 5-38. When you click a section menu, Joomla displays the section landing page.
Joomla provides two page layout options for category menus: Category List Layout and Category
Blog Layout. Figure 5-39 shows an example of a category landing page formatted with the
Category List Layout option:
Figure 5-39. A category landing page formatted with the Category List Layout.
The Category List Layout displays a list of the articles written for the category. Users can easily
scan the list to locate an article they want to read. In addition, the columns of information Joomla
displays in the article list is configurable and allows you to display different types of information
about the articles including titles, dates, hit counts, and author names, to mention a few.
If you write a lot of documents for a specific product, the article list layout is a good option, because
it provides an easily-scanned list of articles.
Like the Section Blog Layout, the Category Blog Layout option is intended to give the category
landing page more of a blog feel. Figure 5-40 shows an example of a category landing page
formatted with the Category Blog Layout option:
Figure 5-40. A category landing page formatted with the Category Blog Layout.
For a corporate publishing site, I recommend using the category list layout over the blog layout
style. But, I’m not sure if one is really better than the other. In fact, the blog layout could be more
helpful in some instances, because readers can read document overviews, which might help them
decide which one to select. The blog layout style is much more common for online journals and
news sites.
I only explain how to create a category menu with the list layout in this section. But, you can easily
edit your menus and switch to the Blog Layout style if it is more appropriate for your category
landing pages.
Figure 5-41. The Menu Item Type section identifies the category layout style.
Figure 5-42. Complete the Menu Item Details section to identify the category menu.
• Title: The title you type in this field appears on the menu. You should use a menu
name that matches the name of the category for which you are creating it. For
example, if you were creating menu for a category named “Documentation” you
would type Documentation in the Title field.
• Alias: Joomla automatically creates an alias based on the menu’s title, so you can leave
this field empty.
• Link: Contains the internal link associated with the menu item (in this case, it is a link
to a specific category).
• Display in: Select the menu module that contains the category menu you are creating.
• Parent Item: When you create your first category menu, only the section menu title is
available in this list, and you should select it as the category menu’s parent.
However, as you add other category menus, they also become available in this list. You can
select a category menus in this list as the parent for a category menu you are creating. This
enables you to create the menu’s overall hierarchy. Figure 5-43 shows how the hierarchy of
a Parent Item list grows for a menu with multiple menu items:
list:
7. Select values for the parameters in the Parameters (Advanced) section, as desired, for the
menu:
Figure 5-51. Enable users to select the number of articles they want to display in the article list.
• Show a Feed Link: To syndicate articles and other content you publish for this category
menu, which means users can subscribe to it, set this parameter to Yes. When set to Yes,
Joomla creates an RSS feed link, accessible via feed icons on browser toolbars.
When users click the feed link, Joomla allows them to subscribe to content on the
category menu.
8. The options in the Parameters (Component) section allow you to configure which
distribution, navigation, and metadata features should display on your articles. For example,
you can use them to display metadata like author names, creation dates, etc. However, the
parameters in this section are also available on the articles themselves, as well as in the
Article Configuration Manager. For now, I recommend leaving all parameters in the
Parameters (Components) section set to “Use Global,” as shown in Figure 5-52:
Figure 5-52. Leave the parameters in this section set to “Use Global” for the category menu.
I explain how to use the parameters in this section together with the parameters on your
articles and in the Article Configuration manager in Chapter 8, “Configuring the Article
Feature Set,” which starts on page 171. When you are familiar with how to use the settings
in the three configuration locations together, you can edit your category menus and select
values in the Parameters (Component) sections as necessary.
9. Select values for the parameters in the Parameters (System) section, as desired, for the menu:
Figure 5-54. The page title displays in the upper-left corner of the section landing page.
• Show Page Title: This parameter is enabled by default, which means Joomla displays a
page title on the landing page.
• Page Class Suffix: If desired, you can format the landing page for the category menu
with a unique layout style. However, the process of creating custom page layouts is
beyond the scope of this book and I recommend leaving this field empty for now.
• Menu Image: You can use this parameter to display images next to the category title
text, like the example in Figure 5-55:
images for a menu module, see the explanation of the Show Menu Images parameter on
page 80.
To display a custom image on the category menu, you must upload it to the server, which
I have not explained how to do yet. To learn how, see the instructions on uploading
images to the server in Chapter 7, “Managing Media Folders and Files.” Otherwise, I
recommend saving this task for later.
• SSL Enabled: If you select On, Joomla uses Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) for the
category landing page, which encrypts the data that transfers between the Joomla server
and end users. If security is a concern, consider buying and installing a security
certificate from a company like Thawte or VeriSign. However, if your documentation
site resides on the company intranet, you probably do not need to enable SSL.
10. Click Save to create the new category menu, which displays in the Menu Item list:
Figure 5-56. The Menu Item column shows the menu hierarchy.
In Figure 5-56, notice the Technical Documents menu is indented beneath the Joomla menu,
which shows their hierarchical relationship.
Figure 5-58 shows a five-level menu system split across two menu modules. The primary menu
module contains the first three menu levels from the menu hierarchy and is positioned on the
horizontal menu bar. The secondary menu module contains the remaining two menu levels and is
positioned in the right navigation column.
Figure 5-58. A menu system split across two menu modules positioned at different locations.
When users select the Installation Guides menu shown in Figure 5-58, Joomla displays the lower-
level menus (those that fall beneath the Installation Guides menu in the hierarchy) as a linked-
based menu in the right navigation column.
Figure 5-60. Specify menu depth with the Start Level and End Level parameters.
By setting the End Level to 3, I prevented Joomla from displaying the menus beneath
Installation Guides menu in Figure 5-59 (these are “children” of the Installation Guides
menu).
4. Then, I created a new, secondary menu module. I set the following parameters in Details
section of the New Module page:
Figure 5-63. The secondary module only displays on the landing pages for the selected menus.
• Menus: First, I selected the Select Menu Item(s) from the List option, because I wanted
to assign the module to specific menus in the list. That is, I didn’t want the secondary
menu to be available for all menu systems, because it only contains menus related to
installation guides.
• Menu Selection: Then, I selected only those menus that were related to the links in the
secondary menu module. The secondary menu module displays on the landing pages of
the menus I selected in this list.
Please note that you should not select the Home menu under the mainmenu option in this
section. If you attempt to display a secondary menu module (containing lower-level
menus) on your site’s home page, it will be empty, because the homepage is the top of
the hierarchy. You should only select those menus related to the menus in your secondary
menu module (either its direct parent or child menus).
6. I set the following parameters in the Module Parameters section:
Figure 5-64. Select the menu system name and set the appropriate start and end levels.
• Menu Name: I selected the name of the multi-level menu system containing the menus I
am splitting across two menu modules.
• Start Level: I want the secondary menu system to display all menu items from the third
menu item to the end of the hierarchy, so I typed “3” in this field.
• End Level: Because it is a five-level hierarchy, I typed “5” in this field. However, if I
had been unsure about the hierarchy level of the final menu item, I could have also
typed “0” in this field, which means Joomla displays all remaining menus in the
hierarchy.
7. Finally, I saved and exited the new menu module. When I selected the Installation Guides
menu from my site’s front end, Joomla displayed the secondary menu module containing the
lower-level menus like the example in Figure 5-59.
5. If you restricted access to menus for specific sections or categories of content on your site,
and you want to enable users who log in to see the restricted content, choose the Select Menu
item(s) from the List option in the Menus section. Then, select each restricted menu
containing restricted content in the Menu Selection list, like the example in Figure 6-2:
Figure 6-2. Select menus you want to be accessible to users when they log in.
Please note that if you restricted access to all content on your site, you should select the All
option in the Menus section to allow users who log in to see all content.
6. Complete the options in the Parameters section:
• Module Class Suffix: Leave this field empty. It is used for custom module styling,
which is beyond the scope of this book. You can find information about module styling
on the Joomla documentation site.
• Pre-text: To provide users with an informational message1 above the login form, like
“Please log in,” type it in this field. Joomla displays the “pre-text” login messages above
the login module, like the example in Figure 6-4:
Figure 6-4. The pre-text message displays above the login form.
• Post-text: To provide users with an informational message below the login form, like
“Contact the administrator for a user account,” type it in this field. Joomla displays the
post-text login message at the bottom of the login module, like the example in Figure 6-
5:
Figure 6-5. The post-text message displays below the login form.
• Login Redirection Page: When users log in, Joomla displays your site’s home page by
default. However, the Login Redirection Page option allows you to redirect users to the
landing page of any other section or category menu on your site after logging in. To use
this feature, select the name of the section or category to which you are redirecting users
from the list.
1.Most people are familiar enough with web-based login forms that instructions on using them are probably
unnecessary. However, this could be a good place to display a message, like “Login for authors,” if you want
to communicate something specific about the login process.
• Logout Redirection Page: By default, when users log out, Joomla ends their user
sessions (that is, they can no longer perform tasks available to them when logged in),
but continues displaying the last page they were viewing prior to logging out. If the last
page contains fields, buttons, links, or any other “selectable” options, users can continue
using them, even though they are logged out of the system. To prevent issues that could
arise from users being able to perform tasks after logging out, consider redirecting them
to an innocuous section of your site. For example, you could redirect them to the site’s
home page.
• Greeting: When enabled, Joomla displays a simple, username-based greeting (“Hi
username”) above the Logout button, like the example in Figure 6-6:
Figure 6-6. Joomla displays the greeting message when users log in.
• Name/Username: The option you select from this list displays above the field in which
users type their user names. The purpose of this option is to provide you with the ability
to labeling the field either “Username,” or “Name.”
• Encrypt Login Form: Do not select Yes unless you installed a security certificate on
your server for encrypted server communication via Secure Sockets Layer (SSL),
meaning users access your site via “https://,” which I do not explain how to do in this
book.
7. Click Save to save the login module, which displays in the Menu Manager list.
User Self-Registration
With Joomla, you can allow public users to self-register, which means they can create their own
user accounts. This is a common practice for online journals and news platforms, which often let
users comment on published articles. However, if you are building a corporate publishing platform,
I don’t recommend providing a public commenting2 feature. If you do, be aware that user
comments can often be unprofessional, and that you will need to take cleanup measures from time-
to-time.
Joomla makes the user self-registration option available by default on the login form, as shown in
Figure 6-7:
Figure 6-7. The user self-registration feature resides on the user login form.
2.To capture feedback from your audience on a corporate publishing site, consider using surveys instead of
article commenting. The comments you capture with a survey won’t display on your site’s front. See Chapter
22, “Creating and Conducting Surveys” on page 427 for more information.
Figure 6-9. Users can click the Log Out button to close their user sessions.
If a specific, configurable period of time elapses during which users are inactive (that is, they are
not performing any actions on your site, like accessing or writing content), Joomla automatically
logs them out. For example, when users switch to other applications, but leave their browsers open
and idle for long periods of time, while remaining logged in, Joomla eventually logs them out. In
addition, when users forget to log out and, instead, close their browsers, their sessions remain open,
even though their browsers are no longer open, until the specified inactivity time period elapses
and Joomla logs them out.
Joomla provides a user session maintenance tool that allows you to specify how long to keep user
sessions open during periods of inactivity. However, you should guard against setting the inactivity
time period either too low or too high. For example, if you set it too low, Joomla may sense a
browser is inactive and log a user out when he or she is simply reading a long document. If you set
it too high, and users close their browsers forgetting to log out, they may find they are still logged
when attempting to access the site much later.
Figure 6-10. Configure user session lifetime in the Session Settings section.
• Session Lifetime: The number you type in this field determines how long user sessions
can remain open during periods of inactivity. Keep in mind that if you set it too low,
Joomla may log users out before they are ready to exit your site. And, if you set it too
high, user sessions may remain active even though users have long since abandoned
their browsers.
• Session Handler: Joomla uses a database connection to identify users while they are
logged in to your site. This is the only available option for user session management.
4. Click Save to save your settings and exit the Global Configuration manager.
Figure 6-11 shows the homepage of a Joomla site for which I restricted access to all menus:
Figure 6-11. The home page of a Joomla site for which all menu access has been restricted.
The only content public users can see is the simple welcome message I posted on the site’s
homepage.
• Name: Type the user’s full name in this field, which displays in the user list on the User
Manager. Using a full name will help you differentiate among other users in the list if
you create accounts for multiple users with similar names.
• Username: Type a username you want the user to supply when logging in (he or she will
type it in the Username field on the Login form).
• E-mail: Type the user’s email address in this field, which must be valid if you connected
Joomla to a mail server. In this case, when you finish creating the user account, Joomla
sends an email containing the username and password to the address you supply in this
field. If you did not connect Joomla to a mail server, you must manually deliver the user
name and password to the user.
• New Password: Type a password for the user account in this field.
• Verify Password: Re-type the user’s password in this field. If the New Password and
Verify Password fields don’t match, Joomla displays an error message when you save
the user account.
• Group: You are creating a registered user account for a customer, which means you
should select the Registered option in the Group window (it is selected by default).
• Block User: To prevent the user from logging in to the site, set this option to Yes. You
probably won’t set it to Yes when creating a new user account, but you could use it to
deactivate a user account at a later time.
• Receive System E-Mails: Leave the default No selection. Enabling this option allows
Joomla to send system-generated email messages to this user, which would only be
appropriate for administrative users.
4. Please note that none of the options in the Parameters section are applicable to registered
users. This section contains options that apply to author and administrative user accounts.
5. Click Save to create the new user account, which displays in the User Manager list. Please
note that if your Joomla system is not connected to a mail server, it displays a message
indicating it could not email the user account information to the supplied email address
(“Could not instantiate mail function.”):
Figure 6-14. Joomla displays an error when the system is not connected to a mail server.
Even if Joomla is unable to connect to a mail server, and it displays the message shown in
Figure 6-14, it still creates user accounts for your site. You should, however, consider this
message a reminder that you must deliver user names and passwords to your users via
another method.
Authors
When you assign writers to the Author group, they have the ability to write and submit articles, but
not to edit or publish them. That is, users in the Author group cannot retrieve the articles they
submit to make changes and they are unable to make their articles display on the site. I personally
think the “Author” group is better suited for sites that are used in more of a blog fashion, or for sites
with content supplied by many writers in a large documentation team.
Joomla displays the following message to writers in the Author group when they submit articles to
the site:
Figure 6-16. Article submission message for writers in the Author group.
If you assign the Author role to corporate writers, they have only one chance to write and proof an
article before submitting it. In this scenario, they will resort to using other tools during the drafting
process. Copying and pasting the final version into Joomla’s authoring tool will be the last step in
the writing process. This is not an ideal way to work and makes Joomla much less useful. For a
corporate platform, I recommend assigning the Editor role, at a minimum, to all writers who
contribute articles. This enable them to write and revise their articles in Joomla during the drafting
process and lessens the need for other writing tools.
Editors
If you are building a publishing platform for a large documentation team, and you want to control
what gets posted on it, assigning writers to the Editor group may be a better option than restricting
them to the Author group. As members of the Editor group, writers can draft their documents in
Joomla without having to rely on other documentation tools. Joomla allows editors to access their
documents as often as necessary to make changes. But, they cannot publish their articles, or those
written by anyone else.
Publishers
When you assign writers to the Publisher group, they can perform the same tasks as those in the
Author and Editor groups, with the additional benefit of being able to publish articles on the site.
If you are a member of a small documentation team, assigning everyone to the Publisher group is
probably the best approach. Team members can write and edit their own documents, keeping them
in the draft state as long as necessary before publishing them on the site.
To create user accounts for administrative users, follow the same steps you used to create user
accounts for front-end users, while selecting the Manager, Administrator, or Super Administrator
user groups:
Managers
When you assign users to the Manager group, they have the fewest administrative privileges. But,
they can perform many tasks from the back end, as well as writing and publishing articles from the
front end. Figure 6-18 shows how Joomla’s administrative console appears to users in the Manager
group:
Figure 6-18. Joomla’s administrative console as it appears to users in the Manager group.
The following is a list of the features to which users in the Manager group have access:
• Article Manager - You can perform all article maintenance tasks with the Article Manager,
including creating, editing, and publishing articles for yourself, as well as other users.
• Front Page Manager: You can write, edit, publish, disable, delete, and archive articles
assigned to the front page of your site with the Front Page Manager.
• Section Manager: With the Section Manager, you can perform all section maintenance tasks,
including creating, updating, and deleting sections.
• Category Manager: With the Category Manager, you can perform all category maintenance
tasks.
• Media Manager: You can upload and manage various types of media like graphics and videos
with the Media Manager.
In addition, users in the Manager group can create and update menus for existing menu modules.
However, they do not have access to the Menu Manager and cannot create menu modules.
Administrators
Users you assign to the Administrator group have the same privileges as users in the Manager
group. Figure 6-19 shows how Joomla’s administrative console appears to users in the
Administrator group:
Figure 6-19. Joomla’s administrative console as it appears to users in the Administrator group.
In addition to performing the same tasks as Manager users, Administrator users have access to the
following, additional features:
• User Manager: With the User Manager, you can create, update, disable, and delete user
accounts.
• Extension Manager: You can install and uninstall third-party modules and plugins (feature
extensions), that enhance the functionality of your Joomla site.
• Module Manager: You can perform all module maintenance tasks, including creating,
updating, and deleting modules.
• Plugin Manager: You can enable, disable, and update plugins. Like modules, plugins are also
feature extensions you can turn on to add functionality to your Joomla site. Plugins often
accompany feature extensions and need to be enabled when installed.
• Global Check In: You can check in items that are locked or “checked out.” A common use for
this feature is checking in articles that an author left open during his or her user session with
Joomla.
• Cache Manager: Joomla allows you to cache data for many modules on the server, which
means it creates files containing snapshots of the data it retrieves from the database to
improve your system’s performance. According to the Joomla documentation site3, if you
make major changes to your site, like installing and enabling a new template, or installing a
new language pack, your cache files could become out of date. You can use the Cache
Manager to delete cache files from the server.
• Purge Expired Cache: With the Cache Manager, you can delete all files cached for individual
modules and components on your site. The Purge Expired Cache option clears all expired
cache files on your site at the same time (it does not purge current cache files).
Super Administrators
The user account with which you currently log in Joomla’s administrative back end is a member of
the Super Administrator group. As a super administrator, you can perform all publishing and
administrative tasks for your site. Figure 6-20 shows how Joomla’s administrative console appears
to users in the Super Administrator group:
3.You can find an explanation of the cache manager at the following address:
http://docs.joomla.org/Screen.cache.15
Figure 6-20. Joomla’s administrative console as it appears to users in the Super Administrator group.
In addition to performing the same administrative tasks Manager and Administrator users, super
administrators have access to the following additional features:
• Global Configuration: Enables you to configure system-wide settings that affect your entire
Joomla site.
• Language Manager: If you installed more than one language module, the Language manager
allows you to set a default language for both the front end and back end of your site.
• Template Manager: With the Template Manager, you can enable, disable, and edit the settings
in templates installed through the Extension manager.
• System email: With the system email functionality, you can send email messages to individual
users, to entire groups of users (for example, you can send email to all users in the Author
group), and read messages sent to your system from users.
4.You don’t have to make this feature available to everyone. For example, if you don’t feel comfortable en-
abling registered users to change their personal settings, you can set the access level to Special, which means
it is only available to users in the authoring user groups.
Figure 6-23:
Figure 6-23. To create a user account maintenance form, choose User Form Layout.
6. I set configured the following parameters on the New Menu Item page:
• Title: “Change My Account Settings”
• Display In: User Account Settings
• Parent Item: Top
• Access Level: Registered
7. When I saved the new menu module and logged in, Joomla displayed a link to the menu,
which was titled “Change My Account Settings,” beneath the login form (as shown in Figure
6-21 on page 129).
On the other hand, if you are building a Joomla site on the Internet, you might not want to provide
users with the names of individual content contributors. But, you may want to provide a generic
contact address for the overall site. In this case, you could provide a “Contact Us” link that users
can click to send comments to a department email address.
Creating and displaying a contact list on your site includes the following steps:
1. Create one or more contact categories. Contact categories are groups into which you can sort
contacts (people) for your site. For example, if you post documentation about three different
products to your site, and one or more writers are assigned to each product, you might create
three separate contact categories for each product. You would associate each writer with the
category for which he or she writes content.
2. Create a contact record for each person you designate as a contact. This includes supplying
personal contact information, like email addresses and phone numbers. You can also
associate a contact with a specific user account.
3. Create a contact module. Please note that you can add a contact menu to an existing module,
like the Main Menu module. I prefer to create a separate menu module, which allows me to
place the menu wherever I want on the site.
4. Create the contact list menu. When users select the contact list menu, Joomla displays a list
of contacts. Joomla allows you to format the contact list with one of two separate page
layouts: the Contact Category Layout and the Standard Contact Layout. If you will provide
users with a list of two or more contacts, I recommend using the Contact Category Layout,
which presents the contact list in a table. If you will only provide a single, generic contact,
use the Standard Contact Layout, which displays a single contact when users access the
menu.
Please note that you can find a variety of contact-related extensions on Joomla’s extension site. For
example, there are “columnist-style” extensions that enable Joomla to display a writer’s contact
information on each article her or she submits to the site, as well as links to his or her other articles.
While these types of extension would be helpful for online journals and news sites, they may not
add a lot of value to corporate publishing sites.
The following sections explain how to perform the steps listed above to add a contact list menu to
your Joomla publishing platform.
Figure 6-25. The contact category description on the contact list page.
5. Click Save to save the new contact category.
To create a contact:
1. If you are still viewing the Category Manager, click the Contacts link to open the Contact
Manager page, or select Components > Contacts > Contacts on the menu bar. The Contact
Manager opens:
Figure 6-27. Complete the Details section on the New Contact page.
• Name: Type the contact’s full name in the Name field.
• Alias: Joomla automaticallys create an alias based on the Name field.
• Published: By default, Yes is selected, which means Joomla makes the contact available
on your site when you save it.
• Category: Select one of the contact categories from the list.
• Linked to User: To link the contact to a specific user account, select one from the list.
• Order: Joomla automatically places each new contact at the bottom of the contact list on
the Contact Manager. You can reorder them on the contact list after creating them.
• Access Level: The Public option allows anyone who can access your website to see the
contact. The Registered option only allows users for whom you have created user
accounts and who can log in to your Joomla site see the contact. The Special option only
allows users with “authoring” privileges to see the contact.
4. Supply information about the designated contact person in the Information section:
5. Use the options in the Contact Parameters section to enable Joomla to hide or show the
contact information you supply in the Information section.:
Figure 6-29. Use the Contact Parameters section to hide or display data from the Information section.
6. The parameters in the Advanced Parameters section enable you to identify information on
the contact page with icons or labels:
The Icons option is selected by default in the Icons/Text list. Figure 6-31 shows how Joomla
displays icons on the contact page:
Figure 6-33. You can enable users to send email messages to contacts from the contact page.
• E-Mail Form: This parameter is set to Show by default, which means Joomla displays
an email form on the contact page, like the example in Figure 6-34:
Figure 6-34. Enable the email form on the contact page to allow users to email you from your site.
If you display an email form on the contact page, your Joomla site must be connected to
a mail server. If it is not connected to a mail server, Joomla cannot deliver email through
the form and you should select Hide to prevent Joomla from displaying the email form
on the contact page.
• Description Text: This is a description of the email form you are customizing for the
contact. This description does not display on the contact page on Joomla’s front end.
You only see this description when editing the contact.
• E-mail Copy: When enabled, Joomla displays an option that allows users to send a copy
of any email they submit to their own email addresses.
• Banned E-mail: You can supply a list of terms that you want Joomla to ban from being
sent through the site. Separate each term with a semi-colon (;). For example, if you
typed “meds;personal”in this field, Joomla would ban email addresses like
“meds@savings.com” and “info@personal.com.”
• Banned Subject: You can supply a list of terms, also separated with a semi-colon, that
appear in the subject fields of email messages to ban those messages from being sent
through the site. For example, “meds;personal” enables Joomla to ban messages with
“meds” and “personal” in the subject lines.
• Banned Text: You can supply a list of terms, also separated with a semicolon, that could
be included in the body of email messages to ban them from being sent through the site.
For example “meds;personal” enables Joomla to ban messages with content like “Get
cheap meds from us,” and “A personal message for you!”
8. Click Save to save the new contact.
Figure 6-35. Select the Contact Category Layout option to create a list of contacts.
• If you are deploying your site on the Internet, and you only want to provide a single,
generic contact through which public users can send comments and requests, you
should consider using the Standard Contact Layout option. If you select this page layout
style, Joomla displays a single contact like the example in Figure 6-34 on page 138.
Whether you select the Contact Category Layout option or the Standard Contact Layout
option, the New Menu Item page opens.
Figure 6-36. The Menu Item Details section for the contact category menu.
• Title: The title you type in this field appears on the menu.
• Alias: Joomla automatically creates an alias based on the menu’s title, so leave this field
empty.
• Link: Contains the internal link associated with the menu item.
• Display in: If you created a separate menu system for the category menu, select it from
this list. Otherwise, select the desired menu system.
• Parent Item: If you created a separate menu system for the category menu, it is
automatically the top item in the menu hierarchy. If you selected a menu system created
for other menus, decide whether you want the category menu to be a child of another
menu, or whether you want it to be a top-level menu item.
• Published: Yes, unless you do not want the menu to be accessible to users.
• Order: Joomla places all menus at the bottom of the menu list by default. You can
rearrange the menu order after creating them.
