When someone first starts working with Joomla, there is usually a certain amount of frustration and confusion. This is normal, because we tend to think a certain way about websites - as website USERS, we think differently than we do as website CREATORS. We think about what we SEE on the front of the site, not what has to happen in the back to create what we see.

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In order to use the website software more effectively, it helps to learn to "Think Like Joomla". That means learning to think about what CREATES the pages, as well as just what the site visitor sees.
Joomla does not think in terms of "pages". It thinks in terms of "content". Content can be information, images, videos, audio or music, software, links, or anything else you want to present to the world.

Joomla is truly a "content management system". A system designed to help you manage content efficiently, no matter what kind of content it is. So the first step in setting ANY new function up is to define what kind of content it is, and how it might best be handled. Chances are, whatever kind of content it is, Joomla has a way to manage it efficiently, that will be more efficient than trying to handle it in the way we think of as a "page".

Articles can be one of two kinds of content - categorized or uncategorized.

A Contact "page" in Joomla is a dynamically created form, handled by the Contact Manager (Qcontacts). It is a different kind of content than an article.

Forums, galleries, comparison charts, directories, forms, etc, are just other types of content, managed in the best way to handle them. If you handle them in an extension that is special for that kind of content, it will be easier long term than trying to fit them into an article layout.

The goal of setting up content is to set it up in a structure that is best suited to handling it - that way the system simplifies the work for you, and does part of it for you. It usually takes a few extra minutes to set it up initially, but then it saves you time each time you add anything to that area.

The classification of "content" rather than "pages" is also why some things in Joomla are handled through the Menus, NOT through the articles - because the Menus are actually what designate the final output of "pages", not the articles - an article is not a Page, until someone clicks on a menu link to ask for it as a page. Articles can appear in many ways - as main content in a page, as supplementary content in a page (an article can show in a module - in a box in the sidebar), as a link in a page, with multiple articles on a page, etc. But menu links CREATE pages.

At first, this can be hard to get your head around. This is a concept that confuses EVERYBODY in the beginning. But it is also the lightbulb that goes on at some point that suddenly makes it all make sense. So be patient with yourself and keep asking questions until the lightbulb goes on - It WILL go on! It just takes some time and repeated exposure to be able to fully grasp it.

Once you understand how Joomla thinks, it gets much easier. It will take some practice to completely learn this - you can ask all the questions you need to, we will answer them!