Joomla cho người mới bắt đầu part 11 docx

Chapter 4 [ 107 ] Wrapping up: Change site settings The one-hour website is nished. However, there are a few adjustments to be made in the backend. Time for action – change site conguration The site conguraon sll shows some default values that don't match the new site contents. Let's enter the appropriate site name and add site metadata. 1. Navigate to Site | Global Conguraon. 2. In the Site Sengs secon, enter the Site Name: SRUP - Ugly Painngs Society. This is the site informaon that will be shown on in the Title Bar of the visitors web browser: 3. In the Metadata secon, change the text of Metadata Sengs. Metadata are im- portant for search engines—but if you leave the default text unchanged, search engines will nd informaon on Joomla! instead of informaon on SRUP. In the Global Site Meta Descripon, enter: SRUP is an internaonal Society For the Reappreciaon of Ugly Painngs. 4. In the Global Site Meta Keywords, enter a few keywords that characterize the site's contents: ugly painngs, bad painng, bad art, SRUP. What just happened? By entering a few lines in the Global Conguraon screen we've made sure the right site name shows up in the visitors' web browser and search engines pick up the right informaon about the site's contents. Pop quiz – test your basic Joomla! knowledge 1. What can you use the built-in Joomla! CSS editor for? a) To add some content containers b) To change the appearance of your site c) To change menu sengs Download at Wow! eBook WWW.WOWEBOOK.COM Web Building Basics: Creang a Site in an Hour [ 108 ] 2. In what order do you add arcles and menu links? a) Create menu links rst, then add arcles b) Add arcles rst, then create menu links c) You can choose whatever order you like 3. What do you use components and extensions for? a) Adding extras, such as newsleers or contact forms b) Adding content that only registered users can see c) To quickly add new content Summary You may not be aware of it, but you did actually do an incredible job. Your rst Joomla! website is up and running!  You've seen that building your site is a three-step process. First you customize the layout, then you add content, and then you add further funconality (such as a contact form or a poll) to your site.  You can personalize the looks of the site by eding the template les. If you know just a lile CSS, you can edit the template les directly in the Template Manager editor screen.  Before you create content pages you create the containers they belong in. These containers are called secons (the top level) and categories (the second level). Create uncategorized arcles if you need some content pages that don't t any category.  To make any content visible on your site there has to be a menu link poinng to it.  You add items to the home page by changing their Front Page seng. In the Front Page Manager you can change the order in which these items are presented on the home page.  You can add extra funconality through components and extensions. An example of this is the Contacts component that allows you to add contact details and contact forms. In this chapter, we followed the fast and simple approach and used only the basic capabilies of the system, leaving most sengs at their default values. Building on this, it is possible to create much bigger, complex, sophiscated, and cool sites. The next chapters will cover the subjects we've touched upon in more detail. In Chapter 5, we'll look specically at the site's structure; how can you organize the content of your site, whether it's a ten page personal website or a big corporate site? The challenge is to make your site's organizaon user friendly, expandable, and keep it easily manageable. Download at Wow! eBook WWW.WOWEBOOK.COM 5 Small Sites, Big Sites: Organizing your Content Effectively In the last chapter, you saw that creang a website in Joomla! revolves around three major tasks: designing a layout, creang content, and adding extras. The central part is, of course, creang content. You can have a Joomla! site using a simple default template, you can have a site without adding extra funconality, but you can't have a site without content. That's why, in the next few chapters, we'll concentrate on managing and creang content. In later chapters, you'll work on the layout and add extras. In this chapter you'll:  Understand how to translate a basic site map to a workable blueprint for a Joomla!-based site  Design a clear, scalable framework for your content, grouping your content with secons and categories  Use uncategorized pages to build sites that don't require a mul-level content Building on the example site The SRUP site you developed in Chapter 4 is a great lile site, perfectly suited for your client's inial purposes to their rst Web presence. Now it's me to make room for growth. Your client has a big pile of informaon on ugly art that they want to present to the public. You are asked to design a site framework that makes it easy to add more content, while at the same me keeps it easy for visitors to quickly nd their way through the site. Download at Wow! eBook WWW.WOWEBOOK.COM Small Sites, Big Sites: Organizing your Content Eecvely [ 110 ] Can you do that? You most certainly can! Joomla! allows you to build sites of all sorts and sizes, whether they consist of just a few pages or thousands of them. If you plan ahead and start with a sound basic structure, you'll be rewarded with a site that's easy to maintain and extend. In this chapter, we'll review the site you've just built and look at the dierent ways the content can be structured—and rearranged, if need be. Grouping content: A