Joomla How To: The Basics

The Basics: Estimated time to complete: 30 minutes. Please take the time to read this page and familiarize yourself with "JoomlaSpeak" and the lingo used throughout our site and in the videos.

What is Joomla?

Joomla is a Content Management System.

What is that? Read this >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_management_system

Joomla is the most widely utilized and most popular Content Management System (CMS) in the world.

Joomla is one of the most powerful Open Source Content Management Systems on the planet.

It is used all over the world for everything from simple websites to complex corporate applications, intranets and extranets, ecommerce site, social networking sites and even video sharing sites. There are thousands of Joomla Components that extend the function of Joomla creating an almost unlimited amount of possibilities. Joomla is easy to install, simple to manage, and reliable.

Visit the Joomla homepage located at www.Joomla.org for more information.

Joomla is free.

Joomla is offered as a stand alone product for you to download and install manually, OR you can install Joomla using the hosted solution provided by your hosting company. We're going to show you how to install Joomla^TM using the the hosted solution. It takes less than 2 minutes! On many hosting provider control panels it can takes less than 60 seconds!

So who uses Joomla?

The United Nations implemented a Joomla installation at http://www.unric.org/. Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich's website utilizes Joomla with a few special components installed. Thousands of website are built using Joomla. From small business and Fortune 100 companies to municipalities, government sites and non-profits, Joomla provides an affordable, powerful, efficient and effective website solution.

Joomla is great for companies and organizations of all sizes. Joomla allows multiple users to contribute content to a website creating a dynamic user experience. Joomla provides for rapid content creation and a robust Admin area to organize all of that content.

Here are a handful of Joomla sites from the Joomla Community Showcase.

Colleges and Universities	Governments	The Arts	Non Profit Sites	Business	Media/Magazines
Stanford IREPP	Norwich City of Culture Bid 2013	The Guggenheim Museum	CoolPlanet2009 Climate Change Campaign - United Nations	Kaos Lacrosse	Road Cycling New Zealand
Yale University Association of Yale Alumni	Coming year in Parliament - UK	Contemporary Jewish Museum	NanoNed	iLana Designs	FLAIX.fr
Harvard Graduate School of Arts & Sciences	United Nations Regional Information Centre	Hampton Arts	Electronic Government Research Center	Via Dutto	Thrasher Skateboard Magazine
Oklahoma State University	Congressman Dennis Kucinich	The Witte Museum	Technology First	TheUltimatePowerTrip.com	GreenMuze
Universidad Santiago de Cali	The Consulate General for the Sultanate of Oman in Australia	teatro Malandro	Movimento dos Focolares	GnosyMentor	Ultimate Athlete Magazine
Dearborn Public Schools	Minnesota Management & Budget	Charlie the 2nd	Carol Foundation	Spanish Wedding Planner	BackPageLead
University of Maryland- Joint Quantum Institute	Dubai Civil Defence	Cinemad	United State African Chamber of Commerce	Blinds BG	Prescott eNews
University Of Utah - Department of Chemical Engineering	California State Employee's Charitable Campaign	Movie Bloggers	Minnesota Indian Womens Sexual Assault Coalition	Bluworld	Solidarity Publication Pvt. Ltd.
University of Nebraska	Mexico at NAFSA	Joretha Taljaard Wedding Photography	European Chamber of Commerce Taipei	Furnicology, Inc.	DC Bureau
artmouth University Dickey Center	Orange County Comptroller	The Art of Berlin	Massachusetts Municipal Association	Abbey Flooring & Roofing Company	Eskisehir Kent rehberi

What JOOMLA isn't.

Joomla does not create webpages that can be edited in Dreamweaver or any other HTML editor (in the traditional sense). Joomla uses a database to store site content (text and images) and page elements (modules and components). You can edit the HTML contained in the BODY of a Joomla page and/or the content inside a custom module using Dreamweaver etc. This makes for a simple way to add tables, FLASH, Javascript, PHP or other custom code. We show you how to do these more advanced procedures in the PRO SERIES.

