using joomla

www.it-ebooks.info www.it-ebooks.info Using Joomla www.it-ebooks.info www.it-ebooks.info Using Joomla Ron Severdia and Kenneth Crowder foreword by Louis Landry Beijing • Cambridge • Farnham • Köln • Sebastopol • Taipei • Tokyo www.it-ebooks.info Using Joomla by Ron Severdia and Kenneth Crowder Copyright © 2010 Ron Severdia and Kenneth Crowder. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. Published by O’Reilly Media, Inc., 1005 Gravenstein Highway North, Sebastopol, CA 95472. O’Reilly books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promotional use. Online editions are also available for most titles (http://my.safaribooksonline.com). For more information, contact our corporate/institutional sales department: (800) 998-9938 or corporate@oreilly.com. Editor: Julie Steele Production Editor: Loranah Dimant Production Services: Appingo, Inc. Indexer: Fred Brown Cover Designer: Karen Montgomery Interior Designer: David Futato Illustrator: Robert Romano Printing History: December 2009: First Edition. Nutshell Handbook, the Nutshell Handbook logo, and the O’Reilly logo are registered trademarks of O’Reilly Media, Inc. Using Joomla, the image of a white stork, and related trade dress are trademarks of O’Reilly Media, Inc. Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book, and O’Reilly Media, Inc. was aware of a trademark claim, the designations have been printed in caps or initial caps. While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher and authors assume no responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from the use of the information con- tained herein. TM This book uses RepKover™, a durable and flexible lay-flat binding. ISBN: 978-0-596-80494-7 [M] 1260219914 www.it-ebooks.info Table of Contents Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvii Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xix 1. An Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Using a CMS: Static Versus Dynamic 1 A Brief History of Joomla 1 Why Open Source and the GPL? 2 The Future 2 Joomla 1.0.x: End of Life 3 Summary 3 2. Quick Start . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Quick Install 5 Installing Joomla Using Fantastico 6 System Requirements 8 Add Sample Content or Not 9 Some Basic Terminology 10 Frontend Versus Backend 10 Extensions 10 Site Content 12 Summary 12 3. A Tour of the Administrator Panel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Control Panel 16 Administrator Menus 17 Site 17 Menus 18 Content 19 Components 19 Extensions 20 v www.it-ebooks.info Tools 21 Help 21 Administrator Modules 22 Main Toolbar 23 Article Filtering and Display 23 Summary 23 4. Global Configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Site 25 Site Settings 26 Metadata Settings 26 SEO Settings 27 System 27 System Settings 27 User Settings 27 Media Settings 28 Debug Settings 29 Cache Settings 29 Session Settings 30 Server 30 Server Settings 30 Local Settings 31 FTP Settings 31 Database Settings 31 Mail Settings 32 Summary 33 5. Preparing Your Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Planning, Creating, and Organizing Your Content 35 Sections, Categories, and Articles 35 Section Manager Overview 36 Creating Sections 36 Publishing and Unpublishing Sections 37 Copying Sections 38 Category Manager Overview 39 Creating Categories 40 Publishing and Unpublishing Categories 40 Copying Categories 42 Moving Categories 43 Uncategorized Sections and Categories 43 Summary 44 vi | Table of Contents www.it-ebooks.info 6. Creating Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Articles As Building Blocks 45 Creating Articles 46 The WYSIWYG Editor 47 Customizing Articles 49 Article Publishing and Unpublishing 50 Scheduled Publishing and Unpublishing 51 Article Parameters 53 Article Parameters Hierarchy 53 Global Article Parameters 54 Basic Article Parameters 56 Advanced Article Parameters 57 Page Functions: Print PDF, Email to a Friend, and Print Page 60 Prevent Code from Being Stripped Out of the Editor 60 Global Check-in 62 Article Manager Filtering and Ordering 63 Filtering Articles 63 Ordering Articles 64 Permissions 65 Section Permissions 65 Category Permissions 65 Article Permissions 66 Archiving Articles 66 Archiving an Article 66 Unarchiving an Article 67 Trashing Articles 67 Trashing an Article 67 Restoring Trashed Articles 67 Permanently Delete Trashed Articles 68 The Front Page Manager 69 Ordering Front Page Articles 71 Removing Front Page Articles 72 Frontend Versus Backend Editing 72 Edit an Article on the Frontend 72 Submitting Content on the Frontend 73 Submit a New Article on the Frontend 75 Submit a New Web Link on the Frontend 75 Summary 77 7. Menus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 Menu Structure Versus Content Structure 79 Menu Manager 80 Menu Item Manager: Menu Item Types Explained, Controlling Layout 82 Table of Contents | vii www.it-ebooks.info Menu Item Parameters 90 Menu Item Details 90 Parameters (Basic) 92 Parameters (Advanced) 93 Parameters (Component) 94 Parameters (System) 97 Menu Modules: Parameters 98 Module Parameters 99 Advanced Parameters 101 Other Parameters 101 Menu Module: Split Menus 102 Built-in Site Map 105 Create the Site Map 105 Add Your Site Map to an Article Using the Content—Load Module Plug-in 106 Using ItemID to Create Internal Links 106 Menu Trash 106 Restore Menu Items 107 Permanently Delete Menu Items 107 Summary 108 8. Components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 Extending Joomla with Extensions and Compatibility 111 Built-in Components: Banners, Contacts, News Feeds, Polls, Search, and Web Links 112 Banners 112 Contacts 113 News Feeds 114 Polls 116 Search 117 Web Links 118 Other Built-in Components in the Extension Manager 119 Third-Party Components: How to Install 121 Summary 122 9. Modules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 The Module Manager 123 Built-in Frontend Modules 123 Article Modules 124 Component Modules 125 Feed Modules 125 User Modules 125 Other Modules 125 viii | Table of Contents www.it-ebooks.info [...]