• Access Level: The Public option allows anyone who can access your website to see the
menu. The Registered option only allows users for whom you have created user
accounts and who can log in to your Joomla site see the menu. The Special option only
allows users with “authoring” privileges to see the menu.
• On Click, Open in: Generally, you should select the Parent Window with Browser
Navigation option (the default option), which means that when a user clicks the menu
you are creating, the content displays in the same browser window. To launch content in
a separate browser window on top of the main window, select either of the other
options.
5. Complete the Parameters (Basic) section:
Figure 6-37. The Parameters (Basic) section for the Contact Category Layout.
• Select Category: Select the contact category for which you are creating the contact list
menu from the list.
• # Links: Select the maximum number of contacts you want Joomla to display on the
contact list page. If the number of contacts exceeds the maximum number you set with
this option, Joomla displays contact list navigation features beneath the contact list, like
the example in Figure 6-38, which allows users to display subsequent pages of the
contact list:
Figure 6-39. Align the contact image on either the right or left side of the description.
• Limit Box: Displays a list that allows users to select the number of contacts they want to
display in the contact list. The limit box displays above the contact list, as shown in
Figure 6-40:
Figure 6-40. The limit box displays above the contact list.
• Show a Feed Link: To syndicate the contact list, which means users can subscribe to it,
set this parameter to Yes. When set to Yes, Joomla creates an RSS feed link, accessible
via feed icons on browser toolbars. When users click the feed link, Joomla allows
them to subscribe to the contact list.
6. Use the parameters in the Parameters (Component) section to override any of the contact
Figure 6-41. You can override individual contact settings with the Parameters (Component) options.
7. The options in the Parameters (System) section are the same as those you completed for other
menus. Complete the options in this section as necessary.
8. Click Save to save the contact menu.
Figure 6-42. The “Who’s Online” list of registered and unregistered users.
This feature may be of more interest or use to those of you creating blogging sites. I’m not sure if
it would add much value to a corporate publishing platform or a news site.
Figure 6-43. The Details section for the Who’s Online module.
• Module Type: This is an uneditable field that identifies the type of module you are
creating (in this case, mod_whosonline, which is Joomla’s name for the module).
• Title: Type a title for the module in this field.
• Show Title: This parameter is set to Yes by default, which it means it displays the
module’s title above the online user list, like the example in Figure 6-42. To hide the
module’s title, select No.
• Enabled: This parameter is set to Yes by default, which means users can see the module
when you save it.
• Position: Select the desired position from the list, excluding the hornav and user4
options.
• Order: Specifies the order in which the module appears in the module list on the Module
Manager page.
• Access Level: The Public option is selected by default, which means everyone who can
access your site can see the module. Select the desired access level in the list.
Figure 6-44. The Menu Assignment section for the Who’s Online module.
• Menus: By default, the All option is selected, which means the Who’s Online module is
enabled for all sections and categories on your site. To limit the module to specific
menus, select the Select Menu Item(s) from the List option.
• Menu Selection: To enable Joomla to display the Who’s Online module on the pages of
specific sections or categories of your site, use the Shift or Ctrl keys to select the desired
section or category menus.
6. Complete the Module Parameters section:
Figure 6-45. The Module Parameters section for the Who’s Online module.
• Caching: The only option available in the Caching list is “Never.” Generally, when you
enable caching for a specific feature, Joomla saves an image of the feature and loads it
on the page instead of retrieving content from the database, which improves your site’s
performance. However, because the list of online users changes each time a user logs on
or off, it is not practical for Joomla to cache the module.
Figure 6-46. Counts of the registered and unregistered users currently accessing your site.
To enable the module to display the login names of registered users currently using
your site, like the example in Figure 6-47, select Member names:
Figure 6-47. Login names for users currently accessing your site.
To enable the module to display both a count of the registered and unregistered
users currently accessing your site, as well as the login names of registered users,
like the example in Figure 6-42, select Both.
• Module Class Suffix: Leave this field empty. It is used for custom module styling,
which is beyond the scope of this book. You can find information about module styling
with CSS on the Joomla documentation site.
7. Click Save to save the Who’s Online module. The Menu Manager lists the new module and
displays a message indicating it was created.
1.Joomla provides two versions of the Media Manager: a front-end version through which writers can upload
image files to the server, and a back-end version, which is only available to administrative users from Joom-
la’s administrative back end.
Figure 7-1. The images directory is the image and multimedia file storage location on the server.
Joomla provides both front-end and back-end versions of the Media Manager. Writers can access
the front-end version through their text editors and use it to upload image files to the stories folder
on the server. However, they cannot create or delete folders with the front-end version of the Media
Manager. You must, therefore, perform all folder maintenance tasks with the back-end version.
Figure 7-2. Manage and organize image and multimedia content for your site with the Media Manager
Figure 7-3. The Folders section duplicates the folder structure of the images directory.
The Media folder at the top represents the images directory on the server. All folders beneath the
Media folder are sub-folders in the images directory. Folders that contain sub-folders are identified
with an adjacent plus sign (like the stories folder in Figure 7-3). You can click the plus sign next
to a folder to expand it and view its sub-folders.
Notice that the path at the top of the Files section displays the full path to folder you select in the
Folders section. For example, Figure 7-4 shows the full path to the stories folder on a XAMPP-
based Joomla server:
Figure 7-4. The Files section displays the full path to the selected folder on the server.
Figure 7-5. You can change the layout style for the Files section.
By default, the Media Manager uses the Thumbnail View layout style to display content in the Files
section (see Figure 7-2 for an example of the Thumbnail View layout).
If you select the Detail View layout option, the Media Manager displays the attributes of each
folder and file in separate data columns, as shown in Figure 7-6:
Figure 7-6. The Detail View displays the attributes of each file and folder in separate columns.
Figure 7-8. Type the name of the folder you are creating in the Files section
3. Click Create Folder. Joomla creates a folder using the name you supplied. The new folder
displays in the Files window.
Figure 7-9. Select the folder you want to delete and click the adjacent Delete button.
2. Click the adjacent Delete button, as shown in Figure 7-9.
Figure 7-10. You can upload and associate graphics with sections, categories and menus.
Figure 7-11. Locate and select the file you want to upload using the Select File to Upload window.
3. Navigate to the folder containing the file you want to upload and select it.
4. Click Open. The path to the selected file displays in the adjacent path field:
Figure 7-12. Click Start Upload to upload a selected image file to the server.
5. Click Start Upload. Joomla uploads the file to the server. Please note that the maximum file
size you can upload is 10 MB by default. See the “Configuring the Media Manager” section
on page 156 to learn how to increase or decrease the maximum allowed file size for uploads.
Figure 7-13. Select the file you want to delete and click the adjacent Delete button.
2. Click the corresponding Delete button, as shown in Figure 7-13.
Figure 7-14. Configure the Media Manager via the options in the Media Settings section.
3. Configure the Media Manager with the following settings in the Media Settings section:
• Legal Extensions (File Types): This field lists all file extensions Joomla allows writers
and administrative users to upload to the server through the Media Manager. To allow
users to upload files with an extension not included in this list (for example, you might
want to allow writers to upload .mpeg files), add the extension to the list and separate it
from the others with a comma.
Notice this list includes both uppercase and lowercase versions of the same extension.
For example, you can find .bmp and .BMP in the list. If you think writers could upload
files with both uppercase and lowercase file extensions, you should add both versions in
this field.
Please note that if you allow users to upload image files with extensions other than those
in this list (.bmp, .gif, .jpg, and .png), you must also add them to the Legal Image
Extensions (File Types) field.
• Maximum Size (in bytes): This field sets the maximum file size for files users can
upload to the server through the Media Manager. The default maximum file size is
10,000,000 bytes, or 10 MB. The Upload File section on the Media Manager reflects the
Figure 7-15. The default maximum file size in the Update File section.
For example, to increase the maximum file size limit for the Upload File field on the
Media Manager to 20 MB, you would do so by typing 20000000 in the Maximum Size
field. When you saved your changes in the Global Configuration manager, the Upload
File section on the Media Manager would show 20M, like the example in Figure 7-16:
Figure 7-16. The new maximum file size in the Update File section.
• Path to Media Folder: This field specifies the path to the folder in which the back-end
version of the Media Manager enables users to upload files other than images to the
server, like videos (writers cannot upload multimedia files through the front-end
version). By default, the path is set to images2, which means users can upload
multimedia files to any folder in the images directory.
• Path to Image Folder: This field specifies the path to the stories folder on the server,
which is where Joomla enables users to upload image files with the front-end Media
Manager. The stories folder is a sub-folder in the images directory.
• Restrict Uploads: This option allows you to specify whether you want to restrict writers
who belong to user groups lower than Manager (that is, Author, Editor, and Publisher)
to only being able to upload images. That is, if you select Yes, which is the default
selection, writers cannot upload multimedia files from the front end.
• Minimum User Level for Media Manager: By default, the Author user group is selected
in this list. This means users in the Author user group and higher (Editors and
Publishers) can access the front-end version of the Media Manager with their text
editors. Use this option to restrict the front-end version of the Media Manager to writers
in a specific user group.
• Check MIME Types: A MIME type is a file format identifier for the Internet that was
originally used to identify the content of e-mail messages (MIME stands for
2.Notice that this field does not contain the full path to the images directory on the server’s file system. Joom-
la is “aware” of the full path, which you can see in the Files Section of the back-end version of the Media
Manager (see Figure 7-2 on page 151 for an example of where the Media Manager displays the full path to
the images directory).
Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension), which has grown to support other file transfer
protocols. When you set the Check MIME Types option to Yes (the default setting),
Joomla uses either MIME_Magic, or Fileinfo (components of the PHP engine), to verify
the MIME type information in files users upload to the server through the Media
Manager. Allowing the system to check MIME types in uploaded files can help prevent
users from accidentally uploading files containing malicious content.
• Legal Image Extensions (File Types): By default, the Media Manager allows users to
upload files with the .bmp, .gif, .jpg, and .png extensions. To enable the Media Manager
to allow users to upload other image file types (for example, files with the .tiff
extension), add them to the end of the list, separating them from the others with a
comma (remember to also add them to the Legal Extensions field). When users upload
image files with extensions listed in this field through the Media Manager, Joomla
checks them for a valid image headers to verify they are really graphics.
• Legal MIME Types: A MIME type has two identifying parts: a type and a subtype. For
example, the MIME type for a GIF is image/gif, where image is the type and gif is the
subtype. The purpose of this field is to provide a place where you can list full MIME
types for the files users upload through the Media Manager. Identifying legal MIME
types enables Joomla to further verify that users are not uploading malicious content.
If you add extensions for additional file types to the either the Legal Extensions field or
the Legal Image Extensions field, you can add their full MIME types to the Legal MIME
Types field (separating them from the others with a comma). However, this is an
additional precaution and is not a required step for enabling the Media Manager to upload
additional file types. In fact, the following sentence, from the explanation of the Legal
Mime Types field on Joomla documentation site, is meant to discourage you from adding
MIME types to this field unless you are familiar with them: “It is recommended that you
do not touch this setting unless you know what you are doing.”3
You can find lists of MIME types on the Internet. I found one that probably contains most
of the MIME types you would use for a publishing system on Wikipedia at the following
address: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mime_type.
• Illegal MIME Types: You can specify a list of MIME types for files you want to prevent
the Media Manager from uploading to the server. By default, this field contains an entry
for the HTML MIME type, which prevents users from uploading HTML files.
Remember that, though Joomla is a web-based system, its content resides in a database
and is displayed in web browsers via PHP scripts (there is no static HTML content).
Therefore, writers should not upload HTML files to the server through the Media
Manager. Identifying HTML as an illegal MIME type is another way to prevent users
from uploading malicious content to the site. To reproduce content from an existing,
static HTML document in Joomla, you can copy and paste its content (text) from the
HTML file into Joomla’s front-end text editor and save it to the database.
Please note that the Joomla documentation site also warns against making entries in the
Illegal MIME Types field, unless you are familiar with MIME Types.
• Enable Flash Uploader: The Flash Uploader is a more stylized version of the standard
file uploading feature available in the media manager. However, according to the
Joomla documentation site4, Flash Player version 10 causes issues for the Flash
Uploader and they recommend leaving this option disabled (that is, set to No).
Joomla’s administrative back end, and can access the web server’s entire file system. The danger
in this is that someone could inadvertently delete or corrupt an essential file or folder, which may
cause either the web server or Joomla to stop functioning properly. If you install eXtplorer, inform
other administrative users of the dangers of changing content in any folder other than what you
upload to the stories folder.
It is important to note that eXtplorer is not the only folder management extension you can install
for Joomla. There are others, like NinjaExplorer and Joomla Flash Uploader, but neither of these
extensions is remarkably better than eXtplorer. For example, while NinjaExplorer allows you to
upload ten files, it doesn’t provide the explorer-like user interface available in eXtplorer, which
makes it a little more difficult to use. And, though you can upload ten files simultaneously with
NinjaExplorer, it has the same 64 MB file upload limit as eXtplorer. The non-commercial version
of the Joomla Flash Uploader (that is, the free version) only enables you to upload 3 MB at one
time.
To download eXtplorer
1. Start a web browser and go to the eXtplorer download site at the following address5:
http://joomlacode.org/gf/project/joomlaxplorer/frs/
2. In the Files column on the JoomlaCode software download page, click the
com_extplorer_2.0.1.zip link in the product list:
Figure 7-17. Click the com_extplorer_2.1.0.zip link to start the download process.
5.If this address is no longer accessible, search for the eXtplorer extension in the Core Enhancements section
of the Joomla extensions site at http://extensions.joomla.org.
Figure 7-18. Click Save to save the com_extplorer_2.0.1.zip file to your computer.
3. Click Save. The Save As window opens:
To install eXtplorer:
1. From the computer on which you downloaded the com_extplorer_2.0.1.zip file, access
Joomla’s administrative back end.
2. Select Install/Uninstall from the Extensions menu. The Extension Manager opens:
Figure 7-20. Install the eXtplorer extension through the Extension Manager.
3. Click Browse. The Choose File window opens:
4. Locate the and select the com_extplorer_2.0.1.zip file on the computer’s file system.
5. Click Open. The Choose File window closes. Notice that the Package File field displays the
path to the com_extplorer_2.0.1.zip file on the computer.
6. Click Upload File & Install. The installation process takes several moments. When it
completes, the Extension Manager displays a message:
Figure 7-22. The Extension Manager displays a message when the installation is complete.
To access eXtplorer:
1. From Joomla’s administrative back end, select eXtplorer from the Components menu.
eXtplorer launches in your browser:
Figure 7-24. Use the navigation pane to locate a folder and view it in the contents pane.
The contents of the directories you select with the Directory Tree display in the contents
pane. Use the options on the toolbar to perform standard file and folder maintenance tasks:
Figure 7-25. Use the options on the toolbar to perform standard file and folder maintenance tasks.
2. Notice that user interface for eXtplorer is separate from Joomla. That is, when you access
eXtplorer from Joomla, a new, separate application launches in your browser. To return to
Joomla’s administrative back end, click the Back to Joomla! link:
Figure 7-26. Click Back to Joomla! to return to Joomla’s administrative back end.
3. Also, notice the message in the upper-right corner that mentions you can run eXtplorer in
FTP mode:
Figure 7-27. You can only run eXtplorer in FTP more if an FTP server is running on the computer
hosting your Joomla system.
If an FTP server were running on the server hosting your Joomla system, you could click the
ftp link in this message and access eXtplorer in FTP mode with a user account from the FTP
server. However, if an FTP server is not running on your Joomla system, you cannot use this
feature. If you are using eXtplorer, chances are you are doing so because an FTP server is
not running on the server hosing your Joomla site.
If an FTP server is running on the server hosing your Joomla site, I recommend installing an
FTP client on your computer (like FileZilla) and use it to upload files and folders to your
system instead of eXtplorer. You can upload entire folders and many files at once to your
Joomla server with an FTP client, which you cannot do with eXtplorer.
Figure 7-28. Navigate to the stories folder with the Directory Tree.
2. Click New File/Directory on the toolbar:
Figure 7-29. Click New File/Directory to create a new folder in Joomla’s file system.
The Create New File/Directory page opens:
5. Click Create. eXtplorer creates the new directory, which displays under the stories folder in
the Directory Tree.
6. Repeat steps 2 - 5 to create other directories or sub-directories.
Figure 7-31. Click Upload to upload files from your computer to a folder on the server.
The Upload files window opens:
5. Click Open. eXtplorer closes the Choose File window and displays the path to selected file
on your computer in the File 1 field:
Figure 7-33. The File 1 field displays the path to an image you are uploading to the server.
6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 for the remaining File fields, as necessary, to select additional files to
upload to the server.
7. After selecting all image files you want to upload to the server, click Save. eXtplorer uploads
the selected files to the desired directory.
Figure 7-34. Click Delete to delete a selected file from the server.
eXtplorer deletes the selected file from the directory.
Metadata
You can configure Joomla to display the following types of metadata for your articles, as illustrated
in Figure 8-5:
• Article titles
• The titles of the sections to which they belong
• The titles of the categories to which they belong
• Author names
• The dates and times they were created
• The dates and times they were last updated
• The number of times they have been accessed (also known as “hit count”), which only
displays on category landing pages
• User rating results (results of user-based voting on article quality)
Feature Inheritance
To enable Joomla to display article navigation and distribution features and metadata, you can
configure parameter settings in one or more of the following three locations:
• On each article individually, which allows you to control the features and data that display on
each article
• At the section and category menu levels, which means they apply to all articles in those
sections and categories
• At the global level, meaning they to all articles published on your site, regardless of the
sections and categories to which they belong
When a user accesses an article on your site, Joomla follows these steps to determine what
parameter settings to apply to it and, therefore, what features to display for it:
1. First, it checks the parameter settings on the article itself. If Joomla finds you selected a value
for a parameter on the article, it applies the setting to the article and does not check the
parameter elsewhere (that is, it won’t check the same parameter in either the section or
category menus, or in the global configuration manager). For example, if you set the “Author
Name” parameter to Show on the article, Joomla displays the author’s name on the article,
even if you set the same parameter to Hide on a section or category menu, or in the global
configuration manager.
2. Next, Joomla checks the parameter settings on the section and category menus. If it finds you
selected a value for a parameter in one of these locations, it applies the setting to the article
and does not check the same parameter in the global configuration manager. For example, if
you did not select a value for the “Created Date and Time” parameter on the article, but you
set it to Show on the category menu, Joomla shows the article’s creation date and time, even
if you set it to Hide in the global configuration manager.
3. Finally, Joomla checks the parameter settings in the global configuration manager and
applies the settings for the remaining parameters to the article. For example, if you did not
select a value for the “Category Title” parameter on the article or menus, but you set it to
Show in the global configuration manager, Joomla displays the title of the category to which
the article belongs.
Figure 8-6 illustrates the steps Joomla takes to determine what features to display for articles
published on your site:
Figure 8-6. Joomla checks settings on articles, then in menus, and finally in the Article Manager.
3. Select values for the following parameters in the Global Configuration section as required
for your site:
• Show Unauthorized Links: This parameter is set to No by default, which means
unregistered users cannot see links to articles and other content on your site that have
been assigned either the “Registered” or “Special” access level. If you set this parameter
to Yes, users can see links to this content; though, they cannot access it.
• Show Article Title: When set to Yes (the default setting), Joomla displays article titles
on category landing pages and, in cases where you selected the Section Blog Layout for
section menus, on section landing pages.
• Title Linkable: This parameter only applies to the landing pages of section and category
menus formatted with blog layouts (either the Section Blog Layout or the Category
Blog Layout). When set to Yes, Joomla displays article titles as hyperlinks that, when
clicked, display the full article. Figure 8-9 shows a “linkable” article title on a category
landing page:
Figure 8-10. Introductory text above a Read More link on a category landing page.
This parameter is set to Show by default, which means Joomla displays an article’s
introductory text when users click the article’s Read More link to access the rest of the
article. When set to Hide, Joomla does not display an article’s introductory text when
users click the Read More link. In this case, they only see the remainder of an article.
• Section Name: This parameter is set to Hide by default. If you set it to Show, Joomla
displays the titles of the sections to which articles are assigned on every article tool bar,
like the example in Figure 8-11:
Figure 8-11. The title of the section to which an article belongs on its toolbar.
• Section Title Linkable: If you set the Section Name parameter to Show, indicate
whether you want Joomla to display section titles on article toolbars as hyperlinks,
which users can click to jump to section landing pages. Figure 8-12 shows how Joomla
inserts a section title as a hyperlink on an article’s toolbar when you set the Section Title
Linkable parameter to Yes:
Figure 8-13. The title of the category to which the article belongs on its toolbar.
• Category Title Linkable: If you set the Category Title parameter to Show, indicate
whether you want Joomla to display category titles on article information bars as
hyperlinks, which users can click to jump to category landing pages. Figure 8-14 shows
how Joomla inserts a category title as a hyperlink on an article’s toolbar when you set
the Category Title Linkable parameter to Yes:
Figure 8-16. Author names in the article list on a category landing page.
• Created Date and Time: This parameter is set to Show by default. Joomla displays
article creation dates and times on every article’s toolbar, like the example in Figure 8-
17:
Figure 8-19. Navigate from one article to the next belonging to the same category.
• Read more... Link: This parameter, which is set to Show by default, only applies to
articles that display on the landing pages of section and category menus formatted with
blog layouts. It enables Joomla to display Read More links for articles on section and
category landing pages, like the example in Figure 8-20:
• Icons: This parameter is set to Show by default. Joomla displays document distribution
options on each article’s toolbar, like the options labeled in Figure 8-22:
8-24:
Figure 8-24. Joomla displays a printer-friendly version of an article when users click the Print icon.
Users can click the Print icon or link on the printer-friendly version to open the Print
window, where they can select either a local or networked printer.
• E-mail Icon: This parameter is set to Show by default. Joomla displays either an email
icon or text link on article toolbars (depending on the option you set for the Icons
parameter). Please note that Joomla can only send email if it is connected to a mail
server (see “Connecting to a Mail Server” on page 48 for more information).
When users click the email icon, Joomla displays the email form shown in Figure 8-25:
Figure 8-25. Joomla displays an email form when users click the email icon.
• Hits: This parameter, which is set to Show by default. Joomla adds a “Hits” column in
the article list on category landing pages, like the example in Figure 8-26:
• For each feed item show: If you are syndicating the content of a section or category1,
you can enable Joomla to display either an article’s introductory text (if the article
includes a Read More link) or the entire text of the article in the feed link. If you
enabled a feed link for a section or category of your site, you insert Read More links in
your articles, and you select the Intro Text option, Joomla displays the article’s title and
introductory text above the Read More break on the RSS feed page, as shown in Figure
8-27:
1.That is, you enabled an RSS feed link for a section or category to share its content with other web sites or
users.
Joomla displays the entire article on the RSS feed page, as shown in Figure 8-28:
• Filtering options: TinyMCE, which is the name of Joomla’s writing tool, enables writers
to work on their articles in HTML. The filtering options in this section allow you to
control the types of HTML tags authors can submit in their articles, which can help
prevent both intentional and unintentional attacks on your site. By default, the Blacklist
option is selected for the Filter type, as shown in Figure 8-29:
If you are building a corporate publishing platform that fellow employees will use to
write and publish documentation, the default blacklist filtering will probably meet your
security needs. However, if you are building a site through which the “public” will
submit articles, you can use the options in this section to further restrict the types of
HTML tags authors can submit in their articles, or you can eliminate HTML tag
submission altogether.
4. Do one of the following:
• If you believe the blacklist HTML filtering meets your security needs, click Save to
save your global configuration settings.
• To learn how to use the other HTML filtering options in the “Filtering options” section
before saving your settings, see Appendix D., “Securing Article Submission” on page
481.
Figure 8-30. The Edit Menu Item page for a section menu.
3. Expand the Parameters (Component) section, as shown in Figure 8-30. If you didn’t select
values for these parameters when you created the section men, they will all be set to “Use
Global” like those in the example. This means that all articles associated with the section
menu currently inherit their feature settings from the global configuration manager.
4. To override the global settings, select values for the parameters you want to apply to all
articles belonging to this section menu. For example, if you set the Author Name parameter
to Hide in the global configuration manager, but, you want to display author names for all
articles associated with this section menu, you would set the Author Name parameter to
Show.
Please note that the parameters in the Parameters (Component) section are identical to those
available in the global configuration manager. See the “Global Feature Configuration”
section, starting on page 176, for explanations of these parameters.
5. Click Save to save your settings and exit the Edit Menu Item page.
Figure 8-31. The Edit Menu Item page for a category menu.
3. Expand the Parameters (Component) section, as shown in Figure 8-31. If you didn’t select
values for the parameters in this section when you created the category menu, they will all
be set to “Use Global” like those in this example. When set to “Use Global,” they inherit their
settings from the global configuration manager.
4. To override the global settings, select values you want to apply to all articles belonging to
this category menu from the list of available parameters. The parameters in the Parameters
(Component) section are identical to those available in the global configuration manager. See
the “Global Feature Configuration” section, starting on page 176, for explanations of these
parameters.
5. Click Save to save your settings and exit the Edit Menu Item page.
3.The “front page” is Joomla terminology for what you might otherwise think of as your site’s “homepage.”
4.This site functioned as a publishing platform. I did not need to design a captivating front page. Instead, I
needed a utilitarian site that enabled users to quickly find information.
