Joomla is a Content Management System (CMS). The Software is installed on the web server.
The web site content is stored in a database (MySQL)
Note: Look up any terms using wikipedia, type “wiki theTermYouDontUnderstand” into Google
A Joomla web site has two parts
- Front end for users and some content editing
- Back end for administrators (yourdomain.co.uk/administrator)
Examples
- http://www.derbyramblers.org.uk/ - Front end
- http://www.derbyramblers.org.uk/administrator - Back end
All the software you need on your PC is a web browser. All changes to the web site can be done from the administrator area.
Information about the Joomla Content Management System
- Home: http://www.joomla.org
- The official documentation for Joomla is on a wiki web site called http://docs.joomla.org/ .
- Extensions: http://extensions.joomla.org/
- Forum: http://forum.joomla.org/
Another source of information is a number of tutorials is YouTube. If you type “joomla tutorials” into the search field at http://www.youtube.com/ you will get a list of tutorial videos. I cannot vouch for all of these but the ones I have looked at are very good but note that the older ones will be for version 1.0 of Joomla.
Overview
Users
Users of the web site are divided into different groups.
- Public – can access the normal front end of the web site
- Registered – can access the front end and optionally the back end of the web site. Registered users can be given additional access.
Front end
- Registered
- Author
- Editor
- Publisher
Back end
- Manager
- Administrator
- Super Administrator
Web site content
- Articles – what you think of as a page, but may only part be of the page
- Contacts – so people can contact you.
- Web links
- and more
Web Pages
A Web page is divided up into a number of areas such as
- Header
- Footer
- Left and right columns containing Modules
- Centre containing content.
To see these areas add ?tp=1 to your url
i.e. http://www.yourdomain.org.uk/?tp=1
Content and presentation
The content of a Joomla web site is separate from how it is presented.
- The Database contains the content
- a Template defines how to "Present" the content on the web page. This includes how the screen is divided up into areas, the colour, fonts etc of all the items. Most people don't need to worry about Joomla Templates.
Privacy/Dates
Each article can be set to be viewable by the public, registered or special users. Only registered users who log on to a site will see articles that are restricted to “registered”. Only users with extra functionality will see the special articles.
For each article you can specify the date you want it to start being viewed and also the date after which it should stop being viewed. Web site navigation
Menus
You can have more than one menu.
A menu item can point at a number of things
- Article
- A category of articles
- A section of articles
- A blog – all articles in a category say
- A Contact or a category
- A web link or category
- An external URL
- etc
Privacy
Access is set as Private, Registered or Special
How to publish information for you to review
A simple way of checking new content is to make it only visible to a registered or special level of user and then login to the site to see this content. When you are happy make it viewable at the Public level.