Joomla Content Manager

Managing Content in Joomla CMS

Managing Content

This chapter discusses one of the most important functions performed by a cms. This is, as you would have guessed, Content Management. The Content menu contains all content areas. Content is organized by the following structure
in Joomla!:

This structure can be compared with the directory tree on your hard drive. You can create as many sections and categories, and as much static content as you desire. If you archive individual elements, then the structure is completely transferred to the archive. This fixed structure has advantages and disadvantages. The biggest advantage in my opinion is that a structure is predetermined and thus the administrator must keep a certain hierarchy. This makes it easier to grasp an overview of the website. The disadvantage is that the two-stage structure cannot be changed and some administrators thereby feel limited when individualizing their website. The Content menu makes different workspaces available in order to work on content and structures within the website design(Figure 5.1):

Figure 5.1: Content Menu

Content by Section
Content is sorted according to Section. The next step in the structure is Category; the actual content then follows (Item).

Section
Underneath the Content by Section menu, all available sections are shown. You can add as many sections as you want.

Category

Figure 5.2: New Category

You can only specify parameters for this category after it has been saved once by clicking Save. You wind up in the Category Manager and will see the new Joomlabook category (Figure 5.3):

Figure 5.3: Category Manager

Content Item: After we have created a new category, we want to insert content into this category. Click Content | Content by Section | News | News Items. You are now put into the Content Items Manager and can see the four standard entries of the Joomla sample data. Click New in order to be transferred to the content item workspace using the cms:

Figure 5.4: Content Item Workspace

You will see a form consisting of several areas. Actual content is located in the left panel; in the right panel are several tabs with different parameters. It is sufficient to fill out the left side at this time in order to write information.
Title: Title of the item of information.
Title Alias: Alias of the title.
Section: Here you can select the section under which the message is to be displayed. Select News.
Category: Depending on the section selected, the existing categories are shown. Select Joomlabook.
Intro Text/Main Text: Here you enter your actual information. The intro text has to be filled out; the main text is optional. With one click on Preview, you can see a preview of your text in a separate browser window (Figure 5.5):

Figure 5.5: Content Preview

In order to integrate the new information immediately into the Joomla_Book menu, you now click the tab Link to Menu:

Figure 5.6: Link to Menu

You will see a list of the available menus.
If you select the Joomla_Book menu, enter Chapter 4 in the Menu Item Name field and click Link to Menu. The page is newly configured and you will see in the lower part of existing menu links that your information has been added to the menu. Click Save. If you look at your site, you will notice that the Joomla_Book menu has an additional entry. After a click on the entry you will see your information:

Figure 5.7: The Created Information