Figure 8-32. The configuration parameters on an article accessed from the Article Manager.
The parameters in the Parameters (Advanced) section have the same options as the parameters on
the section and category menus and the global configuration manager. However, this section
includes a few additional parameters, which I explain on page 210.
Using TinyMCE
Joomla’s default text editor is TinyMCE version 2.0. If you followed the instructions previous
chapters of this book, you have already seen, and probably used, TinyMCE to write descriptions
for sections, categories, and menus (Figure 4-26 on page 67 is the first example of the TinyMCE
editor in this book). Joomla displays the TinyMCE editor wherever you can input paragraphs of
information for your site. Figure 9-1 shows how the 2.0 version of the TinyMCE editor appears in
Joomla’s back-end authoring tool:
To download JCE:
1. Start a web browser and go to the JCE site at the following address:
http://www.joomlacontenteditor.net
2. Select Editor from the Downloads menu. The Editor Archive page opens.
3. Locate the JCE Installation package section, as shown in Figure 9-3:
To install JCE:
1. From the computer on which you downloaded the com_jce_1576_package.zip file, open a
browser and log in to Joomla’s administrative back end.
2. Select Install/Uninstall from the Extensions menu. The Extension Manager opens.
3. Click Browse. The Choose File window opens.
4. Locate the and select the com_jce_1576_package.zip file on the computer’s file system.
5. Click Open. The Choose File window closes. Notice that the Package File field displays the
path to the com_jce_1576_package.zip file on the computer.
6. Click Upload File & Install. When the installation process completes, the Extension Manager
displays the following installation summary message:
To enable JCE:
1. Select Global Configuration from the Site menu. The Global Configuration Manager opens.
2. Select Editor - JCE from the Default WYSIWYG Editor list in the Site Settings section, as
shown in Figure 9-5:
Figure 9-5. Select Editor - JCE from the Default WYSIWYG Editor list.
3. Click Save. Joomla displays a message indicating it saved your changes to the global
configuration settings.
Administering JCE
JCE includes an administrative dashboard you can use to configure how the application functions,
who can access specific types of features, and the text formatting options that are available on the
JCE toolbar. You can also install specific JCE plugins from the dashboard.
I administered a site for a small technical documentation team and I never bothered changing the
JCE’s default parameter settings. However, if you are managing a Joomla site with a large number
of authors, you may find the JCE’s security parameters helpful. These parameters, which are
available via the JCE Group Manager page, allow you restrict features to users who belong to
certain user groups.
To access JCE’s administrative dashboard, select Components > JCE Administration > Control
Panel from the menu bar:
2. From the JCE homepage, select any of the following menus from the Support menu:
• FAQ: Articles answering commonly-asked questions.
• Tutorials: Tutorials on installing, configuring, and administering JCE.
• Documentation: Articles on administering JCE, as well as using JCE’s features.
• Forum: Questions and answers submitted by the JCE user community, a subscriber
forum, and announcements.
• Known Issues: Lists known issues for recent releases.
• Releases: A change log listing enhancements and bug fixes included in each release.
1.Template creation is beyond the scope of this book. If you want to try building your own Joomla template,
consider investigating Artisteer (http://www.artisteer.com). Artisteer has a menu-driven user interface with
which you can customize Joomla templates. You can download an evaluation version for free, but you must
purchase the Standard edition.
Figure 10-3. Format text in your article with the options on the toolbar.
Figure 10-3 shows the toolbar for the 3.2.7 version of the TinyMCE editor, which allows you
to perform the same types of text formatting tasks you would normally perform with a word
processor. Please note that while I am not explaining the options on the TinyMCE toolbar, I
do explain how to use the following JCE options that are accessible from the toolbar:
• Image Manager. To learn how to insert and manage the images in your articles, see
Chapter 11, “Working with Images” on page 221.
• Table Manager: To learn how to insert and style tables in your articles, see Chapter 12,
“Working with Tables” on page 235.
• Advanced Link: To learn how to insert and style links in your articles, see Chapter 13,
“Working with Links” on page 243.
6. I recommend saving an article not long after you create it, as well as saving it periodically
during the writing process to ensure you never loose work. Remember that Joomla is
configured to time-out user sessions when they remain idle for a specific period of time. For
example, if you got distracted in the middle of writing an article, if your user session times
out before you return to it, you will loose all unsaved work.
Do one of the following to save your work:
• To save your article and continue working, click Apply.
• To save and close your article, click Save. When you save an article, Joomla displays it
in the article list on the Article Manager:
Figure 10-4. The Article Manager lists all articles written for your site.
Over time, you may find the article list becomes fairly long. Use the sorting options above the list
to quickly find specific types of articles. For example, when trying to find an article on a site with
hundreds of articles, I use the Select Section and Select Category options to narrow the list down
to those articles written for a specific section and category.
Figure 10-5. Click on an article’s title in the article list to open and edit it.
Joomla opens the selected article in the Edit Article page, which has features identical to those on
the New Article page.
To preview an article:
1. You can preview an article at any point during the writing process (even before you save it)
to get an idea of how it will look on your site. Click Preview on the Article toolbar. Joomla
displays the article in a preview window:
Figure 10-6. The article preview window shows how your article will look when published.
2. Click the X in the upper-right corner to close the preview window.
Please note that an article’s accessibility is also determined by the section and category
menus to which it belongs. For example, if you set an article’s access level to “Public,”
but the category menu to which it is assigned is set to “Registered,” the article will only
be accessible to those users with registered user accounts. In this case, only users who
can log in to your site will be able to see the category menu, which means only registered
users can access the article.
• Created Date: This the date on which you created the article. By default, this field shows
the date and time on which you started creating it. If you want an article to appear to
have been created on a different date, you can change the values in this field. You can
manually change the date in this field, or you can click the adjacent calendar icon to
open the calendar window, where you can pick a date:
Figure 10-8. Change the article’s creation date with the calendar.
• Start Publishing: By default, the date in this field matches the date in the Created Date
field. For example, if you started creating a document on July 21, 2010, the Start
Publishing field would show “2010-21-07.” If you set the Published parameter to Yes,
when you save the article, Joomla will immediately display it on your site.
If, however, you want Joomla to automatically publish an article at a future date, which
may not correspond to its creation date, you could type, or select, the future date in this
field. For example, if you were writing a user’s guide for a product that would not be
released to the public for several weeks, you might type or select a date matching the
product’s release date for this field. This means Joomla would not display the article on
your site until the date in the Start Publishing field.
• Finish Publishing: To enable Joomla to automatically stop publishing an article on your
site by a specific date, select or type the date in this field. By default, this field shows
“Never,” which means Joomla will always display the article on your site until you
remove it by setting the Published parameter to “No.”
2.Remember that any values you select for parameters at the article level will override the parameter settings
at the global and menu levels.
3.You can find language conversion extensions on Joomla’s extension site (http://extensions.joomla.org),
which will convert the content of your articles to other languages, but you must install and configure them
separately.
For example, if you wrote an article in German, and you installed the German language
pack on your site, you could select Deutsche from the list, like the example in Figure 10-
10, to identify the article as having been written in German:
Figure 10-10. If you installed additional language packs, you can select a specific language for the
article.
If you have not installed a language pack, your site’s default language will be the only
option in the Content Language list.
• Key Reference: You can ignore the Key Reference field (that is, leave it blank) unless
you are building a Joomla site that will host documentation for a Joomla component
developer (someone who develops third-party software for Joomla). If this description
applies to you, then you can use key references to turn your articles into context-
sensitive help for Joomla software components.
You would start by writing and publishing articles on your site about the developer’s
component. To use the articles as context-sensitive help topics, you must add a key word
that uniquely identifies each article in the Key Reference field. To use multiple key
words for a key reference, you must separate each word with a dot, like the example in
Figure 10-11:
In this example, <homeURL> represents the address of your Joomla site, &task=findkey
tells Joomla to look for a key reference, and &keyref=my.help.topic identifies the help
topic’s key reference (in this case, my.help.topic). For example, if I wrote an article as a
help topic for Joomla’s News Feeds component that I published on my own Joomla
documentation server, I would provide developer with my server’s URL (e.g.,
mattdoc.net) and the key reference I assigned to the article (e.g., “news.feed.help”). He
or she would plug this information into the link format above to link to the article on my
server, which would look like the following example:
http://mattdoc.net/index.php?/option=com_content&task=findkey&keyref=news.feed.help
In this scenario, when users click the Help link on the developer’s component page,
Joomla would display the corresponding article from my server in the user’s browser.
• Alternative Read more text: By default, when a user moves his or her mouse over a
Readmore link on your site, Joomla displays the article’s name in a popup window, like
the example in Figure 10-12:
4.This quote comes from the Metadata Information section at the following address: http://docs.joomla.org/
Screen.content.edit.15
Please note that you can enable Joomla to link articles that share the same keywords as
“related articles.” When users access an article with one or more keywords that match
other articles, Joomla automatically lists the titles of the related articles in the form of
hyperlinks. You can use this feature to help users quickly navigate to articles with related
content. For more information, see the “Related Articles” section on page 316.
You can also display banners for specific articles using keywords. For example, if you
were writing a user’s guide for a specific product, and you wanted to display a banner for
the product with your article (for example, a product logo), you would add a keyword to
the article and then add the same keyword to the banner. See Chapter 18, “Advertising
with Banners,” on page 351 for more information on banners.
• Robots: Robots, or bots, are applications that roam the Internet, analyzing and
cataloging information from web servers. If desired, you can type specific keywords
that bots can use to catalog your articles.
• Author: Type the author’s name o use it as part of the metadata available to search
engines.
Working in HTML
By default, TinyMCE displays your articles in WYSIWYG, which means you can’t see the
underlying HTML tags it applies to text and other elements in your articles as you format them.
For example, to apply bold formatting to a word in your article, you might select it and press
Ctrl+B. Because you are working in WYSIWYG, the formatted text appears to be bold in
TinyMCE’s text editor window. However, if you were to switch to an HTML view of the article,
you would see TinyMCE applied the <strong> tag set to the bold word.
With TinyMCE, I find I rarely need to work with my articles’ underlying HTML. The options on
the TinyMCE toolbar are all I need when formatting text - that is, I can use them instead of
manually applying HTML tags and attributes. But, because I memorized many HTML tags long
ago, when I did create HTML documents by hand, I find it faster, from time-to-time, to switch to
an HTML view when formatting an element in an article. For example, after designing and
inserting a table with TinyMCE’s table editor, I sometimes find it faster to switch to an HTML view
when making small changes to it. In this case, editing a table in HTML saves me a few seconds
over TinyMCE’s table editor.
If you find you need to view or edit an article’s underlying HTML (either because you want to
manually format text, or to insert an element like an image map), you can use TinyMCE’s built-in
HTML view, or the JCE’s Advanced Code Editor. TinyMCE’s HTML view presents a straight-
forward, HTML version of your article in the text editor window. The Advanced Code Editor,
which launches in a separate window over the TinyMCE editor, includes several formatting
features not available in TinyMCE. I can’t say whether one is better than the other (for example,
while the Advanced Code Editor has more features, I find I don’t use them too often), so I explain
how to access and use both in the following sections.
Figure 10-15. A “No HTML” filter prevents TinyMCE from showing HTML tags.
• Format list: Apply any of the options in this list to text in the editor window. For
example, to convert a paragraph to a title, you could select the paragraph text and select
Heading 1 from the Format list. The Advanced Code Editor applies the <h1> tag set to
the selected paragraph.
3. When you finish working on your article in the Advanced Code Editor window, click Update
to apply your changes and close the editor window.
Figure 10-17. The Front Page of a Joomla site with a front page article.
There is no limit to the number of articles you can publish on your site’s front page. In fact, you
could publish all articles on the front page, which means you wouldn’t need sections, categories,
or menus. That is, you could have skipped chapters 4 and 5 and simply started writing and
publishing articles directly on your site’s front page. However, if you write different types of
documents for more than one product (like me), I think you would find publishing everything on
the front page would quickly lead to a very disorganized, unusable site.
Figure 10-18. Select Front Page to publish an article on your site’s front page.
If you select a category from the Category list, Joomla will also display the article on the Category
landing page, as well as your site’s front page. If you were to set the Front Page parameter to No,
it would no longer display on the front page, but would continue displaying on the assigned
category landing page.
If you publish numerous articles on your site’s front page, a quick and easy way to view and update
them is using the Front Page manager. The Front Page manager displays a list of all articles
published on your site’s front page, regardless of the sections and categories to which they are
assigned.
5. Chapter 7, which is titled “The first step in recovery is admitting that the Home page is beyond your con-
trol,” is dedicated to homepage design. (Krug, 2006, p. 94)
6.The Christian Science Monitor’s online news site, at http://www.csmonitor.com, provides a great example
of how articles rotate on and off of a site’s front page. Newly published articles appear at the top of the front
page. As authors publish more articles, older ones move down the page. Eventually, they are moved from the
front page to the appropriate section of the site.
Figure 10-19. Manage articles on your site’s front page with the Front Page Manager.
3. To remove an article from the front page, click the Published icon in the Published column,
or click the article’s title in the Title column to open it and set the Front Page option to No.
When removed from the front page, Joomla displays the Unpublished icon .
Figure 11-1. You can create image folders on your server with the Image Manager.
3. Decide where you want to create the image folder. The Root drive icon , which is
located at the top of the Folders pane in Figure 11-1, corresponds to the stories folder on your
server (see “Working with Image and Multimedia Folders” section on page 153 for more
information on the stories folder). You can either create a top-level folder, meaning you are
creating it directly under the Root drive icon (which also means you are creating it inside of
the stories folder), or a sub-folder, which means you are creating it under a top-level folder.
If you were writing a manual with many chapters, each of which contained multiple graphics,
consider creating a top-level folder under the Root folder representing the entire manual.
You could then create sub-folders under the top-level folder for each chapter in the manual,
which would allow you to upload graphics for each chapter into their own folders. For
articles with very few images, a single, top-level folder might meet your organizational
needs.
3. In the Folders section, click the folder into which you will upload the article’s images to
select it. The Image Manager displays the content of the selected folder in the center pane:
Figure 11-4. Joomla displays the content of selected folders in the folder content section.
4. Click the Upload icon , which is located above the Details pane. The Upload window
opens:
Figure 11-6. Locate and select the image you want to upload with the Choose file window.
6. With the Look in list, locate and open the folder on your local computer containing the
images you want to upload.
7. Click an image to select it and then click Open. The Choose file window closes and the name
of the selected file appears in the Queue section of the upload window:
Figure 11-8. A green check mark displays next to each successfully uploaded image.
9. When you finish uploading images to the server, close the Upload window.
Inserting Images
After creating an image storage folder on the server and uploading the images for your article to it,
you can insert them into your articles.
Figure 11-9. The Image Manager automatically populates fields in the Properties section.
Notice that the Details pane displays a preview of the selected image, as well as its
specifications. You can perform a variety of image maintenance tasks using the features on
the right side of the Details pane (specifically, renaming, deleting, copying, cutting, viewing,
and inserting selected files).
5. The JCE developers provide helpful tooltips for the options on each tab of the Image
Manager. To see the tooltips, move your mouse over each field name:
Figure 11-10. Move your mouse over field names for field definitions
The following fields and options are available in the Properties section of the Image tab:
• URL: When you select an image, the Image Manager automatically populates this field
with the path to the image on your server.
• Alternate Text: Joomla automatically populates this field with the selected image’s file
name. By default, joomla displays a tooltip containing this text when users mouse over
the image, like the example in Figure 11-11:
Figure 11-11. Joomla displays a tooltip containing text from the Alternate Text field.
To provide a unique image description, delete the file name and add a short
description in this field. Please note that you can override this field by adding text
to the Title field on the Advanced tab (see step 8 for more information).
• Dimensions: The Image Manager automatically populates the dimension fields with an
image’s width (located in the first field) and height (located in the second field) in
pixels.
You can, if desired, scale an image by typing a larger or smaller pixel size in either the
width or height fields. By default, the Proportional option is selected, which means if you
change the pixel size in either the width or height fields, the Image Manager will
automatically scale the opposite field in proportion.
• Alignment: By default, the Alignment option is Not Set, which means the Image
Manager will place the image at the location of your cursor, wrapping text around it as
necessary. The Top, Middle, and Bottom options allow you to place an image in relation
to adjacent elements. For example, if I inserted an image in front of a heading, and I
selected Top from the Alignment list, the heading text would appear at the top of the
image, like the example in Figure 11-17:
Figure 11-12. The adjacent heading aligned at the top of an inserted image.
Likewise, if I selected Middle from the list, the heading text would appear at the middle
of the inserted image. And, selecting Bottom would make the text appear at the bottom
of the image. Selecting Left and Right displays the image on either the left or right side
of the page.
Refer to the Preview window as you experiment with the image formatting options to see
how an image will appear in your article in relation to surrounding text. Figure 11-13
shows an image with alignment set to Right in the Preview window:
Figure 11-13. The Preview window shows how an image will appear in your article.
• Clear: This option, which only becomes active if you select Left or Right from the
Alignment list, enables you to keep the selected side of an image “clear” of other
elements.
• Margin: You can specify the amount of empty space (in pixels) that surrounds an image
with the Top, Right, Bottom, and Left margin fields. The Equal Values option is selected
by default, which means if you type 10 in any of the margin fields, the Image Manager
will automatically populate the other fields with 10.
To create a margin on a specific side of an image, de-select the Equal Values option and
type the desired number of pixels in the appropriate field. For example, if I right-aligned
and cleared the left side of an image (meaning there was no text on its right or left sides),
but I wanted to insert a 20 pixel margin between it and the paragraph beneath it, I might
de-select the Equal Values option and type 20 in the Bottom field.
• Border: If desired, you can display a colored, styled border around your images. To add
a border, first select the Width option and then select the border’s pixel width from the
adjacent list. Next, select a style type from the Style list, if desired. Finally, to add color,
you can either type the hexadecimal code (a.k.a., hex code) for the desired color in the
Color field, or click the Browse icon and select a color using the color picker.
6. When you finish selecting options for the attributes on the Image tab, click Insert.
Figure 11-15. The Image Manager populates the Style field with styling attributes from the Image tab.
• Class List: The Class List contains a list of all style classes available in the site’s
template style sheet (in the case of the JA Purity template, these styles reside in the
template.css file). If you were to add a custom tooltip style to your template’s style
sheet, it would be available in this list1.
It is important to note that the Class List parameter works in conjunction with the Title
field. That is, if you type text in the Title field, and select a style from this list, when users
mouse over the image, Joomla displays a tooltip containing text from the Title field
formatted with style selected in the Class List. If you don’t create a custom tooltip style,
the only style you should select from this list is jcetooltip, which creates an attractive,
semi-transparent tooltip (the other styles either create strangely-styled tooltips, or won’t
work when applied in this manner). However, there is a catch to using the jcetooltip style:
to make it work, you must install the JCE MediaBox plugin2.
If you were to install the MediaBox plugin, select the jcetooltip style from this list, and
type an image description in the Title field, the resulting image tooltip would look similar
to the example in Figure 11-16:
Figure 11-16. An image tooltip created by the jcetooltip style and the JCE MediaBox.
If you don’t install the MediaBox plugin, and you don’t select a style from the Class List,
Joomla displays any text you type in the Title field in the standard, yellow tooltip window
(see Figure 11-11 on page 227 for an example of the standard tooltip window).
• Classes: The image manager automatically populates this field with the name of the
style class you select in the Class List.
1.The process of adding custom tooltip styles to a template’s style sheet is beyond the scope of this book.
However, you can find information about this process on the JCE site at the following address:
http://www.joomlacontenteditor.net/support/tutorials/configuration/68-custom-styles
2.You can download and install the MediaBox plugin from the Download menu on the JCE site.
• Title: When you type text in this field, Joomla displays a tooltip containing the text over
the image when users mouse over it (the text you type in this field overrides any text in
the Alternative Text field on the Image tab). This field can work in conjunction with the
Class List parameter (see the explanation of the Class List parameter for more
information).
• Id: To identify an image in your article with a unique identifier, type it in this field. An
“id” is a standard HTML attribute for identifying elements when you want to reference
them via JavaScript to perform actions on them, or via CSS to style them.
• Language Direction: The language direction parameter allows you to identify an
element’s language direction (in this case, an image). You can select Right to left and
Left to Right from the list. The purpose of this parameter is to identify text for
languages like Chinese and Hebrew that read right-to-left.
• Language Code: To identify the language used on a specific image, type the appropriate
ISO language code identifier in this field. For example you would type “en” in the
Language Code field for English, or “es” for Spanish. Language codes are available for
many of the world’s main languages, which you can easily find on the Internet.
• Image Map: If you will add an image map3 to the image you are inserting, you can
reference it in this field with #mapname, where mapname represents the name of your
image map.
To use an image map, first add the image map with its coordinates to your article via the
<map> tagset, as you would for any web page, which you must do by switching to the
HTML view (see “Working in HTML” on page 215 for more information on working in
the HTML view). Then, use the Image Manager to insert an image for the image map into
your article. During the image insertion process, click the Advanced tab and type the
image map name in the Image Map field.
• Long Description: This parameter allows you to link to a separate file containing a
description of an image for visually impaired users who may access your site with a
screen reader4. To use it, write a description of the image and save it in either an HTML
or text (.txt) file. Then, upload the file containing the image description to the stories
folder on the server.
3.An image map is a set of coordinates you can use to segment the surface of an image into invisible shapes
(for example, you can create invisible circles, rectangles, squares, etc., on top of an image). Most importantly,
you can add hyperlinks to image maps. For example, you can create a square image map over a square shape
that, when clicked, launches a new web page. Please note that the process of creating image maps is beyond
the scope of this book. You can find a tutorial on creating client-side image maps on the HTML Goodies site
at the following address: http://www.htmlgoodies.com/tutorials/image_maps/article.php/3479741
4.Please note that only users with screen readers will know images have long descriptions. Long description
text will be inaccessible to users who access your site with standard browsers.
To link an image to the file containing the image description, click the Browse icon
located to the right of the Long Description field. The Browser window opens showing
the files in the stories folder:
Figure 11-17. Select a file containing an image description with the Browser window.
Click the name of the file containing the image description to select it and then click
Insert. JCE populates the Long Description field with the path to the selected file. When
visually impaired users access your site with a screen reader, they will be able to access
the selected image description.
5. When you finish configuring image attributes and are ready to insert the image, click the
Insert button located near the bottom right corner of the Image Manager.
Figure 11-18. Create a rollover effect with the parameters on the Rollover tab.
Notice the Mouseout field is already contains the path to the main image you selected on the
Image tab.
6. Select the Enable parameter.
7. In the Mouseover field, type the path to the secondary image file (the one you want users to
see when they mouse over the primary image). If you placed both images in the same folder,
you can duplicate the path in the Mouseout field, replacing the file name with the name of
the secondary image file.
8. Click Insert. JCE inserts the selected image and the associated rollover effect in your article.
Inserting Tables
When adding tables to your articles with JCE’s table manager, you can specify table width and
height, the number of columns and rows, cellspacing and cellpadding, text alignment, and you can
add captions.
To insert a table:
1. Place your cursor where you want to insert a table in an article.
2. Click the Insert Table icon on the toolbar. The Insert/modify table window opens
showing the General tab:
• Cellpadding: Specify the amount of white space (in pixels) that should surround text or
other elements in each table cell. This field is empty by default, which means the table
cells will not be padded with white space. Figure 12-2 shows a table with no
cellpadding:
• Alignment: Specify how the table should be aligned on the page (centered, left-aligned,
or right-aligned).
• Border: This parameter allows you to specify the width of the table’s exterior border.
Figure 12-5 shows a table with an exterior border five pixels wide:
Figure 12-7. A table with hidden table borders as seen from a site’s front end.
• Width: To establish the table’s maximum width, type the desired width (in pixels) in this
field. When a table reaches it’s maximum width, content automatically wraps within the
table’s cells.
• Height: To establish the table’s minimum height, type the desired height (in pixels) in
this field. If you set a minimum table height, the table will expand its cells to reach the
minimum height, if necessary. Please note that you cannot set a table’s maximum
height.
• Class: The Class list contains a list of all style classes available in the site’s template
style sheet. If you created a custom table style class and added it to your site’s style
sheet, select it from this list. Otherwise, I don’t recommend applying styles from this list
to your table. To create a custom table layout, see the steps on performing advanced
table styling tasks with the parameters on the Advanced tab, which starts on page 239.
• Table caption: Select this parameter to add a caption above the table. When selected,
TinyMCE automatically inserts a centered, empty line above the table where you can
type a caption. Figure 12-8 shows a table caption:
Figure 12-9. Perform additional table styling with the parameters on the Advanced tab.
2. Apply the following advanced styling attributes to the table as desired:
• Id: To identify the table with a unique identifier, type it in this field. An “id” is a
standard HTML attribute with which you can reference elements via JavaScript or CSS.
• Summary: To add table summary for visually impaired users who access your site with
screen readers, type it in this field. For example, you could type a description of the
table’s contents. Please note that table summaries are not available to users who access
your site with standard web browsers.
• Style: This field displays any styling attributes you applied to the table on the General
tab. For example, if you typed 10 in the Height field on the General tab to limit the
height of all cells in the table to 10 pixels, the Style field would display the following
style attribute:
height: 10px;
• Language code: To identify the language used in the table, type the appropriate ISO
language code identifier in this field. For example you would type “en” in the Language
Code field for English, or “es” for Spanish.
