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
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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.
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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.

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[ 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.
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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
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[ 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.
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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.
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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!
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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.
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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:

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