Chapter 5 [ 127 ] This same simple one-level structure would be appropriate for all kinds of small sites with a dedicated subject maer, i.e. a porolio site for a one man company or an event site. A copy wring company would have a Joomla! site structure similar to the following: John Johnson Copywriting My work Examples About me Clients Contact For an event site—such as a site for a congress or seminar—a structure like the one shown in the following diagram would be ne: Web Builders Seminar Agenda Speakers Location Contact Although you'll leave much of the built-in funconality for managing big, content-rich sites untouched, it's sll worthwhile to use Joomla! for sites like these. All the other advantages of Joomla! sll hold, such as the ability to add any extra funconality you like. If your client wants a registraon form for his seminar site, or a photo gallery for his porolio site, you can add these using Joomla! extensions. And, of course, your client will be able to manage and update content easily. How do you go about building a small site? Creang a small site like the examples previously shown simply means you'll skip a few steps, as there's no need to create any secons or categories. These are the acons it takes: 1. Create the uncategorized content pages you need. 2. Add menu links to the Main Menu. In this case, you'll link directly to arcles instead of secons or categories. Download at Wow! eBook WWW.WOWEBOOK.COM Small Sites, Big Sites: Organizing your Content Eecvely [ 128 ] An example is as follows, a three page site based on a "clean" Joomla! installaon (without sample data). Creang the basic setup of a ny site like this takes just a few minutes. In this example, in our new and empty Joomla! site we've created three uncategorized arcles. We've set them all to display on the Front Page, too. For each of the arcles, we've added a menu link in the Main Menu (via Menus | Main Menu | New). This is what the visitor sees. The Main Menu contains three links; the Front Page shows intro texts to the three arcles with Read more links. Download at Wow! eBook WWW.WOWEBOOK.COM Chapter 5 [ 129 ] When the visitor clicks on a link, the full arcle is shown. That's all there is to seng up a ny one-level website in Joomla!. You can write a few arcles, and create links poinng to them. Aer that, you can focus on the extras you want to add (see Chapter 10 on extending Joomla! ) and the design (see Chapter 11 on using templates). Downsize the home page, too For a very small site, you can sll build the home page with Joomla!'s default Front Page tools. Just select a few arcles to display (fully, or only as intro text) on the Front Page. However, you may want something simpler for this type of site. You might want to consider showing just one arcle as your own, customized home page content. You'll read more about this technique in Chapter 6 on home page display opons. Have a go hero – organize a site! Imagine you've been asked to build an informave website for a small company you know. How would you go about this? Think of what you want to achieve, create an outline of the main and secondary secons, and translate this outline to Joomla!. What would be your secons and categories, where would you put uncategorized arcles? And how about creang a small website about yourself? Using the site structuring skills you've acquired in this chapter, go ahead and create a great structure that would be both realizable in Joomla! and appeal to your visitors. Download at Wow! eBook WWW.WOWEBOOK.COM Small Sites, Big Sites: Organizing your Content Eecvely [ 130 ] Pop quiz – test your site organization knowledge 1. What's the best order in which to build Joomla!-based sites? a. Start with extensions, add content, add menu links, add content containers. b. Start with menu links, add content containers, add content, add extensions. c. Start with content containers, add content, add menu links, add extensions. 2. What can you use uncategorized arcles for? a. To display arcles that have not yet been authorized. b. To display arcles that do not belong to categories. c. To display arcles that belong to a secon, but not to a category. 3. How can you get categories to display in the frontend? a. Categories are backend stu; they're only displayed in the Category Manager. b. A category can be displayed by adding a specic menu link that points to a category overview page. c. Categories are automacally displayed on overview pages when added to the Category Manager. Summary In Chapter 3, you've learned that Joomla! retrieves content from a database, block by block. Together these blocks form a web page. That's why you start building a site creang categories; you actually build a well-organized content database. In this chapter, we've learned what it takes to create content categories and to build a future proof framework for site content. Specically, you've learned: Every website, big or small, requires planning. It all starts with creang a logical site map reecng the structure of the content you have in mind. Keep it lean and clean. Bear in mind that visitors will want to get to the content they're looking for as fast as possible. To transfer your hand drawn site map to a working Joomla! site, rst idenfy the dierent Joomla! content elements in it. This will help you build the site step by step. The main content containers are secons and categories. You'll create these rst. Secons hold at least one category, categories hold arcles. Download at Wow! eBook WWW.WOWEBOOK.COM Chapter 5 [ 131 ] To show secon and category contents on the site, you add menu links poinng to secons or categories. At any me, you can rearrange and rename secons and categories or move their contents. Small sites, with just a few content pages, can consist of uncategorized arcles only. In the next chapter, we'll jump from organizaon to creang content. We'll ll the containers we've just set up with dierent types of arcles. Download at Wow! eBook WWW.WOWEBOOK.COM Download at Wow! eBook