• Background image: To select a background image for the table, click the Browse icon
to open the Browse window. Locate and select the image you want to use for the
table background and click Insert. If you select an image smaller than the table, JCE
automatically tiles the table’s entire background with the image.
The background of the example in Figure 12-10 was created from a single, small blue
image that JCE tiled across the entire background:
• Rules: The Rules list provides table border styles that you can apply to the interior of the
table. For example, when you select “cols,” JCE only displays borders around the table
columns, like the example in Figure 12-12:
Figure 13-1. Select the text that will become the external link.
Note that the Insert/Edit link icon on the toolbar only becomes active when you select
text in an article.
3. Click the Insert/Edit link icon to open the Advanced Link page:
• Open in new window: Joomla will open a new browser window and launch the external
site in it.
• Open in parent window / frame: If you inserted a series of frames in an article, and you
are adding a link to a child frame, selecting this option would open the external site in
the parent frame. However, like the Open in this window/frame option, if you select it,
but your article does not contain frames, Joomla will simply open the site in the user’s
current browser window.
• Open in top frame (replaces all frames): This option works in the same manner as the
Not Set option, where Joomla opens the external site in a user’s current browser
window.
6. Title: When you type text in this field, Joomla displays the text in a tooltip when users mouse
over it. For example, if you typed Joomla homepage in the title field, users would see a
tooltip like the one in Figure 13-3:
Figure 13-3. Users will see a tooltip containing title text when mousing over a link.
7. Click Insert. The Advanced Link page closes and JCE adds the link to the selected text in the
article. To test it, use the Preview option, or save your article and view it from the front end
of your site.
To link to an article:
1. Start by adding text that will underlie the link to another article on your site. For example,
you could type the article’s title.
2. Select the text for the link, like the example in Figure 13-4:
Figure 13-4. Select the text you want to use for the internal link.
3. Click the Insert/Edit link icon to open the Advanced Link page.
4. Expand the Content option in the Link Browser section, locate the title of the desired article,
and click the title to select it:
Figure 13-5. Select the title of the article to which you are linking.
5. Since you are linking to another article on your site, you do not need to select options from
the Anchors or Target parameters in the Attributes section.
6. To enable Joomla to display a tooltip containing information about the link when users
mouse over it, type information about the link in the Title field.
7. Click Insert. The Advanced Link page closes and JCE adds the link to the selected text in the
article.
4. Expand the Menu option in the Link Browser section to view a list of the section menus on
your site. Expand the desired section menu to locate the desired category and click the title
to select it:
Figure 13-6. Select the title of a section or category menu, which will create a link to its landing page.
5. You do not need to select options for the Anchors or Target parameters in the Attributes
section.
6. To enable Joomla to display a tooltip containing information about the link when users
mouse over it, type information about the link in the Title field.
7. Click Insert. The Advanced Link page closes and JCE adds the link to the selected text in the
article.
Linking to Contacts
To provide users with contact information about an article’s author, you can add a link to the
author’s contact page. When users click the link, they will see the author’s contact information.
Please note this requires that you first add contact information for the author to a contact list. To
learn more about contacts, see “Creating a Contact List Menu” on page 131.
4. Expand the Contact option in the Link Browser section, locate and expand the desired
contact list, and click the contact’s name to select it:
link category, and click the name of the web link to select it:
Figure 13-10. Style all link styling attributes in the Style field in the CSS format.
Please note that the style sheet (CSS file) associated with your Joomla template will most
likely contain a link style, which will automatically be applied to all links you insert in
your articles (that is, you don’t need to create a custom link style). If you override the
template’s link style with custom attributes in this field, the resulting link will not look
like the other links on your site.
• Class List: The Class List contains a list of all style classes available in the site’s
template style sheet. This parameter works in conjunction with the Title field on the
Link tab. That is, if you add text in Title field, then click the Advanced tab and select a
style from this list, when users mouse over the link, Joomla will display a tooltip
containing text from the Title field formatted with style selected from this list.
The only style I recommend selecting in this list is jcetooltip, which creates a semi-
transparent tooltip. However, as I mentioned when explaining this parameter for image
mouseovers, to make it work, you must install the JCE MediaBox plugin from the JCE
website. You can access the JCE MediaBox from the Download menu on the JCE site.
• Classes: The link manager automatically populates this field with the name of the style
class you select in the Class List.
• Language Direction: This parameter allows you to identify the language direction for
the text underlying the link. You can select Right to left and Left to Right from the list.
The purpose of this parameter is to identify the text direction for languages like Chinese
and Hebrew that read right-to-left.
• Target Language Code: To identify the language used at the target URL, type the
appropriate ISO language code identifier in this field. For example you would type “en”
in the Language Code field for English, or “es” for Spanish.
• Language Code: To identify the language of the text underlying the link, type the
appropriate ISO language code identifier in this field.
• Target character encoding: If you are familiar with the character set that performs
character encoding at the target URL, type the character set name in this field. For
example, if the character set at the target URL was UTF-8 (which is the name of the
Unicode character set), you would type UTF-8 in the field. Unicode is the computer
industry standard for character encoding, because it represents characters used in most
of the world’s writing systems1.
• Target MIME Type: If you are familiar with the MIME type used at the target URL,
type it in this field. A MIME type is a file format identifier for the Internet. If you are
linking to a web page, its MIME type will most likely be text/html.
• Relationship page to target: This parameter allows you to select the relationship
between the current page containing the link and the linked page (the one at the URL in
the link). Please note that this parameter does not enhance the functionality of your
links. It simply adds a “rel” attribute to the HTML underlying the link from which
search engines can get more information about the link.
1.This definition comes from the explanation of Unicode on Wikipedia at the following address:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode.
• Relationship target to page: This parameter, which is the reverse of the “Relationship
page to target” parameter, allows you to select the relationship between the linked page
and the current page containing the link. This parameter adds a “rev” attribute to the
HTML underlying the link, which provides information about the link for search
engines.
• Tab Index: A tab index determines the order in which users can access a specific
element on a web page when pressing the Tab key. A common use for this feature is to
create a specific tab order for the fields in an online form.
If you believe readers will press their Tab keys to move among the links in an article, you
can add a numeric tab index to each link. You would start by typing 1 in the Tab Index
field for link you want users to access first when pressing Tab, and then number the
remaining links in the order in which you want them accessed.
• Access Key: To add a keyboard shortcut users can press to jump to a link, type the
shortcut key character in this field. Users can press Alt plus whatever character you type
in this field to access the link. For example, if you typed “a” in the Access Key field,
users could press Alt+A on their keyboards to access the link. Please note that this
parameter only lets users jump to links in your article - it does not activate the links.
How writers access Joomla’s front end authoring tool depends, in part, on the menu style you
assigned to your category menus. If you assign the Category Blog Layout style to category menus,
authors do not have direct access to the tool. If you assign the Category List Layout style to
category menus, Joomla displays a New Article icon on category menu landing pages, like the
example in Figure 14-2, which users can click to open the tool:
Figure 14-2. The New Article icon displays on category menus formatted with the Category List Layout.
Those of you who formatted your category menus with the Category Blog Layout style must create
an article submission menu so writers can access Joomla’s authoring tool. However, I recommend
creating an article submission menu even if you used the Category List Layout style.
The process of creating an article submission menu includes the following steps:
1. Create a menu system for the article submission menu. While you can add it to an existing
menu system, I recommend creating a separate menu system for it, which you can position
as desired on your site.
2. If you create a separate menu system for the article submission menu, enable the supporting
menu module and position it at the desired location on your site’s front end.
3. Create the article submission menu.
• Description: If desired, type a brief description of the menu module’s purpose in this
field.
• Module Title: When you save the menu system, Joomla automatically creates a menu
module, which it will name according to what you type in this field. I recommend using
a module name that matches the menu name to easily tell what menu system it supports.
5. Click Save to create the new menu system.
Figure 14-3. The Details section for the article submission module.
• This field identifies the type of module you are creating.
• Title: This field is pre-populated with the module name you typed in the Module Title
field when creating the menu system.
• Show Title: When set to Yes, Joomla displays the module title in addition to the menu
title. However, the module’s position determines if and where Joomla displays the
module title.
• If you position it in the left navigation column (the default), Joomla displays the
module title like the example in Figure 14-4:
Figure 14-4. The module title when positioned in the left navigation column.
• If you position it in the right navigation column, Joomla displays the module title
like the example in Figure 14-5:
Figure 14-5. The module title when positioned in the right navigation column.
• If you position it on the horizontal menu bar, Joomla will not display the module
title, even if you set this parameter to Yes, because there is no room for it.
• Enabled: Select Yes to enable the module.
• Position: Select a desired position for the module. The left and right navigation columns
and the horizontal menu bar are easy-to-spot positions.
• Order: Specifies the order in which the module will appear in the module list on the
Module Manager page.
• Access Level: By default, only users with authoring roles can access this menu. In this
instance, the Access Level parameter allows you to specify who can see the menu on
your site’s front page. It is set to Public by default, which means everyone who can
access your site will see the menu (even though they can’t use it). I recommend setting
the access level to Special, which means only users with authoring privileges can see
the menu module.
4. Complete the Menu Assignment section:
Figure 14-6. The Menu Assignment section for the article submission module.
• Menus: By default, the All option is selected, which means the article submission
module will be enabled for all sections and categories on your site. To limit the module
to specific menus, select the Select Menu Item(s) from the List option.
• Menu Selections: To enable Joomla to display the article submission module on the
pages of specific sections or categories of your site, use the Shift or Ctrl keys to select
Figure 14-7. Click the Article Submission Layout link to start creating an article submission menu.
4. The New Menu Item page opens. Complete Menu Item Details section:
Figure 14-8. The Menu Item Details section for the article submission menu.
• Title: This is the title Joomla displays on the menu. Consider using a title that
communicates the task writers can perform with it like “Submit Articles,” “Submit,” or
“Write Articles.”
• Alias: Leave this field empty. When you save the menu, Joomla automatically populates
this field with an alias generated from the title.
• Link: This field is automatically pre-populated with an internal link for the menu. Do
not change it.
• Display In: Select the name of the menu system you created for the article submission
menu.
• Parent Item: Top is selected by default, which means the article submission menu will
be the top menu in the menu hierarchy.
• Published: By default, Yes is selected, which means the menu will be available from the
front end when you save it.
• Order: Determines the order in which the menu displays in the Menu Item Manager list.
• Access Level: The Public option is selected by default, which means everyone who can
access your site can see the article submission menu. Select Special from the list, which
means only users who have authoring roles assigned to their user accounts will be able
to see the menu after logging in to the site. The menu will remain “invisible” to all
registered and public users.
• On Click, Open in: Indicate how you want Joomla to display the authoring tool when
users select the menu:
• Parent Window with Browser Navigation: Enable Joomla to display the authoring
tool in the current browser window with the existing browser navigation features.
This is the default selection and I recommend not changing it.
• New Window with Browser Navigation: Enable Joomla to display the authoring
tool in a new browser that opens on top of your site. The new window displays
standard browser navigation features.
• New Window without Browser Navigation: Enable Joomla to display the authoring
tool in a new browser window without the standard browser navigation features
(that is, hiding the browser’s address bar and toolbars).
5. It is not necessary to complete the parameters in the remaining sections of the New Menu
Item page:
• Parameters (Basic): This is an empty section that does not contain configurable
parameters.
• Parameters (Component): None of the menu configuration parameters in this section
apply to the article submission menu. Leave all parameters set to “Use Global.”
• Parameters (System): None of the parameters in this section apply to the article
submission menu.
6. Click Save to finish creating the new menu.
7. To see the new article submission menu, log in to Joomla’s front end with a user account
belonging one of the front end authoring user groups. Click the menu to access and test the
article submission tool.
To create an article:
1. Log in to Joomla’s front end with a user account that has an authoring role1.
2. Click the article submission you created for your site’s front end to open the authoring tool.
When opened, it should look similar to the example in Figure 14-1 on page 254.
3. Type a title for the article in the Title field.
1.While you can log in to the front end as the Super Administrator, I recommend creating a user account with
an authoring role to working from Joomla’s front end.
Figure 14-10. The publishing parameters available from the front end authoring tool.
• Section: Select the section you want to assign to the article. When you select the desired
section, Joomla populates the Category list with the names of all categories available in
that section.
If no sections are available, select Uncategorized. If your site does not have sections, you
can only publish the article on the front page.
• Category: Select the name of the category you want to assign to the article. If no
categories are available, select Uncategorized. If your site does not have categories, you
can only publish the article on the front page.
• Publish: This option is only available to users with the Publisher role. Set this parameter
to Yes to publish the article when saving it.
• Show On Front Page: Indicate whether the article should be published on the site’s front
page.
If you have not created sections and categories for your site yet, and you selected
Uncategorized for the Section and Category parameters, you can only publish articles on
your site’s front page.
• Author Alias: By default, any article you write from Joomla’s front end is attributed to
the user name on your user account. If you don’t want the article to display your user
account name, type an “alias” in this field.
• Start Publishing: By default, this field is populated with the date and time on which you
created the article. If you want the article to reflect a different publishing date, click the
adjacent calendar icon to launch a calendar and select the desired date.
• Finish Publishing: To enable Joomla to automatically stop publishing an article by a
specific date, select or type the date in this field. By default, this field shows “Never,”
which means Joomla will display the article until someone with Publisher privileges or
higher sets the Published parameter to “No.”
• Access Level: An article’s access level determines who can see it. The options in this
list are tied to user groups. When you select the Public option, all users who do not have
user accounts (and, therefore, do not belong to a user group) can see an article. You
would select this option when you want all visitors to your site to be able to read an
article.
When you select the Registered option, all users with registered user accounts (and who
belong to the “Registered” user group, or higher) can log into your site can see an article.
The Special option means only users who belong to the authoring and administrative user
groups can access the article.
• Ordering: By default, all new articles display at the top of the article list in the Article
Manager by default. Only administrative users can change an article’s order in the list
from Joomla’s back end.
6. Supply information for the fields in the Metadata Information section, as necessary, for the
article:
• Description: Type a concise description of your article for search engines.
• Keywords: Type keywords that you think accurately represent the article. For example,
if you wrote an article on collecting silver dollars, you might include keywords like
silver, coin, dollar, collecting, value, etc., depending on the content of the article.
7. To save the article, click Save. If you have the Author role, you cannot update your article
after saving it.
Only writers with Editor and higher-level authoring privileges can see unpublished articles from
Joomla’s front end. Joomla displays a blue pencil icon next to the titles of unpublished articles, like
the example in Figure 14-11:
5. Click Save to save your changes and exit the authoring tool.
To import a document:
1. After ensuring the document’s text and graphics were in the correct format, I logged into
Joomla’s front end and created a new article.
2. With Joomla’s front end authoring tool open to the new article, I minimized my browser.
Then, I opened the text version of the original document with a Notepad, which is a
Windows-based text editor.
3. I selected (Ctrl+A) and copied (Ctrl+C) all text in the editor.
4. I restored my browser window, placed my cursor in the text entry window and pasted
(Ctrl+V) the copied text into it. The entire document was now in the new article I created in
Joomla.
5. I clicked Apply to save the article, but not exit from the editor.
Figure 15-1. Joomla automatically creates a table of contents from page breaks.
the section heading that will start the next page, like the example in Figure 15-5:
Figure 15-2. Add a space with a hard return for the page break.
3. Click the page break icon on the toolbar . The Insert / Edit Pagebreak window opens:
Figure 15-3. Type a title for the new page you are creating in the Page Title field.
4. Type a title for the new page you are creating in the Page Title field. This will be the link
name that appears in the Article Index. For consistency, I recommend using the section
names as the page titles for page breaks, like the example in Figure 15-4:
Figure 15-4. For page breaks, use page titles that match the section titles.
Please note it is not necessary to complete the Table of Contents Alias field. Anything you
type in this field will display in the Article Index in place of what you type in the Page Title
field.
5. Click Insert. JCE inserts a page break marker where your cursor was positioned in the empty
line:
8. Click Upload. When the installation process completes, the Extension Manager displays a
message indicating it was successful:
To configure UberPageBreak:
1. Select Plugin Manager from the Extensions menu. The Plugin Manager Opens.
2. Locate and click UberPageBreak (by JoomlaWorks) in the Plugin Name column. The Edit
Plugin page opens.
3. In the Details section, set the Enabled parameter to Yes. Do not make any other changes in
this section.
4. Configure the parameters in the Plugin Parameters section as follows:
• Select plugin template: By default, the List option is selected. This option creates the
table of contents in format shown on the right side of the page in Figure 15-7.
If you select the Tabs option, UberPageBreak displays the table of contents as tabbed
headings at the top of your articles, like the example in Figure 15-11:
section’s title, called the “sub-title” to the article title, like the example in Figure 15-12:
Figure 15-12. By default, UberPageBreaks appends section titles to the article title.
To disable this parameter, select No.
• Table of contents: This parameter enables UberPageBreaks to displays the table of
contents on the right side of the page, like the example in Figure 15-12. To hide the table
of contents, set this parameter to Hide.
• Link to ‘all pages’: When set to Show, this parameter displays the All Pages link in the
table of contents:
• Page counter at the bottom: When set to Show, this parameter displays the page counter
beneath the navigation links.
Chunking Articles
When publishing a news article, white paper, case study, etc., in Joomla that consists of many pages
when printed, your readers will benefit from pagination. However, when you publish a very long
document like a book or a manual as a single article, readers may still find it difficult to use, even
with pagination. For example, if a manual includes many chapters, sections, and sub-sections, the
table of contents you build when paginating it may grow longer than the pages themselves. Instead
of publishing a long document as a single, paginated article, try creating a separate category menu
for it and publishing each chapter as a separate article, like the example in Figure 15-16:
Figure 15-16. For very long documents, try publishing each chapter as a separate article.
I took the following steps to chunk the manual as shown in Figure 15-16:
1. First, I created a category named “Joomla for Professional Writers” in which I grouped the
manual’s chapters.
2. Then, I created a category menu formatted with the Category List Layout that I assigned to
the “Joomla for Professional Writers” category, which I also named “Joomla for Professional
Writers.”
3. Finally, I created separate articles for each chapter, which I assigned to the “Joomla for
Professional Writers” category. I paginated the content of each chapter at the H2 level.
When users select the “Joomla For Professional Writers” menu, the category landing page, shown
in Figure 15-16, acts as a high-level table of contents for the manual. And, because I used
pagination, each chapter has its own a table of contents. With these features, readers can quickly
select a chapter and then navigate to a desired section within it to find the desired information.
Archiving Articles
You may find it preferable to archive specific types of old or obsolete articles than to delete them.
Once archived, you can restore articles (that is, unarchive them) as easily as you can archive them.
For example, you may find it necessary to reference an archived article from a new, related article.
In this case, you could unachive the older article and link the new one to it.
To archive an article:
1. Log in to Joomla’s administrative back end.
2. Open the Article Manager.
3. Locate the article you want to archive in the article list.
4. Click the option to the left of the article’s title to select it.
5. Click Archive. Joomla displays a message indicating it successfully archived the article. The
archived icon appears in both the Published and Front Page columns.
You can continue to access archived articles from the Article Manager in Joomla’s back end, as
shown in Figure 16-1:
To unarchive an article:
1. Log in to Joomla’s administrative back end.
2. Open the Article Manager.
3. Locate the article you want to unarchive in the article list. If the article list includes numerous
articles, use the sorting options and select Archived from the Select State list to quickly
locate the archived article.
4. Click the option to the left of the article’s title to select it.
5. Click Unarchive. Joomla displays a message indicating it unarchived the article and removes
the archived icons.
Figure 16-3. The Archived Content module groups archived articles by creation dates.
Please note that neither the menu nor the module enable you to select specific archived articles for
display on your site’s front end. That is, both features provide users with access to all archived
articles. However, both features also provide an article filtering tool. In cases where you have
archived many articles, your front end users can use the filter, shown in Figure 16-4, to locate a
specific article:
Figure 16-4. Users can filter the archived article list to locate specific articles.
While you can add both archiving features to your site, I recommend picking the one you think will
be the most helpful to your site’s users:
• See “Creating an Archived Article List Menu” on page 283 to learn how to add the menu to
your site.
• See “Creating an Archived Content Module” on page 288 to learn how to add the module to
your site.
Figure 16-5. Click the Archived Article List link to start creating the menu.
4. The New Menu Item page opens. Complete Menu Item Details section:
Figure 16-6. The Menu Item Details section for the Archived Article List menu.
• Title: Type a title for the menu in this field. Consider using a title that communicate’s
the menu’s purpose, like “Archived Articles,” or “Archived Manuals.”
• Alias: Leave this field empty. When you save the menu, Joomla automatically populates
this field with an alias generated from the title.
• Link: This field is automatically pre-populated with an internal link for the menu. Do
not change it.
• Display In: Select the name of the section containing the menu, or menus, to which you
are adding the archived article menu.
• Parent Item: To display the archived article menu on several menus at once, select a
higher-level menu in the list. In this case, Joomla will display the menu on the menu you
selected, as well as all child menus beneath it. To display the archived article menu on a
single category menu at the bottom of a menu hierarchy, select the menu in the list.
• Published: By default, Yes is selected, which means the menu will be available from the
front end when you save it.
• Order: Determines the order in which the menu displays in the Menu Item Manager list.
• Access level: The Public option is selected by default, which means everyone who can
access your site can see the breadcrumbs module. Select the desired access level in the
list.
• On Click, Open in: Indicate how you want Joomla to display the archived article menu
when users select the menu:
• Parent Window with Browser Navigation: Enable Joomla to display the archived
articles in the current browser window with the existing browser navigation
features. This is the default selection and I recommend not changing it.
• New Window with Browser Navigation: Enable Joomla to display the archived
articles in a new browser that opens on top of your site. The new window displays
standard browser navigation features.
• New Window without Browser Navigation: Enable Joomla to display the archived
articles in a new browser window without the standard browser navigation features
(that is, hiding the browser’s address bar and toolbars)
5. Complete the Parameters (Basic) section:
Figure 16-7. The Parameters (Basic) section for the Archived Article List menu.
• Order: Select the order in which you want Joomla to display archived articles in the list.
6. The parameters in the Parameters (Component) section enable you to configure which article
distribution, navigation, and metadata features should display on archived articles:
Figure 16-8. The Parameters (Component) section for the Archived Article List menu.
The parameters in this section are also available on the articles themselves, as well as in the
Article Configuration Manager, which is the global article configuration tool. I recommend
only changing parameters in this section if you want to override the global settings already
configured in the Article Configuration Manager. Otherwise, leave them all set to “Use
Global.” To learn about the parameters in the Parameters (Component) section, and how they
are set globally in the Article Configuration Manager, see “Global Feature Configuration”
on page 176. For an overview of the entire process, see “Feature Inheritance” on page 175.
Figure 16-9. The Parameters (System) section for the Archived Article List menu.
• Page Title: Joomla automatically uses the name you typed in Title field in the Menu
Item Details section as the page title for the section landing page. However, if desired,
you can override it by typing a different page title in this field.
• Show Page Title: This parameter is enabled by default, which means Joomla will
display a page title on the menu landing page.
• Page Class Suffix: If desired, you can format the landing page for the category menu
with a unique layout style. However, the process of creating custom page layouts is
beyond the scope of this book and I recommend leaving this field empty for now.
• Menu Image: You can display images next to the menu title text, like the example in
Figure 16-10:
Figure 16-11. The Archived Content module positioned in the right navigation column.
Figure 16-12. The Details section for the Archived Content module.
• Module Type: This field identifies the type of module you are creating (in this case,
mod_archive, which is Joomla’s name for the module).
• Title: Type a title for the module in this field. For example: “Archives,” “Archived
Articles,” “Old Articles,” etc.
• Show Title: This parameter is set to Yes by default, which means it will display the
module’s title above the archive list, like the example in Figure 16-11. To hide the
module’s title, select No.
• Enabled: This parameter is set to Yes by default, which means users will be able to see
the module when you save it.
• Position: Select either “left” or “right” to position the module in either the left or right
navigation columns.
• Order: Specifies the order in which the module will appear in the module list on the
Module Manager page.
• Access Level: The Public option is selected by default, which means everyone who can
access your site will see the module. Select the desired access level in the list.
Figure 16-13. The Menu Assignment section for the Archived Content module.
• Menus: By default, the All option is selected, which means the Archived Content
module will be enabled for all sections and categories on your site. To limit the module
to specific menus, select the Select Menu Item(s) from the List option.
• Menu Selection: To enable Joomla to display the Archived Content module on the pages
of specific sections or categories of your site, use the Shift or Ctrl keys to select the
desired section or category menus.
6. Complete the Module Parameters section:
Figure 16-14. The Module Parameters section for the Archived Content module.
• Count: By default, the archived article count is set to 10, which means Joomla will
display 10 archived articles per page. Change the number in this field to increase or
decrease the number of archived articles Joomla displays per page.
• Module Class Suffix: Leave this field empty. It is used for custom module styling,
which is beyond the scope of this book. You can find information about module styling
with CSS on the Joomla documentation site.
7. Complete the Advanced Parameters section:
Figure 16-15. The Advanced Parameters section for the Archived Content module.
• Caching: By default, this option is set to Use Global, which means caching would then
be enabled for the module only if you enabled it for the entire Joomla server on the
System configuration page in the Global Configuration manager. To prevent Joomla
from caching the contents of the Archived Content module, select No Caching.