Joomla does not allow you to simply download a page via FTP, make changes, and then upload when completed. You do not need Contribute or any other HTML editor to use Joomla.

Please complete the suggested reading below. You will be better equipped to follow some of the lingo used throughout the site.

Learn JoomlaSpeak

After reading this short list, head over to the Joomla Glossary to learn more terms as you come across them.

Front End - Refers to your main website and the ability to login and edit pages from the "front-end"

Back End - Refers to the Administrative Control Panel. You can access the "Back end" of your site by adding "/administrator" to the end of your URL. EXAMPLE: http://www.YouSite.com/administrator.

Additonally, there is a security plug-in that will append a password to this URL so spammers/bots can't find it. The plug-in allows you to set your Admin login URL to something like this:

www.YourSite.com/administrator?password

Components - Components are the main functional units that display in your template, like the content management system, contact forms, Web Links and the like. They are usually displayed in the center of the main content area of a template (depending on the template).

Modules - Modules are lightweight and flexible extensions used for page rendering. Sometimes modules are linked to components such as the “latest news” module which links to the content component (com_content) and displays links to the newest content items. These modules are mostly visible as the “boxes” that are arranged around a component on a typical page, for example, the login module. Modules are assigned per menu item, so, for example, you can decide to show or hide the logon module depending on which component (menu item) is used. However, modules do not need to be linked to components; they don't even need to be linked to anything and can be just static HTML or text.

Module Position - Modules can be added to a Module Position. Positions are defined in a Joomla template. Additionally you can see what positions are available in the template you are using by adding either ?tp=1 or &tp=1 to the end of the URL in the frontend.

Extension - An extension is a package that extends your Joomla! installation in some way. A small selection of extensions is included with the default Joomla! installation but many more are available from the Joomla! Extensions Site.

SEF URLS - Search-engine friendly URLs. Normal Joomla! URLs look something like this:

http://www.yoursite.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=section&id=3&Itemid=41

You can optionally have URLs display to look like static HTML pages like this:

http://www.yoursite.org/faq.html

Joomla! 1.5 has built-in options for SEF URLs. These are enabled by changing the "SEO Settings" in the Site tab in the Global Configuration screen in the Joomla! back end. There are also third-party extensions that create SEF URLs for Joomla!.

Anchor - An anchor is created using the tag in HTML. An anchor allows you to place a bookmark inside an HTML page. In Joomla!, you can place an anchor inside an article (for example, using the TinyMCE editor). This lets you create a link that will go directly to that point in the article.

The HTML source code for an anchor looks like the following:
You can link to an anchor from within the same page using the HTML code
Clicking that link will take you directly to the location of the anchor tag.

You can link to an anchor in a different page by appending "#" plus the anchor name to the end of the URL. In the example above, if the URL for the article was http://www.mysite.com/my_article.html, then you could link directly to the anchor in that page with the URL http://www.mysite.com/my_article.html#my_anchor.

Article - In Joomla! an Article is a piece of content usually consisting mainly of text, but may contain other resources too (for example, images). An Article is most often regarded as the third level in the hierarchy Sections -> Categories -> Articles. For example, a website might have Sections called "Animals" and "Plants". Within the "Animals" Section, the website might have Categories such as "Birds" and "Mammals". In the "Birds" Category there might be Articles called "Parrots" and "Sparrows" which describe the relevant birds in detail. However, it is possible to have uncategorized Articles that exist without being associated with any Section or Category.

Articles are maintained using the Article Manager (help screen) which can be reached in the Administrator (Back-end) by clicking on the Content menu, then the Article Manager menu item.

Section - In Joomla! a Section is a collection of Categories. It is the top level in the hierarchy Sections -> Categories -> Articles. For example, a website might have Sections called "Animals" and "Plants". Within the "Animals" Section, the website might have Categories such as "Birds" and "Mammals".