... what you are looking for with Joomla With Ron and Ken’s insight in this book, you will be building and managing Joomla websites in no time, and wondering why you did it any other way Louis Landry is a principal architect of Joomla 1.5 and the Joomla Framework As a development coordinator for Joomla, Louis helped build the cutting-edge PHP application framework that powers Joomla 1.5 and is focused on... Future In 2008, the Joomla Project put out a call to the Joomla community for input on what should be included in the next version of Joomla The community responses ranged from minor enhancements to a full-blown access control system for user permissions Over 50 features and improvements were accepted for inclusion in Joomla 1.6 The current stable version of Joomla is 1.5 However, with Joomla 1.6 on the... to Joomla 1.6 This allows for a high level of relevance for both co-existing versions and enables you to determine the version that best fits your needs 2 | Chapter 1: An Overview www.it-ebooks.info Joomla 1.0.x: End of Life The end-of-life for the Joomla 1.0.x series was announced in early 2009 and support terminated on July 22, 2009 If you’re still using Joomla 1.0.x, we advise you to migrate to Joomla. .. will need to refer to Appendix A to choose a different installation method We prefer using FTP to upload, install, or update Joomla because hosting providers don’t always have the latest versions See Appendix A if you need further instruction 5 www.it-ebooks.info Installing Joomla Using Fantastico Installing Joomla using cPanel and Fantastico is the easiest and quickest method Follow these steps: 1... images and Flash is easy with Joomla Chapter 14, Languages Get Joomla to speak in your language Chapter 15, Extension Manager Using the Extension Manager, see how you can install, remove, and upgrade your extensions Chapter 16, Tools A few extra tools are included with Joomla Learn how they can make maintaining your website much easier Chapter 17, Hands-on: Converting a Site to Joomla If you have an existing... story of how well Joomla can help you Using Joomla to build your web presence gives you an immediate head start by surrounding yourself with a strong, passionate, and caring community of users The Joomla community is broad and diverse, and members are always working to help each other It is both humbling and empowering to be part of a group so committed to helping one another and improving Joomla so that... website rock solid Chapter 21, Joomla 1.6 and Beyond With Joomla 1.6 on the horizon, see what’s in store, how it can help you, and how to migrate Chapter 22, Getting Involved How to get involved in the Joomla community and how you can give back Appendix A, Installing and Upgrading If the Quick Start doesn’t cover your setup, find a myriad of other ways to either install or upgrade Joomla Appendix B, Choosing... to find the one that best suits your needs Appendix C, Developing for Joomla If you’re a developer or want to develop for the Joomla platform, we’ll give you examples of the power behind the Joomla framework and point you to some valuable resources Appendix D, Tips and Tricks Throughout the book, we give tips and hidden gems to Joomla This chapter contains some of them that did not fit well in other... Joomla Joomla, which is a phonetic spelling of the Swahili word “jumla” (meaning “all together”), was officially launched with version 1.0 on September 16, 2005 The first version was primarily a rebranding with a few bug fixes, but 14 updates and numerous open source awards followed over the next two years 1 www.it-ebooks.info On January 21, 2008, the first major revision to Joomla was announced: Joomla. .. want to know more about this thing called Joomla that people are talking about, this book is for you While we’d like to think that Joomla is for everyone, if you’re a developer looking to build extensions or extend and build on Joomla s framework, this book isn’t for you How This Book is Organized Each chapter of this book breaks down the extensive features of Joomla into easy-tounderstand sections: . www.it-ebooks.info www.it-ebooks.info Using Joomla www.it-ebooks.info www.it-ebooks.info Using Joomla Ron Severdia and Kenneth Crowder foreword by Louis Landry Beijing • Cambridge • Farnham • Köln • Sebastopol • Taipei • Tokyo www.it-ebooks.info Using. thousands of professionals who make their living working with Joomla every day all tell a compelling story of how well Joomla can help you. Using Joomla to build your web presence gives you an immediate. principal architect of Joomla 1.5 and the Joomla Framework. As a development coordinator for Joomla, Louis helped build the cutting-edge PHP application framework that powers Joomla 1.5 and is focused