8. Click Save to save the Archived Content module. The Menu Manager lists the new module
and displays a message indicating it was created.
9. Access your site’s front end to see and test the new module.
1.Joomla addresses the navigation recommendations Krug makes in Chapter 6, “Street signs and Bread-
crumbs.” (Krug, 2006, p. 50)
2.Morville, Peter, and Rosenfeld, Louis. (2006). Information Architecture for the World Wide Web (3rd ed).
O’Reilly.
Joomla displays the JA_Purity template’s module positions, like the example in Figure 17-1:
The JA_Purity template includes the following module positions (described from the top to the
bottom of the template):
• user 4: Located in the upper right corner of the header, this is the ideal location for the Search
module (page 309).
• hornav: The hornav (horizontal navigation) position is reserved for menu modules.
• left: The left position, which is located in the left column, is a good location for the Login
module (page 114).
• breadcrumbs: Though not illustrated in figure 17-1, the breadcrumbs module is located at the
top of the body content column (which is officially called the “component” section). This
position is reserved for the Breadcrumbs module (page 298).
• right: The right position is located, which is located in the right column, is a good location for
modules that take up more space, like the Poll (page 334), Random Image (page 338), Custom
Content (page 342), and Wrapper (page 346) modules.
• banner: The banner position is a good location for advertising banners. To learn more about
banners, see Chapter 18, “Advertising with Banners,” on page 351.
• user 1: The user 1 position is a good location for list modules, like the Section List (page 306),
Related Articles (page 316), Latest News (page 320), and Most Read Content (page 324)
modules.
• user 2: The user 2 position is also a good location for list modules.
• top: The top position is a good location for list modules and message modules like the Latest
News (page 320) and News Flash (page 328) modules.
• user 5: The user 5 position is a good location for list modules and message modules.
• user 3: The user 3 position is a good location for message modules.
• footer. The footer position is reserved for the Footer module (page 303).
• syndicate: The syndicate position is reserved for the Syndicate module (page 313).
• debug: The debug position is reserved for debug messages.
The hornav, breadcrumbs, banner, footer, and syndicate module positions are reserved for specific
modules. However, you can add any type of module to the remaining positions. I made a few
recommendations in the module list above, but you should consider experimenting with a variety
of positions to determine which one works best for a specific module on your site.
Breadcrumbs
With breadcrumbs, users can see the path they have taken to their current location in your site, like
the example in Figure 17-2:
Figure 17-2. Breadcrumbs show readers their current location in your site.
If your site has multiple sections and categories, and you created deep, menu-based hierarchies,
adding breadcrumbs enables users to quickly return to previously-viewed content.
Figure 17-3. Enable the Breadcrumbs module to add them to your site.
3. In the module list, click the Breadcrumbs link to open the Edit Module page.
4. Complete the Details section:
Figure 17-5. The Menu Assignment section for the Breadcrumbs module.
• Menus: By default, the All option is selected, which means the Breadcrumbs module is
enabled for all sections and categories on your site. To limit the module to specific
menus, select the Select Menu Item(s) from the List option.
• Menu Selections: To enable Joomla to display the Breadcrumbs module on the pages of
specific sections or categories of your site, use the Shift or Ctrl keys to select the desired
section or category menus.
6. Complete the Module Parameters section:
Figure 17-6. The Module Parameters section for the Breadcrumbs module.
• Show Home: By default, the Yes option is selected, which means Joomla shows
“Home” (meaning it displays a link to your site’s homepage) at the beginning of the
breadcrumb path, like the example in Figure 17-7:
• Text for Home entry: By default, this field contains “Home” as the text representing
your site’s homepage in the breadcrumbs path. If desired, you can add whatever text you
want to represent your site’s homepage in the breadcrumbs path. For example, you
could change it to “Homepage.”
• Show Last: The Yes option is selected by default, which means Joomla shows users
their current location in your site, like the example in Figure 17-8:
Figure 17-9. The Advanced Parameters section for the Breadcrumbs module.
Generally, when you enable caching for a specific feature, Joomla saves an image of the
feature and loads it on the page instead of retrieving content from the database, which
improves your site’s performance. However, because breadcrumbs differ according to how
a users navigate through your site, it is not practical for Joomla to cache the breadcrumbs
module.
8. Click Save to save the breadcrumbs module. The Menu Manager lists the new module and
displays a message indicating it was created:
Figure 17-11. The Footer module displays a copyright notice in the footer on every page of your site.
When you create a footer, Joomla automatically attributes the copyright notice to your site’s name
(which you supplied when installing Joomla). In Figure 17-11, the copyright notice in the footer is
attributed to “Joomla! for Professional Writers.” However, you may have used a site name that is
different from your company’s name. For example, I used a site name that describes the purpose
of the site shown in Figure 17-11, which was different from my company’s name. To learn how to
customize your site’s copyright notice, see Appendix
Figure 17-13. The Menu Assignment section for the Footer module.
• By default, the All option is selected, which means the Footer module is enabled for all
sections and categories on your site. To limit the module to specific menus, select the
Select Menu Item(s) from the List option.
• Menu Selections: To enable Joomla to display the Footer module on the pages of
specific sections or categories of your site, use the Shift or Ctrl keys to select the desired
section or category menus.
6. Complete the Module Parameters section:
Figure 17-14. The Module Parameters section for the Footer module.
With caching, the Joomla server a saves images of various features, which it can load into
users’ web browsers, instead of retrieving content from the database. The purpose of caching
is to improve the system’s performance.
By default, the Caching parameter is set to Use Global, which means Joomla relies on your
site’s global caching settings, which are set on the System tab of the Global Configuration
page. Caching is enabled by default on Joomla servers, so unless you turned it off, Joomla
will automatically cache this module.
7. Click Save.
8. Next, go to your Joomla homepage to see the new footer, which will look similar to the
Section List
Joomla’s primary navigation tool is the menu. However, Joomla includes another navigation tool,
called the Section module, that allows you to create a link-based list of the sections on your site,
like the example in Figure 17-16:
Figure 17-18. The Menu Selection section for the Sections module.
• Menus: By default, the All option is selected, which means the Sections module is
enabled for all sections and categories on your site.To limit the module to specific
menus, select the Select Menu Item(s) from the List option.
• Menu Selection: To enable Joomla to display the Sections module on the pages of
specific sections or categories of your site, use the Shift or Ctrl keys to select the desired
section or category menus.
6. Complete the Module Parameters section:
Figure 17-19. The Module Parameters section for the Sections module.
• Count: By default, this field contains “5” which means the Section module lists a
maximum of five section titles. Increase or decrease the number in this field to enable
the Section module to display more or less section titles.
• Module Class Suffix: Leave this field empty. It is used for custom module styling,
which is beyond the scope of this book. You can find information about module styling
with CSS on the Joomla documentation site.
7. Complete the Advanced Parameters section:
Figure 17-20. The Advanced Parameters section for the Sections module.
• Caching: By default, this option is set to No Caching, which means Joomla does not
cache the contents of the Sections module. If you select Use Global, caching would then
be enabled for the module only if you enabled it for the entire Joomla server on the
System configuration page in the Global Configuration manager.
• Caching time: If you enable caching for the module, enter the amount of time, in
minutes, in which you want Joomla to store the cache file before refreshing it.
8. Click Save to save the Sections module. The Menu Manager lists the new module and
displays a message indicating it was created.
Search
While some users may prefer to browse for information using menus, others may prefer to use a
“search” feature to quickly locate specific articles. Joomla’s Search module enables users to
perform searches that retrieve lists of articles matching their search criteria from the database.
• Position: While you can place the site search module in a variety of module positions,
the most common location is in the upper right corner, which is set with the user 4
position, as shown in Figure 17-22:
Figure 17-23. Joomla displays search results in the main body of your site.
• Order: Specifies the order in which the module appears in the module list on the Module
Manager page.
• Access Level: The Public option is selected by default, which means everyone who can
access your site can see the Search module. Select the desired access level in the list.
5. Complete the Menu Assignment section:
Figure 17-24. The Menu Assignment section for the Search module.
• Menus: By default, the All option is selected, which means the Search module is
enabled for all sections and categories on your site. To limit the module to specific
menus, select the Select Menu Item(s) from the List option.
• Menu Selection: To enable Joomla to display the Search module on the pages of specific
sections or categories of your site, use the Shift or Ctrl keys to select the desired section
or category menus.
6. Complete the Module Parameters section:
Figure 17-25. The Module Parameters section for the Search module.
• Module Class Suffix: Leave this field empty. It is used for custom module styling,
which is beyond the scope of this book. You can find information about module styling
with CSS on the Joomla documentation site.
• Box Width: You can specify the number of characters users can type in the search field.
By default, this option is set to 20, which means users can type search strings up to 20
characters in length.
• Text: If your site is set to use the English language file, Joomla displays the term
“search. . .” by default in the site search field, as shown in the following example:
Figure 17-28. The Advanced Parameters section for the Search module.
• Caching: By default, this option is set to Use Global, which means Joomla relies on
your site’s global caching settings, which are set on the System tab of the Global
Configuration page. Caching is enabled by default on Joomla servers, so unless you
turned it off, Joomla automatically caches this module.
• Cache Time: This field sets the period of time in minutes before Joomla re-caches the
module. The default setting is 900 minutes.
8. Click Save to save the Search module. The Menu Manager lists the new module and displays
a message indicating it was created.
Syndicate
When you create section and category menus you can syndicate them with RSS. When you
syndicate a menu, Joomla makes a news feeds available for it. Users can subscribe to news feeds
with a variety of devices, including their browsers, their websites, or other media like cell phones.
Each time you publish an article for a section or category associated with a syndicated menu, the
news feed delivers it to your subscribed users.
With the Syndicate module, you can add feed links directly to the landing pages of the section and
category menus for which you enabled syndication, like the example in Figure 17-29:
Figure 17-30. Complete the Details section for the syndicate module.
• Module Type: This field identifies the type of module you are creating (in this case,
mod_syndicate, which is Joomla’s name for the module).
• Title: Type a title for the module in this field. For example: “Subscribe,” “News Feed,”
“Feeds,” etc.
• Show Title: This parameter is set to Yes by default, which means it displays the
module’s title above the module, like the example in Figure 17-29. To hide the module’s
title, select No.
• Enabled: This parameter is set to Yes by default, which means users can see the module
when you save it.
• Position: For Figure 17-29, I set the position to “right” to show the module in the right
navigation column. Consider using the syndicate position, which is reserved for the
syndicate module.
• Order: Specifies the order in which the module appears in the module list on the Module
Manager page.
• Access Level: The Public option is selected by default, which means everyone who can
access your site can see the module. Select the desired access level in the list.
Figure 17-31. The Menu Assignment section for the syndicate module.
• Menus: By default, the All option is selected, which means the Syndicate module is
enabled for all sections and categories on your site. But, remember that this module only
displays on your syndicated menus. To limit the module to specific menus, select the
Select Menu Item(s) from the List option.
• Menu Selection: To enable Joomla to display the Syndicate module on the landing
pages of specific section or category menus, use the Shift or Ctrl keys to select them in
the list.
6. Complete the Module Parameters section:
Figure 17-32. The Module Parameters section for the syndicate module.
• Caching: “Never” is the only option available in the Caching list. Generally, when you
enable caching for a specific feature, Joomla saves an image of the feature and loads it
on the page instead of retrieving content from the database, which improves your site’s
performance. However, because the syndicated content available on your site may
change regularly, it is not practical for Joomla to cache the Syndicate module.
• Text: This is the hyperlink text that displays within the Syndicate module. This is the
link users click to subscribe to a news feed for the syndicated menu. In Figure 17-29, I
used “Syndicated Articles” as the text for the link. Use a phrase that communicates the
feature’s purpose to your audience. For example, you could provide text like “Subscribe
here,” or to spell it out a little more, “Subscribe to our articles.” Because subscriptions
are free, you could even use something like “Subscribe to our free articles.”
• Format: Select either RSS or Atom3 as the news feed format for the Syndicate module.
The Atom format was developed as an alternative to RSS to address some of its
limitations. However, RSS continues to be a widely-used news feed format.
• Module Class Suffix: Leave this field empty. It is used for custom module styling,
which is beyond the scope of this book. You can find information about module styling
with CSS on the Joomla documentation site.
7. Click Save to save the Syndicate module. The Menu Manager lists the new module and
displays a message indicating it was created.
Related Articles
The Related Articles module displays a list of articles related to a specific article open on your site.
For example, if users access a manual that is part of a set, you could use this module to list the other
manuals, like the example in Figure 17-33:
3.To learn more about the Atom format, see the Atom article on Wikipedia at the following address:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom_(standard)
Figure 17-34. The Details section for the Related Articles module.
• Module Type: This field identifies the type of module you are creating (in this case,
mod_related_items, which is Joomla’s name for the module).
• Title: Type a title for the module in this field. For example: “Related Articles,” “Related
Topics,” “Related Documents,” etc.
• Show Title: This parameter is set to Yes by default, which means it displays the
module’s title above the article list, like the example in Figure 17-33. To hide the
module’s title, select No.
• Enabled: This parameter is set to Yes by default, which means users can see the module
when you save it.
• Position: For Figure 17-33, I set the position to “right” to show the module in the right
navigation column. However, this module would also work well in the user 1, user 2,
top, and user 5 positions.
• Order: Specifies the order in which the module appears in the module list on the Module
Manager page.
• Access Level: The Public option is selected by default, which means everyone who can
access your site can see the module. Select the desired access level in the list.
Figure 17-35. The Menu Assignment section for the Related Articles module.
• Menus: By default, the All option is selected, which means the Related Articles module
is enabled for all sections and categories on your site. To limit the module to specific
menus, select the Select Menu Item(s) from the List option.
If you are building a technical documentation site, you may not publish many articles on
your site’s homepage. In this case, you may want to de-select the Home option in the
Menu Selection list. In fact, you may only want to display the Related Articles module
on category menus, where most of your articles will likely reside.
• Menu Selection: To enable Joomla to display the Related Articles module on the pages
of specific sections or categories of your site, use the Shift or Ctrl keys to select the
desired section or category menus.
6. Complete the Module Parameters section:
Figure 17-36. The Module Parameters section for the Related Articles Module.
• Show Date: To show the dates on which articles were written, select Show. Joomla
displays article creation dates in front of the article titles, like the example in Figure 17-
37:
Figure 17-37. Article creation dates added to the list of related topics.
• Module Class Suffix: Leave this field empty. It is used for custom module styling,
which is beyond the scope of this book. You can find information about module styling
with CSS on the Joomla documentation site.
7. Complete the Advanced Parameters section:
Figure 17-38. The Advanced Parameters section for the Related Articles module.
• Caching: By default, this option is set to No Caching, which means Joomla does not
cache the contents of the Related Articles module. If you select Use Global, caching
would then be enabled for the module only if you enabled it for the entire Joomla server
on the System configuration page in the Global Configuration manager. Because the
article list in the Related Articles module differs from article-to-article, it is not practical
for Joomla to cache this module.
• Caching time: If you enable caching for the module, enter the amount of time, in
minutes, in which you want Joomla to store the cache file before refreshing it.
8. Click Save to save the Related Articles module. The Menu Manager lists the new module
and displays a message indicating it was created.
Latest News
With the Latest News module, you can display a list of the most recently published articles on your
site, like the example in Figure 17-39:
Figure 17-40. The Details section for the Latest News module.
• Module Type: This is an uneditable field that identifies the type of module you are
creating (in this case, mod_latestnews, which is Joomla’s name for the module).
• Title: Type a title for the module in this field. For example: “Latest News” (which might
not be appropriate for a technical documentation site), “Recent Articles,” “New
Articles,” etc.
• Show Title: This parameter is set to Yes by default, which means it displays the
module’s title above the article list, like the example in Figure 17-39. To hide the
module’s title, select No.
• Enabled: This parameter is set to Yes by default, which means users can see the module
when you save it.
• Position: For Figure 17-39, I set the position to “right” to show the module in the right
navigation column. However, it would work well in the user 3 and user 5 positions.
• Order: Specifies the order in which the module appears in the module list on the Module
Manager page.
• Access Level: The Public option is selected by default, which means everyone who can
access your site can see the module. Select the desired access level in the list.
Figure 17-41. The Menu Assignment section for the Latest News module.
• Menus: By default, the All option is selected, which means the Latest News module is
enabled for all sections and categories on your site. To limit the module to specific
menus, select the Select Menu Item(s) from the List option.
• Menu Selection: To enable Joomla to display the Latest News module on the pages of
specific sections or categories of your site, use the Shift or Ctrl keys to select the desired
section or category menus.
6. Complete the Module Parameters section:
Figure 17-42. The Module Parameters section for the Latest News module.
• Count: This field includes “5” by default, which means Joomla displays the five most
recently published articles in the module. Type a larger or smaller number to increase or
decrease the number of articles for the module.
• Order: The Recently Added First option is selected by default, which means Joomla
automatically displays the most recently published article at the top of the module list.
To display the most recently modified article at the top of the list, select the Recently
Modified First option. This means Joomla displays both newly-published and recently-
modified articles in the module list.
• Authors: By default, Anyone is selected in the list, which means Joomla displays the
most recently-published articles by anyone with authoring privileges. To limit the
articles Joomla displays in the module to only those you publish on your site, select the
Added or modified by me option. Or, to exclude your articles from the module, select the
Not added or modified by me option.
• Front Page Articles: By default, the Show option is selected, which means Joomla lists
front page articles (that is, articles published on your site’s homepage) in the Latest
News module. However, if you display the Latest News module on your site’s
homepage, you may find listing front page articles in it is redundant. In this case, select
Hide to prevent Joomla from listing front page articles in the Latest News module.
• Section ID: You can enable Joomla to display the most recently published articles from
one or more sections of your site (meaning you can limit the articles Joomla displays in
this module to those from a specific section) by typing section ID numbers in this field.
You’ll have to go to the Section Manager to find them, so click Save to save your work
before exiting the Latest News module.
Select Section Manager from the Content menu to open the Section Manager. In the
section list, locate the title of the desired section and then its ID number, which is listed
in the ID column. Write down, or memorize, the section’s ID number.
Select Module Manager from the Extensions menu. Open the Latest News module you
just created and type the section’s ID number in the Section ID field. To display articles
from multiple sections, type their ID numbers in this field, separating each with a comma.
• Category ID: You can enable Joomla to display the most recently published articles
from one or more categories by typing their ID numbers in this field. You’ll have to
retrieve category IDs from the Category Manager, so click Save to save your work
before exiting the Latest News module.
Select Category Manager from the Content menu to open the Category Manager. Locate
the title of the desired category and then its ID number, which is listed in the ID column.
Write down, or memorize, the category’s ID number.
Select Module Manager from the Extensions menu. Open the Latest News module you
just created and type the category’s ID number in the Category ID field. To display
articles from multiple categories, type their ID numbers in this field, separating each with
a comma.
• Module Class Suffix: Leave this field empty. It is used for custom module styling,
which is beyond the scope of this book. You can find information about module styling
with CSS on the Joomla documentation site.
Figure 17-43. The Advanced Parameters section for the Latest News module.
• Caching: By default, this option is set to Use Global, which means Joomla relies on
your site’s global caching settings, which are set on the System tab of the Global
Configuration page. Caching is enabled by default on Joomla servers, so unless you
turned it off, Joomla automatically caches this module.
• Cache Time: This field sets the period of time in minutes before Joomla re-caches the
module. The default setting is 900 minutes.
8. Click Save to save the Latest News module. The Menu Manager lists the new module and
displays a message indicating it was created.
Figure 17-45. The Details section for the Most Read Content module.
• Module Type: This is an uneditable field that identifies the type of module you are
creating (in this case, mod_mostread, which is Joomla’s name for the module).
• Title: Type a title for the module in this field. For example: “Most Read,” “Most
Popular,” “Most Viewed,” etc.
• Show Title: This parameter is set to Yes by default, which it means it displays the
module’s title above the article list, like the example in Figure 17-44. To hide the
module’s title, select No.
• Enabled: This parameter is set to Yes by default, which means users can see the module
when you save it.
• Position: For Figure 17-44, I set the position to “right” to show the module in the right
navigation column. However, it would also work well in the user 1, user 2, top, and user
5 positions.
• Order: Specifies the order in which the module appears in the module list on the Module
Manager page.
• Access Level: The Public option is selected by default, which means everyone who can
access your site can see the module. Select the desired access level in the list.
Figure 17-46. The Menu Assignment section for the Most Read Content module.
• Menus: By default, the All option is selected, which means the Most Read Content
module is enabled for all sections and categories on your site. To limit the module to
specific menus, select the Select Menu Item(s) from the List option.
• Menu Selection: To enable Joomla to display the Most Read Content display on the
pages of specific sections or categories of your site, use the Shift or Ctrl keys to select
the desired section or category menus.
6. Complete the Module Parameters section:
Figure 17-47. The Module Parameters section for the Most Read Content module.
• Module Class Suffix: Leave this field empty. It is used for custom module styling,
which is beyond the scope of this book. You can find information about module styling
with CSS on the Joomla documentation site.
• Front Page Articles: By default, the Show option is selected, which means Joomla lists
front page articles (that is, articles published on your site’s homepage) in the Most Read
Content module. However, if you display the Most Read Content module on your site’s
homepage, you may find listing front page articles in the module is redundant. In this
case, select Hide to prevent Joomla from listing front page articles in the Most Read
Content module.
• Count: This field includes “5” by default, which means Joomla displays the five most
read articles in the module. Type a larger or smaller number to increase or decrease the
number of articles for the module.
• Category ID: You can enable Joomla to display the most read articles from one or more
categories by typing their ID numbers in this field. You’ll have to retrieve category IDs
from the Category Manager, so click Save to save your work before exiting the Edit
Module page.
Select Category Manager from the Content menu to open the Category Manager. Locate
the title of the desired category and then its ID number, which is listed in the ID column.
Write down, or memorize, the category’s ID number.
Select Module Manager from the Extensions menu to return to the Module Manager.
Open the Most Read Content module you just created and type the category’s ID number
in the Category ID field. To display articles from multiple categories, type their ID
numbers in this field, separating each with a comma.
• Section ID: You can enable Joomla to display the most read articles from one or more
sections of your site (meaning you can limit the articles Joomla displays in this module
to those from a specific section) by typing section ID numbers in this field. You’ll have
to go to the Section Manager to find them, so click Save to save your work before
exiting the Most Read Content module.
Select Section Manager from the Content menu to open the Section Manager. In the
section list, locate the title of the desired section and then its ID number, which is listed
in the ID column. Write down, or memorize, the section’s ID number.
Select Module Manager from the Extensions menu to return to the Module Manager.
Open the Most Read Content module you just created and type the section’s ID number
in the Section ID field. To display articles from multiple sections, type their ID numbers
in this field, separating each with a comma.
7. Complete the Advanced Parameters section:
Figure 17-48. The Advanced Parameters section for the Most Read Content module.
• Caching: By default, this option is set to Use Global, which means Joomla relies on
your site’s global caching settings, which are set on the System tab of the Global
Configuration page. Caching is enabled by default on Joomla servers, so unless you
turned it off, Joomla automatically caches this module.
• Cache Time: This field sets the period of time in minutes before Joomla re-caches the
module. The default setting is 900 minutes.
8. Click Save to save the Most Read Content module. The Menu Manager lists the new module
and displays a message indicating it was created.
News Flash
With the News Flash module, you can either display a single random article, or a series of articles
from a specific category of your site. As its name implies, a “news flash” is intended to provide
readers with quick access to information, whether a synopsis, a blurb about your site, or an
announcement about a product. For a technical documentation site, you could use the News Flash
module to display information about recently-published articles, like the example in Figure 17-49:
Figure 17-50. The Details section for the News Flash module.
• Module Type: This is an uneditable field that identifies the type of module you are
creating (in this case, mod_newsflash, which is Joomla’s name for the module).
• Title: Type a title for the module in this field. For example: “Newsflash,” “New,”
“Product Name,” etc.
• Show Title: This parameter is set to Yes by default, which it means it displays the
module’s title above the module, like the example in Figure 17-49. To hide the module’s
title, select No.
• Enabled: This parameter is set to Yes by default, which means users can see the module
when you save it.
• Position: For Figure 17-49, I set the position to “right” to show the module in the right
navigation column. However, it would work well in the user 3 and user 5 positions.
• Order: Specifies the order in which the module appears in the module list on the Module
Manager page.
• Access Level: The Public option is selected by default, which means everyone who can
access your site can see the module. Select the desired access level in the list.
Figure 17-51. The Menu Assignment section for the News Flash module.
• Menus: By default, the All option is selected, which means the News Flash module is
enabled for all sections and categories on your site. To limit the module to specific
menus, select the Select Menu Item(s) from the List option.
• Menu Selection: To enable Joomla to display the News Flash module on the pages of
specific sections or categories of your site, use the Shift or Ctrl keys to select the desired
section or category menus.
6. Complete the Module Parameters section:
Figure 17-52. The Module Parameters section for the News Flash module.
• Category: If you created a category specifically for news flash articles, select it from the
list. Remember that the News Flash module displays entire articles. If you select a
category that contains regular, full-length articles, the News Flash module displays
them.