Sections are maintained using the Section Manager (help screen) which can be reached in the Administrator (Back-end) by clicking on the Content menu, then the Section Manager menu item.

Category - In Joomla! a Category is a collection of Articles. It is the middle level in the hierarchy Sections -> Categories -> Articles. For example, a website might have Sections called "Animals" and "Plants". Within the "Animals" Section, the website might have Categories such as "Birds" and "Mammals". Within the "Birds" Category, the website might have Articles such as "Parrots" and "Sparrows".

Categories are maintained using the Category Manager (help screen) which can be reached in the Administrator (Back-end) by clicking on the Content menu, then the Category Manager menu item.

Plugin - A plugin is a kind of Joomla! extension. Plugins provide routines which are associated with trigger events within Joomla. When a particular trigger event occurs all plugin routines of the type associated with the event are executed in sequence. In this way it is possible to add functionality to the Joomla Framework.

Template - A template is the type of Joomla extension that changes the way your site looks. There are two types of templates: Front-end Templates and Back-end Templates.

Our JOOMLA video tutorials require that the viewer have a general understanding of the following:

What is a URL?
What is meant by "file directory" and "host" and "root directory".
What is FTP?

What is a URL?

The term URL is the acronym for Universal Resource Locator. A URL is used to identify the location of a file or "resource" on the internet. You domain name (www.YourSite.com) is a URL. The files within your site are easy to locate using a distinct URL like so:

If I want to let others locate an image called "HOUSE.jpg", I could provide them the following URL:

EXAMPLE URL: www.YourSite.com/HOUSE.jpg

When someone typed the above URL into their browser it would show them the image HOUSE.jpg.

If I had the image HOUSE.jpg in a folder called "images" the URL would look like so:

EXAMPLE URL: www.YourSite.com/images/HOUSE.jpg

Why is this important? The link above illustrates a simple file structure or "directory" within your hosting account.

What is meant by "directory" Your hosting directory is a simple filing system on a server (at your Hosting Company) that holds the HTML or PHP or ASP pages of your site. We can view this file structure using IE. or Firefox but let's use a real FTP client to do this. Before we do that... Read this article that defines "directory" from Wikipedia and then return to this page. (See also "File System" for more in depth information.)

What is a "host"? Your site host is where your site files are actually stored and then "served" to site visitors through their browser when they visit your URL. Simple. Not much to know here other than this is where all of your files will be "hosted" and served. Think of it like a dinner party where the location is the host and the meal is your website. Read this article that defines "host" from Wikipedia and then return to this page.

What is FTP (File Transfer Protocol)? File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard network protocol used to copy a file from one host to another over a TCP/IP-based network, such as the Internet. FTP is built on a client-server architecture and utilizes separate control and data connections between the client and server applications, which solves the problem of different end host configurations (i.e., Operating Systems, file names).FTP is used with user-based password authentication or with anonymous user access. Applications were originally interactive command-line tools with a standardized command syntax, but graphical user interfaces have been developed for all desktop operating systems in use today.
It is not important that you know the inner workings of FTP. It is important that you know HOW to use your FTP client and KNOW THIS - You can delete your entire site if you make a mistake using FTP. OK, that's the scary scenario, but we'll show you in the FTP video how FTP works and how to use an FTP program for the PC called FILEZILLA. After using it a few times, you'll settle right in.
JOOMLA does not require any user to utilize FTP in order to build a website. However, in order to create a professional website with branding elements it is strongly suggested you get comfortable with an FTP client. When viewing the Intermediate and PRO SERIES training videos, you'll need to be comfortable with uploading and downloading files via FTP.

Read this article that defines FTP from Wikipedia and then return to this page.

You'll want an FTP client.
You can download an FTP client for free below:

For PC: FREE FTP software: Filezilla - Download for free at http://filezilla-project.org/

Purchase FTP software: WsFTP - http://www.ipswitch.com/products/ws_ftp/home/index.asp

For MAC: FREE FTP software: Fetch - http://www.fetchsoftworks.com/