Category1

Article

Article

Article

Category2

Article

Article

Category1

Article

• Click on the New button.
  
  
• Name the Section – this is the name that will show up at the top of the section page when you go to that section.
  
  
• Give it an Alias – use one or two words, and put DASHES between them. This is what Joomla will use for the page name in the page link, if you have SEF URLs activated.
  
  
• The Published setting just indicates whether it is ready to go live. Most of the time, it stays on Yes, but you can set it to No if you want to hide it temporarily while you work on it.
  
  
• Set the access level – it can be Public, Registered, or Special. Remember, if you set it to Registered or Special, then this Section, and ALL categories and articles that are under it will not be visible to anyone who is not logged into the frontend of the site.
  
  
• Give the Section a Description – this is what your readers will see at the top of the section, to tell them what kinds of info they might find in it.
  
  
• Click Save to publish it.

• Go to the Menus menu, and select the menu that you want it to show up in.
  
  
• Click NEW.
  
  
• Click on Articles.
  
  
• Select Section Layout if you want to display the list of categories in the section.
  
  
• Name your link – this is the name that will show up in the front end of the site, in the menu.

Marketing

Article

Article

Web Design

Article

Business Instruction

Article

Member Info (Category, under an unlinked section)

Article – Join

Article – Member Benefits

Article – Terms of Use

• Go to the Content menu, and select the Category Manager.
  
  
• Hit the New button.
  
  
• Give it a name.
  
  
• Give it an alias – the alias is the same thing that it is in the Section setup.
  
  
• Select the Section that it belongs under. If you change your mind, you CAN change this later in Joomla 1.5 and later.
  
  
• Give it a description – the description will show up on the category page, when they select that category, and it can provide a nice introduction to the items in the category if the articles happen to be private. When someone selects the category – from the section page, or from a direct menu link – they will see the description that you put in for the Category, followed by a list of the articles in the category, from newest, to oldest.
  
  
• Set the access level – again, this can be Public, Registered, or Special, and just like Sections, if you set it to Registered or Special, it will be invisible, and all items under it will also be invisible unless logged in.

• Click Save to publish it.

1. Put a menu link for the parent Section into the menu, and the Category will automatically show up in the Category list on the Section page.
   
2. Create a Menu Link directly to the Category – this is valuable for small Categories that need no sub-level (just link to the Category instead of to the section).

1. Single page article. You don't have to do anything special for this. If you use this, then the ENTIRE article will show up on a Category page, so generally you'd only want to use this for an Uncategorized article, such as an About or Policies page.
   
2. Article with Teaser, and Read More segment. This is perfect for Categorized items which you want to access from the Category page, because it allows you to have a teaser, or summary, followed by the rest of the article when they click "read more".
   
3. A multi-page article, with or without the Read More feature. This works for articles that have multiple segments, or when you want to break it up.

• Go to the Content menu, and select the Article Manager.
  
  
• Click the New button.
  
  
• Fill in the Name, and Alias – they mean the same thing they do for Categories and Sections.
  
  
• Choose the Section that the article goes in, and the Category, if you want the article to be categorized. If you do not want them Categorized, then leave the Section and Category unselected.
  
  
• Paste your article into the box – remember, if you wrote your article in Word, or another Word Processor, the formatting may go funky – if it does, just select all of the article, and use the Eraser Tool right above the description box, to erase the formatting – it is a white ovalish lumpish looking tool on the lower right. Then reformat your page for easy reading.
  
  
• Set the access level. Same as Category and Section access levels – any article that is set to Registered or Special will not even be visible to anyone who is not logged in, but will appear in the list as soon as they do log in.
  
  
• Save your Article.

1. Joomla has a system timeout. This is a security feature, so it has an important purpose. It is set in the Site Configuration, under the Server tab. 120 minutes is a reasonable time to set this to – it is set to about 5 minutes in the default install, which is such a SHORT time that you may lose work if you are not careful! If you are working on an article, and the session times out, it will kick you back to the login, and you will LOSE your work.
   
   We compensate using three strategies:
   
   First: We make sure the config is set to at least 120 minutes.
   
   Second: We usually work in another program, and paste the article in, then format it fairly quickly in Joomla.
   
   Third: If we think we've been in there a bit too long, we copy the content that we were working on before we hit Save – then if it kicks us back to the login, we can go back, rename the article, and just paste in what we were working on.
2. Joomla has a Check-out, Check-in feature. When you start working on an article, Menu item, Category, Section, or other alterable item, Joomla checks it out under your account. Anyone else who tries to access it gets a “locked” item icon, and they can't open it or mess with it. It cannot be deleted, EVEN BY YOU when it is locked. It will STAY locked, until the changes are Saved, or Canceled.
   
   If you accidentally hit your browser Back button (after looking at an article and choosing not to change it), or if you open one, then the session times out because the baby threw up and you had to go clean it up, or if you just close your browser window instead of Saving or Canceling, then the item will be locked. If that happens, just go back in, and hit Save.
   
   Joomla is designed to allow many people to work on a site at the same time, and this feature prevents one person canceling out the changes of another person.

• This is VERY easy – simply place the cursor between the teaser text and the rest of the article, and hit the Read More button below the article box. It will put in a line, which can be deleted, or you can move items from one side of it to the other.

• Do NOT repeat the summary text when you do this, because when you click the Read More link (or the article title) from the front of the site, the summary shows up above the rest of the article below.

• Just as easy! Put the cursor where you want the pagebreak, and hit the PageBreak button below the article box.