• Layout: To enable the News Flash module to randomly display one article when users
access your site, select Randomly choose one at a time from the list. For example, if you
created a series of articles containing informational blurbs for a blog (e.g., inspirational
“thoughts of the day”), this option might be appropriate.
To enable the News Flash module to display multiple articles in a side-by-side
arrangement, like the example in Figure 17-53, select Horizontal:
sections above the Read More breaks. If you select Yes for the Article Title parameter,
and you select Yes for the Title Linkable parameter, readers can click the article’s title to
jump to the full article, like the example in Figure 17-55:
• Article Title: By default, the No option is selected, which means the News Flash module
does not display article titles. Remember that you are trying to keep the space taken up
by the News Flash module to a minimum. Adding article titles increases the size of the
module, as you can see in Figure 17-55.
To enable the News Flash module to display article titles, select Yes.
• # of Articles: To limit the number of articles the News Flash module can display, type
the maximum article limit in this field. If you specify an article limit, the News Flash
module displays articles according to their order in the article list from the top to the
bottom of the list.
• Module Class Suffix: Leave this field empty. It is used for custom module styling,
which is beyond the scope of this book. You can find information about module styling
with CSS on the Joomla documentation site.
7. Complete the Advanced Parameters section:
Figure 17-57. The Advanced Parameters section for the News Flash module.
• Caching: By default, this option is set to Use Global, which means Joomla relies on
your site’s global caching settings, which are set on the System tab of the Global
Configuration page. Caching is enabled by default on Joomla servers, so unless you
turned it off, Joomla automatically caches this module.
• Cache Time: This field sets the period of time in minutes before Joomla re-caches the
module. The default setting is 900 minutes.
8. Click Save to save the News Flash module. The Menu Manager lists the new module and
displays a message indicating it was created.
Polls
With the Polls module, you can create a simple, one-question poll to capture feedback from your
users, like the example in Figure 17-58
To create a poll:
1. Choose Polls from the Components menu. The Poll Manager opens.
2. Click New. The New Poll page opens.
Figure 17-62. The Menu Assignment section for the Poll module.
• Menus: By default, the All option is selected, which means the Poll module is enabled
for all sections and categories on your site. To limit the module to specific menus, select
the Select Menu Item(s) from the List option.
• Menu Selection: To enable Joomla to display the Poll module on the pages of specific
sections or categories of your site, use the Shift or Ctrl keys to select the desired section
or category menus.
6. Complete the Module Parameters section.
Figure 17-63. The Module Parameters section for the Poll module.
• Poll: Select the title poll you create with the Poll manager.
• Module Class Suffix: Leave this field empty. It is used for custom module styling,
which is beyond the scope of this book. You can find information about module styling
with CSS on the Joomla documentation site.
7. Complete the Advanced Parameters section:
Figure 17-64. The Advanced Parameters section for the Poll module.
• Caching: By default, this option is set to Use Global, which means Joomla relies on
your site’s global caching settings, which are set on the System tab of the Global
Configuration page. Caching is enabled by default on Joomla servers, so unless you
Random Images
The Random Image module randomly retrieves and displays images on your site, like the example
in Figure 17-65:
Figure 17-65. The Random Images module randomly retrieves and displays images on your site.
For a corporate publishing site, you could use this module to randomly display product logos or
hardware images for applicable section menus.
The process of creating a Random Image module includes the following steps:
1. Create a sub-folder in the stories folder on Joomla’s file system where you can upload the
images for the module. See the “Working with Image and Multimedia Folders” section on
page 153 to learn how to create a folder on Joomla’s file system.
2. Upload the images you want the module to randomly retrieve and display on your site to the
folder you created in step 1.
3. Create the Random Image module, providing the path to the folder you created in step 1.
Figure 17-66. The Details section for the Random Image module.
• Module Type: This is an uneditable field that identifies the type of module you are
creating (in this case, mod_random_image, which is Joomla’s name for the module).
• Title: Type a title for the module in this field.
• Show Title: This parameter is set to Yes by default, which it means it displays the
module’s title above the module, like the example in Figure 17-65. To hide the module’s
title, select No.
• Enabled: This parameter is set to Yes by default, which means users can see the module
when you save it.
• Position: Select the desired position from the list, excluding the user 4, hornav,
breadcrumbs, banner, footer, and syndicate positions. If you use large images, try the
“right” module position first.
• Order: Specifies the order in which the module appears in the module list on the Module
Manager page.
• Access Level: The Public option is selected by default, which means everyone who can
access your site can see the module. Select the desired access level in the list.
Figure 17-67. The Menu Assignment section for the Random Image module.
• Menus: By default, the All option is selected, which means the Random Image module
is enabled for all sections and categories on your site. To limit the module to specific
menus, select the Select Menu Item(s) from the List option.
• Menu Selection: To enable Joomla to display the Random Image module on the pages
of specific sections or categories of your site, use the Shift or Ctrl keys to select the
desired section or category menus.
6. Complete the Module Parameters section:
Figure 17-68. The Module Parameters section for the Random Image module.
• Image Type: Type the file format of the images you uploaded to the server for the
Random Image module. If you uploaded images in multiple file formats, separate each
with a comma like the following example:
jpg,png,gif
• Image Folder: Type the path to the folder into which you uploaded images for the
module in the stories folder on Joomla’s file system. The path should start with
images/stories. For example, if you created a folder named random-images in the stories
folder, you would type the following path in the Image Folder field:
images/stories/random-images
• Link: To enable the images to act as hyperlinks that open another website when clicked,
type the full address of the external site in this field. For example, if you were creating a
Random Image module to display product images, and you wanted the module to act as
a link to your corporate website, you would type the full address for your corporate site
in this field.
• Width (px): To enable the module to resize all images to as specific width, type the
desired width in this field in pixels.
• Height (px): To enable the module to resize all image to a specific height, type the
desired height in this field in pixels.
• Module Class Suffix: Leave this field empty. It is used for custom module styling,
which is beyond the scope of this book. You can find information about module styling
with CSS on the Joomla documentation site.
7. Complete the Advanced Parameters section:
Figure 17-69. The Advanced Parameters section for the Random Image module.
• Caching: By default, this option is set to Use Global, which means Joomla relies on
your site’s global caching settings, which are set on the System tab of the Global
Configuration page. Caching is enabled by default on Joomla servers, so unless you
turned it off, Joomla automatically caches this module.
• Cache Time: This field sets the period of time in minutes before Joomla re-caches the
module. The default setting is 900 minutes.
8. Click Save to save the Random Image module. The Menu Manager lists the new module and
displays a message indicating it was created.
Figure 17-70. A Custom HTML module that contains text, graphics, and hyperlinks.
If Joomla’s other modules don’t meet your needs, you may be able to create one with the Custom
HTML module.
Figure 17-71. The Details section for the Custom HTML module.
• Module Type: This is an uneditable field that identifies the type of module you are
creating (in this case, mod_custom, which is Joomla’s name for the module).
• Title: Type a title for the module in this field.
• Show Title: This parameter is set to Yes by default, which it means it displays the
module’s title above the module, like the example in Figure 17-70. To hide the module’s
title, select No.
• Enabled: This parameter is set to Yes by default, which means users can see the module
when you save it.
• Position: Select the desired position from the list, excluding the user 4, hornav,
breadcrumbs, banner, footer, and syndicate positions. If you create a custom HTML
module that requires a lot of space, try the “right” module position first.
• Order: Specifies the order in which the module appears in the module list on the Module
Manager page.
• Access Level: The Public option is selected by default, which means everyone who can
access your site can see the module. Select the desired access level in the list.
Figure 17-72. The Menu Assignment section for the Custom HTML module.
• Menus: By default, the All option is selected, which means the Custom HTML module
is enabled for all sections and categories on your site. To limit the module to specific
menus, select the Select Menu Item(s) from the List option.
• Menu Selection: To enable Joomla to display the Custom HTML on the pages of
specific sections or categories of your site, use the Shift or Ctrl keys to select the desired
section or category menus.
6. Complete the Module Parameters section:
Figure 17-73. The Module Parameters section for the Custom HTML module.
• Module Class Suffix: Leave this field empty. It is used for custom module styling,
which is beyond the scope of this book. You can find information about module styling
with CSS on the Joomla documentation site.
7. Finally, supply the content of the Custom HTML module in the Custom Output section:
Figure 17-74. Add the content you want to display for the Custom HTML module in the Custom Output
section.
The Custom Output section displays the TinyMCE editor, which provides the features you
normally use for article writing. With TinyMCE, you can write and format text, as well as
insert images, links, and tables for your custom module.
8. Click Save to save the Custom HTML module. The Menu Manager lists the new module and
displays a message indicating it was created.
Figure 17-77. The Menu Assignment section for the Wrapper module.
• Menus: By default, the All option is selected, which means the Wrapper module is
enabled for all sections and categories on your site. To limit the module to specific
menus, select the Select Menu Item(s) from the List option.
• Menu Selection: To enable Joomla to display the Wrapper module on the pages of
specific sections or categories of your site, use the Shift or Ctrl keys to select the desired
section or category menus.
6. Complete the Module Parameters section:
Figure 17-78. The Module Parameters section for the Wrapper module.
• Module Class Suffix: Leave this field empty. It is used for custom module styling,
which is beyond the scope of this book. You can find information about module styling
with CSS on the Joomla documentation site.
• URL: Type, or copy and paste, the address of the website you want to display inside of
the wrapper.
• Scroll Bars: Indicate whether you want the wrapper to display scroll bars. Auto is
selected by default, which means if the site exceeds either the width or height
parameters you specify in the fields below, it displays either a horizontal or vertical
scroll bar, or both, as necessary. Select No to disable scroll bars, or Yes to ensure Joomla
always displays scroll bars.
• Width: By default, width is set to 100% which means the wrapper fits the entire width of
the external site in the IFrame. However, the amount of the external site that displays in
the IFrame is limited to where you position it. If you enable scroll bars, users can scroll
to see the entire page. To specify an exact width for the page within wrapper, type the it
in pixels in this field.
• Height: This field works in conjunction with the Auto Height parameter. If you set the
Auto Option to Yes (it is set to Yes by default), then Joomla makes the wrapper module
as high as necessary to fit the external website. However, to control the wrapper height,
set Auto Height to No and then type the desired height in this field in pixels.
• Auto Height: This parameter is set to Yes by default, which means the IFrame wrapper
stretches to the full height of the external website. To make the IFrame a specific height,
set this parameter to No, and type the desired height in the Height field in pixels.
• Auto Add: This parameter, which is set to Yes by default, enables Joomla to
automatically prepend either the “http,” or https” prefix to addresses in the URL field
when missing from the address.
• Target Name: If desired, you can type a target name in this field that allows you to
access the IFrame via a script from another area of your site.
7. Complete the Advanced Parameters section:
Figure 17-79. The Advanced Parameters section for the Wrapper module.
• Caching: By default, this option is set to Use Global, which means Joomla relies on
your site’s global caching settings, which are set on the System tab of the Global
Configuration page. Caching is enabled by default on Joomla servers, so unless you
turned it off, Joomla automatically caches this module.
• Cache Time: This field sets the period of time in minutes before Joomla re-caches the
module. The default setting is 900 minutes.
8. Click Save to save the Wrapper module. The Menu Manager lists the new module and
displays a message indicating it was created.
2. Create a banner category. To display banners for multiple customers, you may want to
organize them in separate categories. But, at minimum, you must create one banner category
for your site.
3. Create a banner client, which is a record of the company for whom you are posting banner
images on your site.
4. Create the banner itself, which links the category and client and enables you display banner
images on your site.
5. Create a banner module for positioning and displaying banners at specific locations on your
site’s front end.
On a Linux-based system, the banners folder is located at a path similar to the following:
var/www/html/joomla/images/banners
To learn how to upload image files to Joomla’s file system with the Media Manager, see “Working
with Image and Multimedia Files” on page 155.
• Alias: Leave this field empty. When you save the banner category, Joomla automatically
populates this field with an alias generated from the category’s title.
• Published: By default, Yes is selected, which means the banner category becomes active
when you save it.
• Access Level: This parameter is not applicable to banner categories. You can leave the
default selection.
• Image: This parameter is also not applicable. That is, the banner category does not
display on your site’s front end, so there is no need to select an image.
• Image position: This parameter is not applicable.
4. You can add a banner description in the Description section. However, because the banner
category does not display on your site’s front end, you only see this description when
opening the banner category from the back end for editing.
5. Click Save.
Creating Banners
After creating banner a banner category and client, you are ready to create the banner itself. This
process links the banner image with the appropriate banner category and client and makes it
available for display on your site.
To create a banner:
1. On the Banner Client Manager page, click the Banners link above the clients list; otherwise,
choose Banner from the Components menu and then select Banners. The Banner Manager
opens:
• Sticky: This options sets a banner’s display priority when you need to rotate more than
one banner into the banner position on your site. If your customer requires a specific
impression count (an impression is the number of times a banner displays on your site),
but you want to display several banners on your page, setting the Sticky option to Yes
enables Joomla display the banner until it meets the impression requirements. After
Joomla displays the sticky banner the required number of times, it starts displaying the
non-sticky banners in the banner position.
• Order: This option determines the order in which the banner displays in the banner list
on the Banner Manager page. If you leave it empty, Joomla automatically appends the
banner to the end of the list.
• Category: Select the banner category you want to associate with the banner.
• Client name: Select the banner client you want to associate with the banner.
• Impressions Purchased: If your customer requested that the banner display a specific
number of times on your site (called an “impression”), type the impression count here.
• Click URL: Type the URL supplied by the customer’s site in this field. When users click
the banner, it opens a new browser window and display the contents of the site at the
address.
• Clicks: This field displays the number of times users have clicked the banner (it is
empty, of course, when you create a new banner). You can also see the number of clicks
in the Clicks column on the banner list. To reset the click count, you would edit the
banner and click Reset Clicks.
• Custom Banner Code: To enable Joomla to perform specific tasks, like turning off
specific browser elements when users click the banner, type the code for performing
these tasks in this field.
• Description/Notes: To provide a description of the banner for your record keeping, type
one here. This does not display with the banner on your site’s front end.
• Banner Image Selector: Select the image you want to use for the banner from the list.
This would be the image you uploaded to the banners folder in Joomla’s file system.
When you select an image from the list, it displays in the Banner Image field.
• Width: By default, Joomla displays the banner in its real size. However, to change the
image’s width, type the desired width, in pixels, in this field.
• Height: To change the image’s height, type the desired height, in pixels, in this field.
• Tags: If desired, you can match banners to specific articles published on your site. In
this case you would add a specific keyword to the article and you would then type the
same keyword in the Tags field.
4. Click Save.
• Order: Specifies the order in which the module appears in the module list on the Module
Manager page.
• Access Level: The Public option is selected by default, which means everyone who can
access your site can see the banner. Select the desired access level from the list.
5. Complete the Menu Assignment section:
Figure 18-9. The Menu Assignment section for the Banner module.
• Menus: By default, the All option is selected, which means the Banner module is
enabled for all sections and categories on your site. To limit the module to specific
menus, select the Select Menu Item(s) from the List option.
• Menu Selection: To enable Joomla to display the Banner module on the pages of
specific sections or categories of your site, use the Shift or Ctrl keys to select the desired
section or category menus
Figure 18-10. The Module Parameters section for the banner module.
• Target: Indicate how you want Joomla to display the website at the address underlying
the banner when users click on it. The New Window with Browser Navigation option is
selected by default, which means when users click the banner, Joomla launches a new
window on top of your site to display the page at the banner address.
To enable Joomla to launch a new browser window without the standard browser
navigation features (that is, hiding the browser’s address bar and toolbars), select New
Window without Browser Navigation.
To enable Joomla to open the address in the current browser window, navigating away
from your site, select Parent Window with Browser Navigation.
• Count: Identify how many banners are associated with the module. While you don’t
assign banners directly to banner modules, you do associate them with banner
categories and banner clients, which you do directly assign to banner modules.
• Banner Client: Select the name of the banner client you want to associate with the
module.
• Category: Select the name of the banner category you want to associate with the
module.
• Search By Tags: To display a banner for a specific article on your site, select this option
to enable Joomla to match the banner tag with the article keyword.
• Randomise: When more than one banner is associated with a banner module, indicate
how you want Joomla to prioritize how it displays them.
The Sticky, Ordering option, which is selected by default, means Joomla displays the
sticky banners first until they meet their allotted impression counts. Then, after
displaying the sticky banners, it displays the other banners in order (this is their order in
the banner list on the Banner Manager).
With the Sticky, Randomise option, Joomla displays the banners in a random order, but
only displaying the sticky banners until they meet their impression counts.
• Header Text: To display text above the banners, type it in this field. Figure 18-11 shows
where Joomla places header text for banners:
Figure 18-13. The Advanced Parameters section for the banner module.
• Caching: By default, this option is set to Use Global, which means Joomla relies on
your site’s global caching settings, which are set on the System tab of the Global
Configuration page. Caching is enabled by default on Joomla servers, so unless you
turned it off, Joomla automatically caches this module.
• Cache Time: This field sets the period of time in minutes before Joomla re-caches the
module. The default setting is 900 minutes.
8. Click Save. To see how the new banner looks on your site, access your site’s front end.
• Track Banner Impression Times: To enable Joomla to track the number of times banners
display on your site, click Yes. When enabled, Joomla displays the current impression
count for each banner in the Impressions column in the banner list on the Banner
Manager, as shown in Figure 18-15:
Figure 19-3. The Details section for the news feed category.
• Title: Type a title in this field that represents the contents of the news feed category.
Please note that if you create either a Category Layout or a Category List Layout menu,
users can see this title on the news feed landing page.
• Alias: Leave this field empty. When you save the news feed category, Joomla
automatically populates this field with an alias generated from its title.
• Published: By default, Yes is selected, which means the news feed category is available
for use when you save it.
• Section: This parameter is not applicable to the news feed category.
• Access Level: The Public option is selected by default, which means everyone who can
access your site can see the syndicated articles in the news feed. Select the desired
access level in the list.
• Category Order: Determines the feed category’s order in the list on the Feed Category
Manager.
• Image: To add an image to the category landing page, select one from the available list.
To use a custom image, you’ll need to first upload it to the stories folder on the Joomla
file system. If you add a category description in the Description section, this image
appears either to the left or right of the description text, depending on whether you
select left or right for the Image Position parameter.
Figure 19-4 shows the feed category image positioned on the left side of the category
description:
1.RSS, which stands for Really Simple Syndication, and Atom are the two most common feed protocols.
Figure 19-6. Copy the address for the feed subscription from the address bar.
3. Then, I opened a text editor (specifically, Notepad) and pasted the copied address onto a
blank page.
4. When I created the news feed, I simply copied the subscription URL from Notepad and
pasted it into the appropriate field.
• Category: Select the news feed category you want to associate with the news feed.
• Link: If you know the subscription URL for the news feed, type it in this field. If you
copied it from your browser’s address bar and pasted it into a text editor, copy and paste
it from the text editor into this field.
• Number of Articles: By default, Joomla is configured to display five syndicated articles
from the external site. Change this number as necessary for your site.
• Cache Time: This is a key setting that determines how often Joomla refreshes the
contents of the news feed. The default setting is 3600 seconds, which equals one hour.
To enable Joomla to update the news feed either more or less often, type the desired
cache update time in this field in seconds. According to the Joomla documentation site,
having Joomla check for updates more often means more network traffic and slower
load times.
• Order: Determines the order in which the news feed displays in the feed list on the News
Feed Manager and on the feed category landing page.
• RTL Feed: If you are creating a feed that displays syndicated articles written in a
language that runs right-to-left, select Right to Left Direction from the list.
4. Click Save. Access your site’s front end and verify that the news feed is working. When you
click a feed name of the feed category landing page, you should see syndicated articles from
the external site, like the example in Figure 19-1 on page 365.
5. Continue to one of the following sections: the “Creating News Feed Menus” section on page
371.
Figure 19-9. The Single Feed Layout menu displays syndicated articles for a single news feed.
Figure 19-11. The Menu Item Details section for the news feed menu.
• Title: This is the title Joomla displays for the menu on your site’s front end. Consider
using a title that communicates the menu’s purpose: that it displays syndicated articles
from external websites. For example, you could title it something like “External News
Feeds,” “News Feeds,” or even “Syndicated News.”
• Alias: Leave this field empty. When you save the feed menu, Joomla automatically
populates this field with an alias generated from the title.
• Link: This field is automatically pre-populated with an internal link for the menu. Do
not change it.
• Display in: Select the name of the menu system to which you are adding the news feed
menu.
• Parent item: This field lists all other news feed menus, but is empty when you create the
first menu, like the example in Figure 19-11. If you create multiple news feed menus,
you could make one feed menu the child of another feed menu.
• Published: By default, Yes is selected, which means the news feed menu becomes
available to users on your site’s front end when you save it.
• Order: Determines the order in which the news feed displays in the list on the Menu
Item Manager.
• Access Level: The Public option is selected by default, which means everyone who can
access your site can see the news feed menu. Select the desired access level from the
list.
• On Click, Open in: Indicate how you want Joomla to display the news feed content
when users select the menu:
• Parent Window with Browser Navigation: Enable Joomla to display a list of
syndicated articles from the news feed in the current browser window with the
existing browser navigation features.
• New Window with Browser Navigation: Enable Joomla to display a list of
syndicated articles from the news feed in a new browser that opens on top of your
site. The new window displays standard browser navigation features.
• New Window without Browser Navigation: Enable Joomla to display a list of
syndicated articles from the news feed in a new browser window without the
standard browser navigation features (that is, hiding the browser’s address bar and
toolbars).
6. Complete the Parameters (Basic) section:
Figure 19-12. The Parameters (Basic) section for the Single Feed Layout menu.
• Feed: Select the name of the news feed you want to assign directly to the feed menu.
7. By default, all parameters in the Parameters (Component) section are set to Use Global, as
shown in Figure 19-13:
Figure 19-13. The Parameters Component section for the Single Feed Layout menu.
This means they inherit their settings from the News Feeds Global Configuration Manager.
If you select a specific setting for any of these parameters, it overrides the global setting. For
now, I recommend leaving them all set to Use Global. When you finish creating the news
feed menu, continue to the “Configuring Global News Feed Parameters” section on page 383
for an explanation of each parameter. After setting them globally, you can edit your news
feed menu and override them as desired.
8. Complete the Parameters (System) section:
Figure 19-14. The Parameters (System) section for the Single Feed Layout menu.
• Page Title: Joomla automatically creates a page title for the menu system using the
name you typed in Title field in the Menu Item Details section. In addition, this title
displays on the menu landing page. If desired you can display a different name on the
menu landing page by overriding it with a different page title in this field.
While you can use a page title that is different from the menu title, a menu landing page
title that doesn’t match the menu title could be confusing for your users.
• Show the Page Title: This option is set to Yes by default, which means Joomla displays
a title on the menu landing page. To disable this feature, select No.
• Page Class Suffix: If desired, you can format the landing page for the feed menu with a
unique layout style. However, the process of creating custom page layouts is beyond the
scope of this book and I recommend leaving this field empty for now.
• Menu Image: You can display an image on the news feed menu, like the example in
Figure 19-15:
Figure 19-16. The Category Layout menu displays the news feed category landing page.
To access the syndicated articles for a specific news feed, users must click a news feed link on the
news feed landing page.
• Link: This field is automatically pre-populated with an internal link for the menu. Do
not change it.
• Display in: Select the name of the menu system to which you are adding the news feed
menu. If you created a separate menu system for news feed menus, select it from this
list. To add the news feed menu to an existing menu system, select it from the list.
• Parent item: This field lists all other feed menus, but is empty when you create the first
menu, like the example in Figure 19-11 on page 374. With this feature, you could make
one feed menu the child of another feed menu.
• Published: By default, Yes is selected, which means the news feed menu becomes
available to users on your site’s front end when you save it.
• Order: Determines the order in which the news feed displays in the feed list on the
Menu Item Manager.
• Access Level: The Public option is selected by default, which means everyone who can
access your site can see the news feed menu. Select the desired access level from the
list.
• On Click, Open in: Indicate how you want Joomla to display the news feed content
when users select the menu:
• Parent Window with Browser Navigation: Enable Joomla to display the news feed
list in the current browser window.
• New Window with Browser Navigation: Enable Joomla to display the news feed
list in a new browser window that opens on top of your site. The new window
displays standard browser navigation features.
• New Window without Browser Navigation: Enable Joomla to display the news feed
list in a new browser window without the standard browser navigation features
(that is, hiding the browser’s address bar and toolbars).
6. Complete the Parameters (Basic) section:
Figure 19-17. Options in the Parameters (Basic) section for the Category Layout menu.
• Category: Select the feed category you want to associate with the feed menu.
• Show Limit Box: Show Limit Box: By default, Show is selected, which displays a limit
box, like the example in Figure 19-18, on the category landing page:
9. Click Save. Access your site’s front end and test the new menu.
Figure 19-19. The Category List menu displays a list of all news feed categories.
To access syndicated articles from a Category List Layout menu, users will do the following:
1. Click the news feed menu to display the feed category list on the news feed landing page,
like the example in Figure 19-19.
2. Click a category link to see a list of the feeds you created for that category.
3. Click a feed link to see a list of the syndicated articles from the news feed.
from external websites. For example, you could title it something like “External News
Feeds,” “News Feeds,” or even “Syndicated News.”
• Alias: Leave this field empty. When you save the feed menu, Joomla automatically
populates this field with an alias generated from the title.