crash course in site organization To lay the groundwork for your site, you won't use Joomla!. The back of a napkin will do ne. Draw up a site map to lay out the primary content chunks and their relaonships. View your site from a user's perspecve. What do you think your visitors will primarily look for, and how can you help them nd things fast and easily? Designing a site map To create a site map, rst collect all informaon you plan on having on your website and organize it into a simple and logical format. Let's have a look again at the SRUP website you built in the last chapter. The following is the basic outline of the site you've created up to now: Home Introducing Ugly Paintings Activities Mission Contact Us Lectures Meetings articles articles As site maps come, this is a very basic one. For the most part, it's just one level deep. Introducing Ugly Painngs and Mission are basic web pages (arcles). Acvies is a secon that allows the visitor to browse two other categories. Contact Us is a contact form page. This structure was good enough for a basic website, but it won't do if SRUP wants to expand their site. Download at Wow! eBook WWW.WOWEBOOK.COM Chapter 5 [ 111 ] Time for action – create a future proof site map Let's make some room for growth. Imagine your client's planning to add an indenite amount of new content, so there's a need for addional content containers. They have come up with the following list of subjects they want to add to their site:  News items  A few pages to introduce the founding members of SRUP  Reviews on ugly art  Facts on ugly painngs (history, lile known facts, and so on) What's the best way to organize things? Let's gure out which content ts which type of container. Step 1: You'll probably want to create a separate News secon. News should be a top level item, a part of the site's main menu. Home Intr. Ugly Paintings Activities Mission Contact Us Lectures Meetings articles articles articles News General News Step 2: The informaon on the SRUP founders ts in a new secon About SRUP. Home Intr.Ugly Paintings Activities Mission Lectures Meetings articlesarticles articlesarticles News About SRUP General News Who are SRUP? Contact Us Download at Wow! eBook WWW.WOWEBOOK.COM Small Sites, Big Sites: Organizing your Content Eecvely [ 112 ] Step 3: Both Reviews and Facts can be categories in a new general secon on Ugly Painngs. The exisng arcle Introducing Ugly Painngs could be moved here (or dropped). Home News General News articles Ugly Paintings Reviews Facts Activities Meetings About SRUP Who are SRUP? Mission Contact Us articles articles articles articles articles Lectures What just happened? You've laid a solid foundaon for your site—on paper. Before you actually start using Joomla! to create secons and categories, create a structure for the content that you have in mind. Basically, no maer how big or small your website is, you'll organize it just like the example you've just seen. You'll work from top to boom, from the primary level to the lower levels, dening content groups and their relaons. Bear in mind, though, that there will certainly be more than one way to organize your informaon. Choose an organizaon that makes sense to you and your visitors, and try to keep things lean and clean. A complex structure will make it harder to maintain the content, and eventually—when building menus—it will make it harder to design clear and simple navigaon paths for your visitors. Tips on choosing secons  It can be useful to choose secons based on the main intenons people have when they come to the site. What are they here for? Is it to Browse Products or to Join a Workshop?  Common choices for secons are: Products, Catalog, Company, Porolio, About Us, Jobs, News, and Downloads.  Try not to have more than ve to seven secons. Once you have more than that, readers won't be able to hold them all in their heads at once when they have to choose which one to browse. Download at Wow! eBook WWW.WOWEBOOK.COM Chapter 5 [ 113 ] Transferring your site map to Joomla! Let's have a closer look at our new site map and idenfy the Joomla! elements. This—and any—Joomla! site is likely to consist of ve types of content. Home News General News articles Ugly Paintings Reviews Facts Activities Meetings About SRUP Who are SRUP? Mission Contact Us articles articles articles articles articles Lectures The following are the content types in our SRUP site map: Home Obviously, the top level item will be the home page. News The main content groups we can idenfy as secons and categories. This small site has four secons, three of which contain two categories. articles Each of the categories hold actual content; this is what will end up in Joomla! as arcles. Mission In this site map, there is one arcle that doesn't really belong in any category: the Mission Statement page. Every site will have one or two of those independent arcles. In Joomla!, you can add these as uncategorized arcles. You've seen some examples of this type of arcles when building your rst site in the last chapter. Contact Finally, there's one item that represents a very dierent type of content. In the site map above, a grey background indicates an item containing special funconality. In this case this is a contact form. Other examples are guest books, order forms, and photo galleries. Basically, that's all there is to a Joomla! site. When you've got your site outlined like this, you won't meet any surprises while building it. You can transform any amount of content and funconality into a website, step by step. Download at Wow! eBook WWW.WOWEBOOK.COM Small Sites, Big Sites: Organizing your Content Eecvely [ 