WWW.WOWEBOOK.COM 6 Creating Killer Content: Adding and Editing Articles Once you have created a framework of secons and categories, things can move prey fast. There's nothing to stop you from creang a content-rich site —whether you want to add a dozen, hundreds, or even thousands of pages. In this chapter we'll focus on adding and eding arcles, the type of content that's essenal to most sites. Later, you might want to add other types of con- tent (such as image galleries or forums); we'll deal with those in Chapter 10. When creang the example site in Chapter 4, you've already seen how you can create a new arcle using the default sengs. You've le all of the extra funcon buons and parameters alone. But in real life, you'll probably want more control. You want to make your content look great, add pictures, and spe- cify exactly how to display things and what details to display. Joomla! allows you to you edit arcles and tweak arcle sengs to t your needs exactly. In this chapter you'll learn: Creang, eding, and formang arcles Split an arcle into intro text and body text Dealing with long arcles: spling them into a series of pages Adjusng general arcle sengs So let's get it started! Download at Wow! eBook WWW.WOWEBOOK.COM Creang Killer Content: Adding and Eding Arcles [ 134 ] Articles, content pages, what's the difference? You might be tempted to think an arcle is the same as page. Strictly, it isn't. You've read before that Joomla! doesn't think in terms of pages. Joomla! gures any web page is constructed of a whole lot of database-driven bits and pieces—and almost any combinaon of those bits and pieces can turn up on the visitor's browser as a web page. Although the arcle will certainly be at the center of a content page, there's bound to be much more to that page. Around the arcle there will be all kinds of other dynamic content—yes, those bits and pieces again. Be that as it may, for the sake of simplicity we'll just use the word page (or content page) for arcles now and then. As long as we're aware that content pages may contain more than arcles, that's OK, isn't it? Don't tell Joomla!; it will be our secret. Creating and editing articles: Beyond the basics Over the last few chapters, you pracced adding and eding arcles. Let's recap the steps involved: To create a new arcle, navigate to Content | Arcle Manager and click on New. To edit an exisng arcle, navigate to Content | Arcle Manager. Click on the tle of the arcle to open it in the Arcle: [Edit] screen. Another way to achieve the same results is to select the arcle (select the checkbox on the le-hand side of the arcle tle) and click on the Edit buon in the toolbar. The Arcle: [New] and Arcle: [Edit] are idencal. You're already familiar with some of the most important funcons; in this chapter, we'll boldly go to secons we haven't explored yet. Download at Wow! eBook WWW.WOWEBOOK.COM Chapter 6 [ 135 ] The Arcle Editor is shown in the following screenshot: The arcle eding screen consists of three secons: 1. The actual text eding area oers you a simple word processor like interface for entering and formang text. Above the actual arcle text you add the Title, select the appropriate Secon and Category, and so on. 2. The toolbar buons allow you to preview the arcle, save or apply changes, or cancel changes. 3. The Parameters allow you to set up the arcle to display and behave just as you need it to. You'll learn more about them in the Adjusng arcle sengs secon later in this chapter. Let's now explore the power of the Joomla! arcle editor. We'll nd out how we can tweak arcles to get them to display exactly as we want them to. Making it look good: Formatting article text Your client, the SRUP society, wants to add some new content to their site explaining the characterisc qualies of ugly art. You've been sent a text le and have been asked to turn the contents into a new page. Can you please create a new arcle and make it look good? Download at Wow! eBook WWW.WOWEBOOK.COM Creang Killer Content: Adding and Eding Arcles [ 136 ] Time for action – add styling to article text Let's create a new arcle and see how we can format it adequately. 1. Navigate to Content | Arcle Manager and click on New. 2. In the Title box, enter Just What is Ugly Art? This is the type of factual content that ts the Facts category, so let's select the Ugly Painngs secon and the Facts category: 3. By default, Published is set to Yes. Let's set it to No. This way the arcle will remain invisible to your site visitors unl you're nished with it (and publish it). 4. We don't want this arcle to show up on our home page so leave Front Page set to No. 5. In the text editor screen, add some arcle text. If you want to copy text from a word processor document, rst strip out all of the formang. That way you avoid invisible word processor tags messing up your arcle text. To do this, open the Notepad applicaon on your PC (or TextEdit on a Mac) and paste the text from the word processor into the Notepad or TextEdit document. This will give you a clean text-only le that you can copy and paste into the Joomla! editor window. Right-click and select Paste from the pop-up menu. 6. In this example we've added ve paragraphs: a short introductory text and four separate paragraphs. Type a subheading above each of the four paragraphs. In the example we've used the subheadings Abstract Chaos, Poor Anatomy, Too much detail, and Hideous Colors. Download at Wow! eBook WWW.WOWEBOOK.COM . big, content-rich sites untouched, it's sll worthwhile to use Joomla! for sites like these. All the other advantages of Joomla! sll hold, such as the ability to add any extra funconality. "clean" Joomla! installaon (without sample data). Creang the basic setup of a ny site like this takes just a few minutes. In this example, in our new and empty Joomla! site we've. one-level website in Joomla! . You can write a few arcles, and create links poinng to them. Aer that, you can focus on the extras you want to add (see Chapter 10 on extending Joomla! ) and the