• Link: This field is automatically pre-populated with an internal link for the menu. Do
not change it.
• Display in: Select the name of the menu system to which you are adding the news feed
menu. If you created a separate menu system for news feed menus, select it from this
list. To add the news feed menu to an existing menu system, select it from the list.
• Parent item: This field lists all other feed menus, but is empty when you create the first
menu. With this feature, you could make one feed menu the child of another feed menu.
If you create multiple news feed menus, you could use this feature to make one news
feed menu the child of another news feed menu.
• Published: By default, Yes is selected, which means the news feed menu becomes
available to users on your site’s front end when you save it.
• Order: Determines the order in which the news feed displays in the feed list on the
Menu Item Manager.
• Access Level: The Public option is selected by default, which means everyone who can
access your site can see the news feed menu on your site. Select the desired access level
in the list.
• On Click, Open in: Indicate how you want Joomla to display the news feed content
when users select the menu:
• Parent Window with Browser Navigation: Enable Joomla to display the news feed
category list in the current browser window.
• New Window with Browser Navigation: Enable Joomla to display the news feed
category list in a new browser window that opens on top of your site. The new
window displays standard browser navigation features.
• New Window without Browser Navigation: Enable Joomla to display the news feed
category list in a new browser window without the standard browser navigation
features (that is, hiding the browser’s address bar and toolbars).
Figure 19-20. The Parameters (Basic) section for the Category List Layout menu.
• Show Limit Box: By default, Show is selected, which displays a limit box like the
example in Figure 19-18 on page 379 on the category landing page. By default the limit
is set to display 20 feeds on the category landing page. Users can use this feature to
change the number of feeds displaying on the category landing page. To enable Joomla
to display all news feed categories, and hide the category limit box, select Hide.
• Description: To enable users to see a description of the news feeds on the category list
landing page, select Show and then type a description in the Description Text field.
• Description Text: To display a description of the news feed categories on the category
list landing page, type one here. This description displays above the individual category
links, and next to the description image, like the example in Figure 19-21:
Figure 19-21. A news feed category description and image on the news feed landing page.
• Image: To display an image next to the description text on the category list landing
page, like the example in Figure 19-21, select an image from the list. To use a custom
image, you must upload it first to the stories folder in Joomla’s file system.
• Image Align: If you select an image from the Image list, specify whether it should
display on the left side or the right side of the description text.
7. By default, all parameters in the Parameters (Component) section are set to Use Global. This
means they inherit the global settings configured on the News Feeds Global Configuration
Manager. If you select a specific setting for any of these parameters, it overrides the global
setting. For now, I recommend leaving them all set to Use Global. When you finish creating
the news feed menu, continue to the “Configuring Global News Feed Parameters” section on
page 383 for an explanation of each of these parameters. After setting them globally, you can
edit your news feed menus and override them as necessary.
8. Complete the Parameters (System) section:
• Page Title: Joomla automatically creates a page title for the menu system using the
name you typed in Title field in the Menu Item Details section. You can override the
title on the menu landing page by typing one in the Page Title field.
While you can use a page title that is different from the menu title, a menu landing page
title that doesn’t match the menu title could be confusing for your users.
• Show the Page Title: This option is set to Yes by default, which means Joomla displays
a title on the menu landing page. To disable this feature, select No.
• Page Class Suffix: If desired, you can format the landing page for the feed menu with a
unique layout style. However, the process of creating custom page layouts is beyond the
scope of this book and I recommend leaving this field empty for now.
• Menu Image: If desired, you can display images next to the news feed menu, like the
example in Figure 19-15 on page 376. To display a custom image next to the feed menu,
you must first upload it to the stories folder in Joomla’s file system. Also, remember
that you must enable the menu system’s supporting menu module to display menu
images (set Show Menu Images to Yes in the Other Parameters section on the menu
module).
• SSL Enabled: If you installed a security certificate for your site and you want to enable
SSL for the news feed menu, select On. Otherwise, leave Ignore selected.
9. Click Save. Access your site’s front end and test the new menu.
2.You can find the definition of the Link Column on the Joomla documentation site at the following address:
http://docs.joomla.org/Screen.newsfeeds.15
list landing page for the Category List Layout menu, as illustrated in Figure 19-24:
Figure 19-26. Syndicated article content limited by the Word Count field.
4. When you finish configuring the global news feed parameters, click Save.
Figure 20-3. The Details section for the web links category.
• Title: Type a title in this field that represents the contents of the web links category.
Please note that if you create either a Category List Layout or a Web Link Category List
Layout menu, users can see this title on the web links landing page.
• Alias: Leave this field empty. When you save the web links category, Joomla
automatically populates this field with an alias generated from its title.
• Published: By default, Yes is selected, which means the web links category becomes
available for use when you save it.
• Section: This parameter is not applicable to the web links category.
• Category Order: Determines the order of the web links category in the list on the Web
Links Category Manager.
• Access Level: The Public option is selected by default, which means everyone who can
access your site can see the links to external sites. Select the desired access level in the
list.
• Image: To add an image to the web links landing page, select one from the list. To use a
custom image, you must upload it to the stories folder in Joomla’s file system. If you
add a category description in the Description section, this image appears either to the
left or right of the description text, depending on whether you select left or right for the
Image Position parameter.
Figure 20-4 shows the web link category image positioned on the left side of the category
description:
Figure 20-7. The Category List Layout menu displays all links associated with a single category.
options:
Figure 20-9. The Menu Item Details section for the Category List Layout Menu.
• Title: This is the title Joomla displays for the menu on your site’s front end.
• Alias: Leave this field empty. When you save the web links menu, Joomla automatically
populates this field with an alias generated from the title.
• Link: This field is automatically pre-populated with an internal link for the menu. Do
not change it.
• Display in: Select the name of the menu system to which you are adding the web link
menu.
• Parent Item: This field lists all other web link menus. However, this list is empty if you
created a stand-alone menu system for web link menus, like the example in Figure 20-9.
If you create multiple web link menus, you could use this feature to make one web link
menu the child of another web link menu.
• Published: By default, Yes is selected, which means the web link menu becomes
available to users on your site’s front end when you save it.
• Order: Determines the order in which the web link menu displays in the list on the Menu
Item Manager.
• Access Level: The Public option is selected by default, which means everyone who can
access your site can see the web links menu. Select the desired access level from the list.
• On Click, Open in: Indicate how you want Joomla to display the links to external
websites when users select the menu:
• Parent Window with Browser Navigation: Enable Joomla to display the list of links
to external websites in the current browser window.
• New Window with Browser Navigation: Enable Joomla to display the links to
external websites in a new browser window that opens on top of your site. The new
window displays standard browser navigation features.
• New Window without Browser Navigation: Enable Joomla to display the list of
links to external websites in a new browser window without the standard browser
navigation features (that is, hiding the browser’s address bar and toolbars).
6. Complete the Parameters (Basic) section:
Figure 20-10. The Parameters (Basic) section on the Category List Layout Menu.
• Category: Select the name of the web links category you want to assign to the menu.
• Show a Feed Link: By default, Yes is selected, which means the content of the web links
menu is syndicated. This option activates an RSS feed link that users can click to
subscribe to content on the menu.
7. By default, all parameters in the Parameters (Component) section are set to Use Global, as
shown in Figure 20-11:
Figure 20-11. The Parameters (Component) section on the Category List Layout menu.
This means they inherit their settings from the Web Links Global Configuration Manager. If
you select a specific setting for any of these parameters, it overrides the global setting. For
now, I recommend leaving them all set to Use Global. Please note that the Web Links
Introduction field is only applicable to the Web Links Category List Layout menu.
When you finish creating the web link menu, continue to the “Configuring Global Web Link
Parameters” section on page 408 for an explanation the parameters in the Parameters
(Component) section. After setting them globally, you can edit your web link menu and
override them as desired.
8. Complete the Parameters (system) section:
Figure 20-12. The Parameters (System) section on the Category List Layout Menu.
• Page Title: Joomla automatically creates a page title for the web links landing page from
the name you typed in Title field in the Menu Item Details section. However, if desired,
you can override it by typing a page title in this field. This means Joomla displays the
title you type in this field on the web links landing page. Please note that a title on the
web links landing page that differs from the menu title could be confusing for your
users.
• Show the Page Title: This option is set to Yes by default, which means Joomla displays
a title on the menu landing page. To disable this feature, select No.
• Page Class Suffix: If desired, you can format the web links landing page with a unique
layout style. However, the process of creating custom page layouts for a web links
landing page is beyond the scope of this book and I recommend leaving this field empty
for now.
• Menu Image: You can display an image on the web links menu, like the example in
Figure 20-13:
• SSL Enabled: If you installed a security certificate for your site and you want to enable
SSL for the web links menu, select On. Otherwise, leave Ignore selected.
9. Click Save. Access your site’s front end and test the new menu.
Figure 20-14. The Category List menu displays a list of all news feed categories.
Figure 20-15. The Menu Item Details page for the Web Link Category List Layout menu.
• Title: This is the title Joomla displays for the menu on your site’s front end.
• Alias: Leave this field empty. When you save the web links menu, Joomla automatically
populates this field with an alias generated from the title.
• Link: This field is automatically pre-populated with an internal link for the menu. Do
not change it.
• Display in: Select the name of the menu system to which you are adding the web link
menu.
• Parent Item: This field lists all other web link menus. However, this list is empty if you
created a stand-alone menu system for web link menus, like the example in Figure 20-
15. If you create multiple web link menus, you could use this feature to make one web
link menu the child of another web link menu.
• Published: By default, Yes is selected, which means the web link menu becomes
available to users on your site’s front end when you save it.
• Order: Determines the order in which the web link menu displays in the list on the Menu
Item Manager.
• Access Level: The Public option is selected by default, which means everyone who can
access your site can see the web links menu. Select the desired access level from the list.
• On Click, Open in: Indicate how you want Joomla to display the list of links to external
websites when users select the menu:
• Parent Window with Browser Navigation: Enable Joomla to display the list of links
to external websites in the current browser window.
• New Window with Browser Navigation: Enable Joomla to display the list of links
to external websites in a new browser window that opens on top of your site. The
new window displays standard browser navigation features.
• New Window without Browser Navigation: Enable Joomla to display the list of
links to external websites in a new browser window without the standard browser
navigation features (that is, hiding the browser’s address bar and toolbars).
6. Complete the Parameters (Basic) section:
Figure 20-16. The Parameters (Basic) section on the Web Link Category List Layout menu.
• Image: You can display an image on the web links landing page next to the web links
description like the example in Figure 20-17:
Figure 20-17. A description of the web links with an image on the web links landing page.
• Image Align: If you select an image from the Image list, specify whether it should
display on the left side or the right side of the description text.
• Show a Feed Link: By default, Yes is selected, which means the content of the web links
menu is syndicated. This option activates an RSS feed link that users can click to
subscribe to content on the menu.
7. By default, all parameters in the Parameters (Component) section are set to Use Global,
which means they inherit their settings from the Web Links Global Configuration Manager.
If you select a specific setting for any of these parameters, it overrides the global setting. For
now, I recommend leaving them all set to Use Global.
To display a description of the links on the web links landing page, type one in the Web Links
Introduction field. This description displays above the web link category list like the example
in Figure 20-17 on page 403.
When you finish creating the web link menu, continue to the “Configuring Global Web Link
Parameters” section on page 408 for an explanation of each parameter. After setting them
globally, you can edit your web link menu and override them as desired.
8. Complete the Parameters (System) section:
Figure 20-18. The Parameters (System) section for the Web Link Category List Layout menu.
• Page Title: Joomla automatically creates a page title for the web links landing page from
the name you typed in Title field in the Menu Item Details section. However, if desired,
you can override it by typing a page title in this field. This means Joomla displays the
title you type in this field on the web links landing page. Please note that a title on the
web links landing page that differs from the menu title could be confusing for your
users.
• Show the Page Title: This option is set to Yes by default, which means Joomla displays
a title on the menu landing page. To disable this feature, select No.
• Page Class Suffix: If desired, you can format the web links landing page with a unique
layout style. However, the process of creating custom page layouts for a web links
landing page is beyond the scope of this book and I recommend leaving this field empty
for now.
• Menu Image: You can display an image on the web links menu, like the example in
Figure 20-13 on page 400.
To use a custom image, you must upload it to the stories folder in Joomla’s file system.
Also, remember that you must enable the menu system’s supporting menu module to
display menu images (set Show Menu Images to Yes in the Other Parameters section on
the menu module).
• SSL Enabled: If you installed a security certificate for your site and you want to enable
SSL for the web links menu, select On. Otherwise, leave Ignore selected.
9. Click Save. Access your site’s front end and test the new menu.
options.
4. Click Web Link Submission Layout. The New Menu item page opens.
5. Complete the Menu Item Details section:
Figure 20-20. The Menu Item Details section for the Web Link Submission Layout menu.
• Title: This is the title Joomla displays for the link submission menu on your site’s front
end.
• Alias: Leave this field empty. When you save the link submission page menu, Joomla
automatically populates this field with an alias generated from the title.
• Link: This field is automatically pre-populated with an internal link for the menu. Do
not change it.
• Display in: Select the name of the menu system to which you are adding the link
submission menu.
• Parent Item: This field lists all other link submission pages, but is empty when you
create the first menu. If you create multiple link submission pages or web link menus,
you could use this feature to make one menu the child of another menu.
• Published: By default, Yes is selected, which means the link submission page becomes
available to users on your site’s front end when you save it.
• Order: Determines the order in which the link submission page displays in the list on the
Menu Item Manager.
• Access Level: While the Public option is selected by default, this feature is only
available to registered users. To further restrict the menu to users with authoring
privileges only, select Special.
• On Click, Open In: Indicate how you want Joomla to display the link submission page
when users select the menu:
• Parent Window with Browser Navigation: Enable Joomla to display the link
submission page in the current browser window.
• New Window with Browser Navigation: Enable Joomla to display the link
submission page in a new browser window that opens on top of your site. The new
window displays standard browser navigation features.
• New Window without Browser Navigation: Enable Joomla to display the link
submission page in a new browser window without the standard browser navigation
features (that is, hiding the browser’s address bar and toolbars).
6. By default, all parameters in the Parameters (Component) section are set to Use Global. This
means they inherit their settings from the Web Links Global Configuration Manager. Please
note that these parameters do not apply to the link submission menu directly. They are only
applicable to the links that are available on the web links page after users submit them
through the link submission menu.
If you select a specific setting for any of these parameters, it overrides the global setting. For
now, I recommend leaving them all set to Use Global. Please note that the Web Links
Introduction field is only applicable to the Web Links Category List Layout menu.
When you finish creating the web link menu, continue to the “Configuring Global Web Link
Parameters” section on page 408 for an explanation the parameters in the Parameters
(Component) section. After setting them globally, you can edit your web link menu and
override them as desired.
7. Complete the Parameters (System) section:
Figure 20-21. The Parameters (System) section for the Web Link Submission Layout menu.
• Page Title: Joomla automatically creates a page title for the link submission landing
page from the name you typed in Title field in the Menu Item Details section. However,
if desired, you can override it by typing a page title in this field. This means Joomla
displays the title you type in this field on the link submission landing page. Please note
that a title on the link submission landing page that differs from the menu title could be
confusing for your users.
• Show the Page Title: This option is set to Yes by default, which means Joomla displays
a title on the link submission landing page. To disable this feature, select No.
• Page Class Suffix: If desired, you can format the web links landing page with a unique
layout style. However, the process of creating custom page layouts for the link
submission landing page is beyond the scope of this book and I recommend leaving this
field empty for now.
• Menu Image: You can display an image on the link submission menu, like the example
in Figure 20-22:
• Icon: To display an icon next to each web link other than the default icon shown in
Figure 20-24, select one from the list. To use a custom icon, you’ll need to upload it to
the M_images folder on Joomla’s file system.
4. When you finish conferring the global web link parameters, click Save.
Figure 21-1. Create a folder under the stories folder for storing eLearning video on the server.
You can upload eLearning video to the folder you create on the server using either eXtplorer or
Joomla’s Media Manager. If you create eLearning video with Captivate, upload all required video
files, including the filename.htm, filename.swf, filename_skin.swf, and standard.js files (Captivate
tutorials will not work without the standard.js file).
Figure 21-2. Select the text for the hyperlink that will launch the video tutorial.
4. Click the Insert/Edit link icon to open the Advanced Link page.
5. Click the Browse icon , which is located to the right of the URL field to open the Browser
window. Notice the Root icon at the top of the Folders section, which represents the stories
folder on the server. All folders under the Root icon are folders under the stories folder.
6. In the Folders section, click the name of the folder into which you uploaded the eLearning
video to select it, as shown in Figure 21-3:
Figure 21-3. Click the name of the folder containing the eLearning video.
Figure 21-4. The folder explorer section displays all files and folders.
7. In the folder explorer, click the html file that controls the eLearning tutorial to select it, as
shown in Figure 21-5:
Figure 21-5. Select the HTML file that controls the eLearning video.
8. Click Insert. The Browser window closes. Notice the URL field at the top of the Advanced
Link window displays the path to the selected HTML file.
9. Next, choose Open in new window from the Target list in the Attributes section:
Figure 21-6. Select Open in new window from the Target list.
Selecting this option enables Joomla to launch the tutorial in a separate browser window over
the article when users click the link.
10. Click Insert. The Advanced Link window closes. The text you selected in step 2 now displays
as a hyperlink, like the example in Figure 21-7:
To download AVReloaded:
1. Access the Joomla extension site at http://extensions.joomla.org1.
2. Locate and click the Multimedia category under the Categories heading on the extension site.
3. Under the Multimedia category, click Multimedia Players and then click Video Players &
Gallery, as shown in Figure 21-8:
Figure 21-8. AVReloaded is located in the Video Players & Gallery sub-category.
4. Locate and click the title of the AVReloaded extension on the Video Players & Gallery page.
The AVReloaded page opens.
5. Click Download under the description box. The JoomlaCode site opens in a new browser
window showing the AVReloaded repository.
6. In the Files column, click com_avreloaded-1.2.6.zip, or a more current version if available
(AVReloaded is at version 1.2.6 at the time of this writing), as shown in Figure 21-9:
1.To save time, go directly to the AllVideos Reloaded download site at the following address:
http://joomlacode.org/gf/project/allvideos15/frs/
To install AVReloaded:
1. From the computer on which you downloaded the com_avereloaded-1.2.6.zip file, open a
browser and log in to Joomla’s administrative back end.
2. Select Install/Uninstall from the Extensions menu. The Extension Manager opens.
3. Click Browse. The Choose File window opens.
4. Locate the and select the com_avereloaded-1.2.6.zip file on the computer’s file system.
5. Click Open. The Choose File window closes. Notice that the Package File field displays the
path to the com_avereloaded-1.2.6.zip on the computer.
6. Click Upload File & Install. When the installation process completes, which may take a
minute or more, the Extension Manager displays a message indicating the installation
process was successful. In addition, the AllVideos Reloaded Quickstart page opens, as
shown in Figure 21-10:
Figure 21-11. The videos and audio folders on Joomla’s file system.
After creating the videos folder and the audio folder, and any desired sub-folders, use the Media
Manager or eXtplorer to upload your video and audio files to the server. To learn more about the
Media Manager and eXtplorer, see Chapter 7, “Managing Media Folders and Files” on page 149.
Figure 21-12. AVReloaded selects a video player based on a video’s file type.
For example, you would type the following code to add a video in the AVI format in your
article:
{avi}joom-install{/avi}
Notice I did not include the file extension in the example above. The {avi} and {/avi} codes
tell AVReloaded that it is playing an AVI file named joom-install.avi. Figure21-13 illustrates
how this code looks in the article when editing it with JCE:
For example, if you uploaded the joom-install.avi file into a sub-folder named joomla, you
would type the following:
{avi}joomla/joom-install{/avi}
3. When you finish adding the video code, save and exit the article. To test it, access the article
from your site’s front end. AVReloaded should display a video player where you added the
video code in the article.
Figure 21-14. AVReloaded selects an audio player based on audio file type.
For example, you would type the following code to add an audio file in the mp3 format in
your article:
{mp3}joom-install{/mp3}
It is not necessary include the file extension for audio files. The {mp3} and {/mp3} codes
tell AVReloaded that it is playing an mp3 file named joom-install.mp3.
3. AVReloaded expects your audio files be located in a folder named audio under the stories
folder. If you uploaded audio files into sub-folders, you’ll need to add the sub-folder names
to the code as follows:
{filetype}subfolder/filename{/filetype}
For example, if you uploaded the joom-install.mp3 file into a sub-folder named joomla, you
would type the following:
{mp3}joomla/joom-install{/mp3}
4. When you finish adding the audio code, save and exit the article. To test it, access the article
from your site’s front end. AVReloaded should display an audio player where you added the
audio code in the article.
Figure 21-15. You can add video to your articles from many different providers.
The process of adding video from an external site to an article, which is the same for each provider,
includes the following steps:
1. Locate and copy the video ID for the desired video from the provider’s site.
2. Add a code to your article that enables AVReloaded to retrieve and display the video, using
the video ID, from the external site in your article.
In the following sections, I step through the process of adding a YouTube video to an article. You
should be able to apply these steps to any other video provider. See the Streaming remote content
topic in the AVReloaded documentation for more information.
Figure 21-16. The video ID for YouTube video is located at the end of the address.
4. Select and copy the ID in the address bar (in Figure 21-16, the ID is qJ8uoAqKrQ8) and paste
it into a text editor like Notepad.
For example, if the ID was qJ8uoAqKrQ8, you would add the following code in the article:
{youtube}qJ8uoAqKrQ8{/youtube}
3. Save and exit the article and access it from your site’s front end. You should see a YouTube
video player in your article, like the example in Figure 21-15 on page 425.
This chapter explains how to download and install Fabrik and use it to create a simple survey. It
also explains how to view raw survey data from Joomla’s administrative back end. In addition, it
explains how to display survey data in a chart format on your site’s front end.
Please note that this chapter barely scratches the surface of what you can do with Fabrik. My goal
is to step you through the process of creating a simple, one-page survey to help you become
familiar with how Fabrik works. The steps in this chapter provide the information necessary to
create complex, multi-page surveys.
You should also know that the Fabrik developers provide instructional video tutorials on their site.
In addition, Fabrik has a very active user forum where you can find answers to almost any kind of
question. And, while the software is free, if you decide you like it, you can pay a small subscription
fee to gain access to more video tutorials, documentation, and other benefits.
To download Fabrik:
1. Start a browser and go to the Fabrik site at the following address:
http://fabrikar.com
2. On the Fabrik homepage, click download Fabrik 2.0. The Fabrik 2.0 homepage opens.
3. Scroll down the page to locate the Fabrik download link, which is labeled Fabrik 2.0.2 at the
time of this writing:
Figure 22-2. Click the Fabrik download link to download the extension.
4. Click the download link. The File Download window opens.
5. Save the com_fabrik_2.0.2.zip file to your computer.
6. When the download process completes, exit the browser.
To install Fabrik:
1. From the computer on which you downloaded the com_fabrik_2.0.2.zip file, open a browser
and log in to Joomla’s administrative back end.
2. Select Install/Uninstall from the Extensions menu. The Extension Manager opens.
3. Click Browse. The Choose File window opens.
4. Locate the and select the com_fabrik_2.0.2.zip file on the computer’s file system.
5. Click Open. The Choose File window closes. Notice that the Package File field displays the
path to the com_fabrik_2.0.2.zip file on the computer.
6. Click Upload File & Install. When the installation process completes, which may take a
minute or more, the Extension Manager displays a message similar to the following:
8. To view the Fabrik control panel, choose Fabrik from the Components menu:
To create a group:
1. From Joomla’s administrative back end, choose Fabrik from the Components menu and then
choose Groups; or, click the Groups link on the Fabrik control panel. The Groups page
opens:
Figure 22-5. Create groups to organizing the content of your surveys from the Groups page.
2. Click new. The New Group page opens.
When you create a survey that includes multiple groups, each group acts as a separate
page of the survey. A group title informs participants of the types of questions available
on each page of the survey.
• CSS: To style the survey, type style elements here. Survey styling is beyond the scope of
this book.
• Columns: By default, the survey elements appears in a single column on the survey
form. To enable Fabrik to display the survey elements in two or more columns on the
survey form, type the desired number of columns here.
• Repeat group button: For a simple survey form, leave this parameter set to Hide. If you
were to set it to Show, Fabrik would display Add and Delete buttons that you would to
use to either duplicate or delete data in cases where the group is associated with another
table via a table join.
• Show group in form: By default, this parameter is set to Show, which means Fabrik
displays all survey elements you associate with the group on the survey form on your
site. If you set it to Hide, users cannot see the survey elements.
• JavaScript to run when repeat group added: Leave this text box empty. If you were to set
the Repeat group button parameter to Show, and you wanted Fabrik to execute a
JavaScript when clicking the Add button, you would type the script here.
• JavaScript to run when repeat group removed: Leave this text box empty. If you were to
set the Repeat group button parameter to Show, and you wanted Fabrik to execute a
JavaScript when clicking the Delete button, you would type the script here.
• Randomise elements: This parameter is set to No by default, which means Fabrik
displays survey elements in the order in which you create and order them on the survey
form. To enable Fabrik to order them randomly, select Yes.
4. If you were creating multiple groups for a multi-page survey, you would set the Page break
parameter to Yes in the Pagination section (to create separate pages for each group).