114 ] How do you turn a site map into a website? If you've got your site blueprint laid out, you probably want to start building! Now, what should be the rst step? What's the best, and fastest, way to get from that site map on the back of your napkin to a real-life Joomla! site? In this book, we'll work in this order: 1. Organize: Create content containers. You've seen that much of the site map we just created consists of content containers: secons and categories. In this chapter, we'll focus on these containers. We'll create all necessary containers for our example site. 2. Add content: Fill the containers with arcles. Next, we'll add arcles to the secons and categories. Arcles are the "classic content" that most web pages are made of. We should also check for arcles that do not belong in any category. Instead of assigning them to a secon and a category, we'll add them as Uncategorized content. For our example site, we'll work on arcle contents in the next chapter. 3. Put your contents on display: Create the home page and content overview pages. Next, you'll want to guide and invite visitors. You can achieve this using two special types of pages in the site map, the home page and Joomla!'s secon/category overview pages ("secondary home pages"). You'll focus on deploying these page types in Chapter 7. 4. Make everything ndable: Create menus. The top level items in your site map will probably end up as menu items on the site. To open up your site to the world you'll create and customize menus helping visitors to easily navigate your content. This is the subject of Chapter 8. And what about the special content stu? You'll noce that in the above list we've summed up all sorts of "classic content", such as arcles, home pages, overview pages, and menus linking it all. We haven't yet menoned one essenal part of the site map, the special goodies. On a dynamic website you can have more than just plain old arcles. You can add picture galleries, forms, product catalogues, site maps, and much, much more. It's important to idenfy those special pages from the beginning, but you'll add them later using Joomla!'s components and extensions. That's why we'll rst concentrate on building a rock-solid foundaon; later we'll add all of the desired extras. Let's start with step one now, and get our site organized! Download at Wow! eBook WWW.WOWEBOOK.COM Chapter 5 [ 115 ] Creating content containers: Sections and categories In the previous chapter you have already had a foretaste of how easy it is to create secons and categories. To create a secon, navigate to Content | Secon Manager | New. To make a new category, you'll use the Category Manager instead. Just add a tle for your new secon or category and click on Save. You've created a perfectly workable secon or category with the default sengs (or parameters as Joomla! likes to call them). Time for action – create a new section and a category Your client was happy with the inial site structure you designed, but now their website is evolving, there's a need for more content containers. Let's add a news secon rst: 1. Navigate to Content | Secon Manager and click on New. 2. In the Secon: [New] screen, ll out the Title eld. In this example, type News: 3. Leave the other values unchanged; click on Save. You're taken to the Secon Manager. The News secon is now shown in the secon list. Download at Wow! eBook WWW.WOWEBOOK.COM Small Sites, Big Sites: Organizing your Content Eecvely [ 116 ] Now, add a category to the new secon. We'll call this category General News: 4. Navigate to Content | Category Manager and click on New. 5. In the Title eld, type General News. 6. In the Secon eld, select News. 7. Click on Save. You're done! What just happened? You have added a News secon with one category: General News. Remember, a secon needs at least one category. For now, this General News category will do. Should the client wish to have more specic news categories later, these can easily be added. It's quite OK to have secons with single categories. In the backend they serve as a funconal (and mandatory) container for content, in the frontend the user won't have to click his way through redundant links. On clicking the News link, he'll be shown all of the news content in one go. Basically this means it's possible to add content to a Joomla! secon without having to create several categories when they're not really needed. Have a go hero – add some articles The News category you just added is sll empty. Add some dummy content to it by repeang the steps you took in the last chapter (see Chapter 4). In short, navigate to Content | Arcle Manager and click on New. Add a Title, and in the Secon drop-down box select News. In the Category drop-down box, General News will be selected (it's the only opon). Add some dummy content. Add a Read More link aer the rst paragraph to enable Joomla! to separately show the introductory text and the body text. Click on Save and you're done. In this example, we've added three news arcles to our new secon: Download at Wow! eBook WWW.WOWEBOOK.COM . choose which one to browse. Download at Wow! eBook WWW.WOWEBOOK.COM Chapter 5 [ 113 ] Transferring your site map to Joomla! Let's have a closer look at our new site map and idenfy the Joomla! . a website in Joomla! revolves around three major tasks: designing a layout, creang content, and adding extras. The central part is, of course, creang content. You can have a Joomla! site. eBook WWW.WOWEBOOK.COM Small Sites, Big Sites: Organizing your Content Eecvely [ 110 ] Can you do that? You most certainly can! Joomla! allows you to build sites of all sorts and sizes, whether they consist