However, in the case of a simple, one-page survey form, leave the Page break parameter set
to No.
5. Click Save to create the new group. Continue to “Creating the Survey Elements” on page
433.
Figure 22-8. A drop-down list created with the drop down element.
While the process of creating survey elements is not difficult, each one includes parameters that
differ, sometimes substantially, from other types of elements. Unfortunately, I can’t document them
all in one chapter. Instead, I am stepping through the process of creating the following, more-
common survey elements:
• Drop down lists: To save space and allow participants to select one answer from many
possible answers, use a drop down list, like the example in Figure 22-8. But, don’t use a drop-
down list if you want participants to see all answers at once. In that case, use radio buttons.
• Radio buttons: To enable participants to select one answer from a list of many possible
answers, use radio buttons:
Figure 22-9. Use radio buttons to present participants with many answers.
• Check boxes: To enable participants to select multiple answers, use check boxes:
Figure 22-10. Use check boxes to allow participants to select more than one answer.
• Text areas: To enable participants to write and submit comments, use a text area:
Figure 22-12. Add a date field to enable participants to identify a specific date.
The following sections explain how to create each of these elements. My hope is that if you try
creating these elements, you’ll feel comfortable creating other types of elements.
• label: The name you type in this field displays next to the drop-down list on the survey
form. For example, if you were creating a drop-down list that contained article titles,
you might label it “Article Title.”
• Group: Select the name of the group you created to organize specific types of survey
elements from the list.
• Order: Specifies the order in which the survey appears in the element list on the
Elements page. By default, Fabrik adds each element you create to the bottom of the
list. You can change the element’s order in the list after saving it.
• Element type: Select drop down.
4. Complete the Sub elements section in the Options section:
Figure 22-16. Click Add to add more options to the drop-down list.
Complete the value and label fields as described in step 4 for the second drop-down list
option.
6. Continue clicking Add as necessary to create more drop-down list options. Fabrik displays
each option you add in the Sub elements section in the drop-down list on the survey form.
7. When you finish adding options to the drop-down list, click the Table settings tab on the right
side of the New Element page:
Figure 22-19. A survey question with multiple answers presented as radio buttons.
5. When you finish creating radio buttons for the survey question, click the Table settings tab
on the right side of the New Element page.
6. Set Show in table to Yes to see each participant’s radio button selections in the survey results
table.
7. Click Save to save the radio buttons. Joomla displays a message indicating the new element
was saved.
Figure 22-20. The Options section for the text area element.
• Width: The width for a text area field is defined in columns. The default text area width
is 40 columns. The text area field shown in Figure 22-1 is 42 columns wide. Increase or
decrease the columns to modify the width of the text area field.
• Height: The height for a text area field is defined in rows. The default text area height is
6 rows. Increase or decrease the rows to modify the height of the text area field.
You do not need to change the default settings for the remaining parameters in the Options
section.
4. Next, click the Table settings tab on the right side of the New Element page.
5. Set Show in table to Yes to see the comments each participant types in the text area field in
the survey results table.
6. Click Save to save the text area field. Joomla displays a message indicating the new element
was saved.
• Width: Type the width for the date field in characters in this field. This field should be
10 characters wide at minimum to hold a date in the following format YYYY-MM-DD,
where Y represents the 4-digit year, MM represents the two-digit month, and DD
represents the two-digit day.
• Hidden: To capture the date on which participants submit the survey, but you don’t want
to enable them to select the date themselves, select this parameter. Next, set the default
to current date parameter to Yes.
For a simple survey, you do not need to change the default settings for the remaining
parameters in the Options section.
4. Next, click the Table settings tab on the right side of the New Element page.
5. Set Show in table to Yes to see the date each participant selects or types in the date field in
the survey results table.
6. Click Save to save the date field. Joomla displays a message indicating the new element was
saved.
• Error message: By default, this field is populated with a sample error message that
Fabrik display when participants leave a survey element incomplete. Change the default
error message in this field as desired.
4. Leave the button parameters in the Button section set to their defaults.
5. Complete the Form processing section:
To display your own message when users click Submit, type it in this field.
• Spoof check: Leave this parameter set to Yes.
• Save partially completed multi-page forms: This parameter is not applicable if you are
creating a simple, single-page form and can leave the default selection. If you create a
multi-page form, and you want Fabrik to save data from a partially-completed form to
the database when a participant navigates to the next page, select the desired option
from this list.
6. To capture information about the survey form, or the survey itself, type your notes in the
Notes field. This information does not display on the survey form and is only be accessible
when you open the form to edit it.
7. Next, click the Publishing tab, which is located on the right-side of the Edit Form page:
Figure 22-29. Click the Form link under the Fabrik heading.
The New Menu Item page opens, showing Fabrik Form as the selected menu type in the
Menu Item Type section.
5. Complete the Menu Item Details section as you would for any other type of menu.
6. The Form list in the Parameters (Basic) section lists all forms not currently associated with
a menu. Select the desired survey form from the list.
7. Click Save to create the menu.
8. To view and test the survey, access it from the appropriate menu on your site’s front end and
try submitting it with different answers. Continue to “Viewing the Survey Results” on page
446 to learn how to view the results.
Figure 22-30. The Table page lists the database tables created for surveys or other kinds of forms.
2. In the Table name column, locate the name of the database table you created for the survey
form, which may match the form name.
3. In the View data column, click the View data link for the appropriate database table. Fabrik
displays all data from the table, like the example in Figure 22-31:
To create a visualization:
1. From Joomla’s administrative back end, choose Fabrik from the Components menu and then
choose Visualizations; or, click the Visualizations link on the Fabrik control panel. The
Visualizations page opens:
4. Select chart from the Plug-in list. When selected, the following, additional parameters
display in the Details section:
6. Type the desired width of the chart to be created by Fabrik in pixels in the Width field. For
example, to make the chart 200 pixels wide, type 200 in this field.
7. Type the desired height of the chart in the Height field in pixels.
8. Next, select the name of the database table containing the survey data from the Table list.
This is the name of the database you supplied when creating the survey form.
9. Select the survey element for which you are creating a chart from the Element list. For
example, if your survey includes a rating element, where users can select a rating from two
or more option (like great, good, and poor), select the rating element from the list.
10. In the Colour field, type a hex code for the color in which you want Fabrik to display the
chart. For example, to display the chart in blue, you would type #0000FF in the Colour field.
If you leave this field empty, Google Charts applies the default chart color.
11. On the Publishing tab to the right of the Details section, set the Published parameter to Yes.
12. Click Save.
Figure 22-38. Click the Visualization link under the Visualization sub-heading.
The New Menu Item page opens, showing Fabrik Visualization as the selected menu type in
the Menu Item Type section.
5. Complete the Menu Item Details section as you would for any other type of menu.
6. From the Visualization type list in the Parameters (Basic) section, choose chart.
7. From the Select instance section, select the name of the visualization you created to display
survey results in a chart.
Figure 22-39. Click the Table link to display survey results in a table on the front end.
The New Menu Item page opens, showing Fabrik Table as the selected menu type in the
Menu Item Type section.
5. Complete the Menu Item Details section as you would for any other type of menu.
6. The Table list in the Parameters (Basic) section lists all database tables associated with
Fabrik forms. Select the name of the table you created for the survey form from the list.
7. Click Save to create the menu.
8. To view the table containing the raw survey results, access it from the appropriate menu on
your site’s front end. Figure 22-40 shows how the data table looks on the front end:
Figure 22-40. Raw survey from the database displayed on Joomla’s front end.
Please note that if you are only using your system for learning purposes, and there is little chance
someone could do harm to it (for example, you installed it on your PC or a USB flash drive), you
do not need to configure the security settings explained in this appendix.
2. Click the Security link on the left side of the page. The XAMPP Security page opens.
3. Scroll down the page to locate and then click the following link:
http://localhost/security/xamppsecurity.php
When clicked, XAMPP opens the Security Console where you can set passwords for both
Figure A-1. Secure MySQL and XAMPP from the security console.
4. First, set a password for the root user account for the MySQL server. Type a password in both
the New password and Repeat the new password fields in the MySQL section.
5. Next, select an authentication method. With the cookie authentication option, which is
selected by default, your browser stores the root user’s credentials and password as text in a
cookie and pass it to the MySQL server for authentication during your user session. With
HTTP authentication, your browser passes the user name and password as an encoded string
to the MySQL server. The default cookie authentication method should be fine for intranet
security, but if you are concerned about which is the proper option to use for your company’s
network, talk to your IT support staff.
6. To create a text file containing the password you typed in the password fields, select the Safe
plain password in text file option. The location of the file and its name
(mysqlrootpassword.txt) display beneath the check box. Anyone with access to your
computer’s file system could find this password, so consider either not creating one, or
moving it to a safe place if you do create one.
Figure A-2. After creating a password for the root user, you must restart MySQL.
But, before restarting MySQL, I recommend password-protecting the XAMPP console.
8. In the User field in the XAMPP Directory Protection section, type a name you want to use
to log into the XAMPP console and then type a password in the Password field.
9. To create a text file containing the password, select the Safe plain password in text file
option. The location of the file and its name (xamppdirpassword.txt) display beneath the
check box. Remember that saving your user name and password in a text file on your
computer presents a potential security hazard.
10. Click Make safe the xampp directory. The Security Console displays a message indicating it
successfully protected the xampp directory:
Figure A-3. The Security Console creates a xampp.users file and a .htaccess file.
To protect the xampp directory, the Security Console creates two files (xampp.users and
.htaccess) that it places in separate directories in the xampp file system. The xampp.users file
contains the user name and an encrypted (unreadable) version of the password. The .htaccess
file, which resides in the xampp directory, references the xampp.users file. Whenever you or
someone else attempts to access your XAMPP console through a browser at either http://
localhost or your computer’s IP address, a login page opens and you are required to enter
your user name and password, which XAMPP compares against the entries in the
xampp.users file.
11. Close your browser and continue to “Restarting the Apache and MySQL Services.”
Figure A-5. You can stop and start MySQL and Apache with the XAMPP Control Panel.
4. First, start the MySQL service.
5. After the MySQL service starts, start the Apache service.
6. Click the exit button in the upper right corner to minimize the Control Panel to the system
tray.
7. Continue to “Accessing XAMPP and MySQL.”
Figure A-6. Type a user name and password to access the XAMPP console.
2. Complete the User name and Password fields and click OK to log in.
3. After logging in, Click the phpMyAdmin link under the Tools heading on the left side of the
XAMPP console. In a moment, you should see the phpMyAdmin login page:
Figure A-7. Type root and the password you created for the root user to access phpMyAdmin.
4. This login screen means you have successfully protected MySQL and the root user account.
To log in, type root in the User name field, type the password you created for the root user
account in the Password field, and then click OK.
Figure A-8. The phpMyAdmin user interface for the MySQL database server.
5. Click the Back arrow on your browser’s toolbar to return to the XAMPP Security Console.
6. Next, click the security link on the left side of the page to open the security console. Notice
that the XAMPP console, the MySQL administrative user (root), and the phpMyAdmin
console are now all set to the secure status, as shown in Figure A-9:
The following sections explain how to download Akeeba Backup and install it with the Extension
Manager. The Extension Manager is a tool on Joomla’s administrative back end that allows you to
install software extensions from your local file system. This means you don’t need direct access to
the server on which Joomla is running to install Akeeba Backup.
2. Click the Akeeba Backup Core for Joomla! category link. The Akeeba Backup Core for
Joomla! category page opens.
3. Click the Akeeba Backup 3.0 Stable link.
4. Download the documentation (akeeba-backup-guide-3.0.zip) and Akeeba Backup Core 3.0
(Stable) software (com_akeeba-3.0-core.zip) to your computer.
Figure B-2. The Basic Configuration section of the Akeeba Backup Configuration page.
• Output Directory: At installation, Akeeba Backup automatically creates an output
directory named backup on Joomla’s file system where it places the backup file. The
Output Directory field contains the full path to the backup folder, which resides at the
following location in Joomla’s file system:
../joomla/administrator/components/com_akeeba/backup
Click Browse to see the full path, but do not change it until you are more familiar with
the backup process.
• Temporary Directory: The Akeeba Backup process stores temporary files during the
backup process in the ../joomla/tmp folder. Do not change this path.
• Log Level: This parameter allows you to specify how much information Akeeba
Backup writes to the log file during the backup process. The default setting, All
Information and Debug, is the highest logging level. Akeeba Backup stores the log file
in the backup folder.
• Backup archive name: This field displays the default naming convention Akeeba
Backup applies to backup file names. This convention includes your site and host name,
followed by the date and time on which it was created. To use a different file naming
convention, type one in this field. To include the date or time in the file names, use the
[DATE] and [TIME] variables, as shown in Figure B-2.
• Backup Type: By default, Full site backup is selected, which means Akeeba Backup
backs up the entire Joomla directory structure, as well as the database. I recommend
backing up your entire site the first time. After reading the user’s guide and establishing
a backup policy for your site, you may decide to perform smaller-scale backups in the
future.
3. At this point, it is not necessary to make other configuration changes to Akeeba Backup.
Click Save to save any changes you made in the Basic Configuration section.
To learn about the settings in the other sections of the Configuration page, see the Akeeba
Backup User’s Guide.
5. Click Backup Now! to start the backup process. The Backup Progress page opens:
6. Click Administer Backup Files to view information about the newly-created backup file:
To download JoomlaPack:
1. Start a browser on your computer and go to the Akeeba Backup download site at the
following address:
http://www.akeebabackup.com/download.html
2. Scroll down the page to locate the JoomlaPack 2.x for Joomla! link. Click the link to open
the JoomlaPack 2.x page.
3. Click the JoomlaPack 2.4.1 link.
1. Download the documentation (documentation-2.4.1-pdf.zip) and JoomlaPack Core software
(com_joomlapack-2.4.1-core.zip) to your computer.
To install JoomlaPack:
1. From the computer on which you downloaded the com_akeeba-3.0-core.zip file, start a
browser and log in to Joomla’s administrative back end.
2. Select Install/Uninstall from the Extensions menu. The Extension Manager opens.
3. Click Browse. The Choose File window opens.
4. Navigate to the directory containing the com_joomlapack-2.4.1-core.zip file and click the
file to select it.
5. Click Open. The Choose File window closes and the Package File field displays the path to
the com_joomlapack-2.4.1-core.zip file on your computer.
6. Click Upload File & Install. Please note the installation process may a few moments to
complete. When finished, the Extension Manager displays an installation summary message:
Figure B-8. The Basic Configuration section of the JoomlaPack Configuration page.
Click Browse to see the full path, but do not change it until you are more
familiar with the backup process.
• Minimum Access Level: With this parameter, you can specify the minimum access level
of Joomla’s administrative users who can use JoomlaPack to back up the site. Super
Administrator is selected by default. For explanations of user types in this list, see
“Creating User Accounts for Administrators” on page 125.
• Store temporary backup data in files, instead of in database: This parameter is set to Yes
by default. If you change it to No, JoomlaPack writes data to the database each time you
perform a backup. Do not change it to No.
3. Next, click the Advanced option in the Profile settings section.
4. Set the Archiver Engine parameter to JPA JoomlaPack Achive, as shown in Figure B-9:
Figure B-9. Set the Archiver Engine parameter to JPA JoomlaPack Archive.
5. At this point, it is not necessary to make any other configuration changes to JoomlaPack.
Click Save to save the changes you made on the JoomlaPack Configuration page.
6. To learn about the settings in the other sections of the Configuration page, extract the
JoomlaPack User Manual from the documentation-2.4.1-pdf.zip file you downloaded with
the software and review the “Configuration” section, which starts on page 13.
The message in Figure B-11 is letting me know that my server is running on an older version
of PHP and that the default output directory is in use (in this case, by Joomla). You can
continue with the backup process when you see this message.
2. By default, JoomlaPack populates the Short description field with a description based on the
date and time, which you can change. The information you type in this field displays on the
backup administration page after you perform a backup to help you differentiate among
multiple backups. This is a required field.
3. To provide a longer description of the backup, type it in the Backup comment field. This is
not a required field.
4. Click Backup Now! to start the backup process. The Backup Progress page opens:
When the backup process completes, the Backup Completed Successfully page opens:
• If you built your own server platform, copy the backup file from the computer on which
Joomla is running to another storage medium.
2. On the Joomla extensions site, locate and click the Languages link in the Categories list on
the left side of the page.
3. Then, click the Translations for Joomla link. At the time of this writing, you can find
language packs for 52 languages on the Translations for Joomla page.
4. Locate and download the language pack for the desired language to your computer.
6. Click Upload File & Install. Please note the installation process may a few moments to
complete. When finished, the Extension Manager displays a message indicating the
installation succeeded. Figure C-1 shows the installation message for the German language
pack:
Figure C-1. Joomla displays a message when it finishes installing a language pack.
Figure C-3. Select the desired language pack for the Front End Language parameter.
4. Click Save to save your changes and exit the Edit User page.
You can, if desired, add more HTML tags to the existing blacklist filter. You can also apply
the blacklist filter to specific user groups.
• Whitelist filtering: With whitelist filtering, Joomla blocks authors in selected user groups
from submitting all HTML tags and attributes, except those you specifically list in the Article
Global Configuration manager.
• Total HTML filtering: You can prevent authors in selected user groups from submitting all
HTML tags in their articles.
1.The Joomla documentation site, at http://docs.joomla.org/Screen.content.15, lists these HTML tags and at-
tributes as those blocked by the default blacklist filtering.
2.HTML attributes enhance the basic functionality of HTML tags. For example, to include a heading in an
HTML document, you might enclose it between the <h1></h1> tags. To center it, you would add the “align”
attribute like this <h1 align=“center”>My Heading</h1>.
Figure D-1. The Filtering option section on the Articles Global Configuration manager.
4. While the blacklist filter applies to all user groups except the Super Administrator group by
default, if you select specific user groups in the Filter groups section, it only applies to them.
For example, if you only wanted blacklist filtering to apply to front end users, you would
select the Registered, Author, Editor, and Publisher user groups (hold down the Crtl key to
select multiple user groups):
Figure D-2. To apply blacklist filtering to specific user groups, select them in the Filter groups section.
In this example, blacklist filtering would not apply to users who belong to the Manager,
Administrator, and Super Administrator user groups.
5. Ensure that the Blacklist (Default) option is selected.
6. Type the additional HTML tags you want Joomla to filter from articles in the Filter tags field,
separating each with a space and a comma, but do not enclose them in the < and > symbols.
For example, to prevent authors from embedding the <select> and <input> tags, you would
type them in the Filter tags field as follows:
select, input
7. Type the additional attributes you want to prevent authors from adding to HTML tags in the
Filter attributes field, separating them each with a comma and a space, like the HTML tags.
For example:
action, class
8. When you finish adding HTML tags or attributes to the blacklist filter, click Save.
Figure D-3 shows supported HTML tags for a whitelist filter in the Filter tags field:
Figure D-3. Type the HTML tags authors can submit in the Filter tags field.
5. In the Filter attributes, field, type the attributes authors can use with their HTML tags,
separating each with a comma and a space. For example:
align, alt, border, src
Figure D-4 shows the HTML attributes authors can apply to their HTML tags:
Figure D-4. Type the attributes authors can add to their HTML tags in the Filter Attributes field.
6. Click Save to create the whitelist HTML filter.
Figure D-6. Select No HTML to prevent authors from submitting all HTML with their articles.
Since the No HTML selection prevents authors from submitting all HTML tags in their
articles, you do not need to complete the Filter tags and Filter attributes fields.
4. Click Save to create the No HTML filter.
In the example above, “X” represents the drive on which you installed XAMPP. Figure E-1
shows the logo.gif file in images folder under the JA_Purity template folder on a local
system:
Figure E-1. The logo.gif file in the images folder for the JA_Purity template.
3. If you see a warning message about overwriting the existing logo.gif file, click Yes to
proceed.
4. Access your site’s front end to verify that your custom logo displays in JA_Purity template’s
header.
Figure E-2 shows the path to the images folder in the Directory Tree:
Figure E-2. Navigate to the images folder under the JA_Purity template folder.
4. After selecting the image folder, click Upload on the eXtplorer toolbar. The Upload files
window opens
5. Click the Browse button adjacent to the File 1 field to open the Choose File window.
6. Navigate to the folder on your computer containing logo.gif and click on it to select it.
7. Click Open. eXtplorer closes the Choose File window and displays the path to the logo.gif
file in the File 1 field.
8. Click Save to upload the logo.gif file, overwriting the original.
Figure 0-1 shows the path to the en-GB folder on a computer where XAMPP was installed
on an E: partition:
Figure 0-1. The path to the en-GB file on a local computer’s file system.
On a Linux system, the htdocs folder is often located under /var/www, so the full path would
look like this:
/var/www/htdocs/joomla/language/en-GB
If your site’s default language not English, look for a folder name that approximates your
site’s language. For example, the German language folder is named de-DE.
2. Next, locate the lang.mod_footer.ini file, where lang represents your site’s language. For
example, in the en-GB folder, the file is named en-GB.mod_footer.ini. In the de-DE folder,
the file is named de-DE.mod_footer.ini.
3. Open the file with a text editor. For example, on a Windows-based system, right-click the
file, choose Open With, and select WordPad. Figure 0-2 shows the en-GB.mod_footer.ini
The %sitename% variable displays the site name you provided when installing Joomla. This
is the same name located in the Site Name field in the Site Settings section of the Global
Configuration manager, as shown in Figure 0-3:
Figure 0-3. The %sitename% variable displays the name in the Site Name field.
5. Replace the entire %sitename% variable with the exact wording you want to use for the
copyright notice. For example, to attribute the copyright notice for my site to “MattCo,” I
would replace the %sitename% variable as follows (remember to delete the % symbols):
FOOTER_LINE1=Copyright © %date% MattCo. All Rights Reserved.
Figure 0-4 shows the copyright notice after editing the %sitename% variable in the en-
GB.mod_footer.ini file:
Figure 0-4. The copyright notice in the footer is now attributed to MattCo.
6. If desired, you can also remove the Joomla software notice from the footer. To remove this
notice, delete all text that follows FOOTER_LINE2= parameter (but, don’t delete the
parameter itself), like the example in Figure 0-5:
8. Open your site’s front page and verify that the footer displays the desired copyright
information.
3. In the Directory Tree pane, expand the joomla folder, then the language folder, and click the
name of the folder representing your site’s language (for a British English site, click the en-
GB folder), like the example in Figure 0-8:
Figure 0-8. The path to the en-GB folder on Joomla in the eXtplorer Directory Tree.
If your site’s default language is not English, look for a folder name that approximates your
site’s language. For example, the German language folder is named de-DE.
4. After selecting the appropriate language folder in the Directory Tree pane, locate and click
the lang.mod_footer.ini file, where lang represents your site’s language, in the Browser
Directory pane. For example, in the en-GB folder, the file is named
en-GB.mod_footer.ini. In the de-DE folder, the file is named de-DE.mod_footer.ini.
5. After clicking the appropriate lang.mod_footer.ini file to select it, click Download on the
Figure 0-9. Click Download on the eXtplorer toolbar to download the en-GB.mod_footer.ini file.
A File Download message opens.
6. Click Save. The Save As window opens showing the file system on your local computer.
7. Using the Save in list at the top of the window, locate a folder on your computer where you
want to save the language file.
8. Click the desired folder to select it and then click Save. The Download Complete message
opens when eXtplorer finishes downloading the file to your computer.
9. Click Close to close the Download Complete message.
The %sitename% variable displays the site name you provided when installing Joomla. This
is the same name located in the Site Name field in the Site Settings section of the Global
Configuration manager, as shown in Figure 0-11:
Figure 0-11. The %sitename% variable displays the name in the Site Name field.
3. Replace the entire %sitename% variable with the exact wording you want to use for the
copyright notice. For example, to attribute the copyright notice for my site to “MattCo,” I
would replace the %sitename% variable as follows (remember to delete the % symbols):
FOOTER_LINE1=Copyright © %date% MattCo. All Rights Reserved.
If I were to save my changes and access my site’s front end, I would see the copyright notice
was attributed to “MattCo,” like the example in Figure 0-12:
Figure 0-12. The copyright notice in the footer is now attributed to MattCo.
4. If desired, you can also remove the Joomla software notice from the footer. To remove this
notice, delete all text that follows FOOTER_LINE2= (but, don’t delete the
“FOOTER_LINE2=” entry), like the example in Figure 0-13:
Figure 0-15. Click Upload on the eXtplorer toolbar to start uploading the mod_footer.ini file.
The Upload files window opens, as shown in Figure 0-16:
5. Click Open. eXtplorer closes the Choose File window and displays the path to the
lang.mod_footer.ini file on your computer in the File 1 field, like the example in Figure 0-17:
Figure 0-17. The File 1 field displays the path to the lang.mod_footer.ini file on your computer.
By default, the Overwrite existing file option is selected, which means eXtplorer overwrites
the older version of the lang.mod_footer.ini file on the remote server with the updated
version when you upload it from your computer.
6. Click Save. eXtplorer uploads the newer version of the lang.mod_footer.ini file to the remote
server, overwriting the older version.
7. Open your site’s front page and verify that the footer displays the desired copyright
information.
writing articles
back end 205
front end 260
X
XAMPP 7
about security 24
Control Panel 22
downloading 16
installing 18
requirements 16
web console 24
XAMPP Lite 7
downloading 8
installing 9
starting 13
stopping 15