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An article is the basic unit of written content for your site. The text you write will be stored in your site database. It is dynamically rendered as a webpage by the site software when a visitor comes to the URL for a page containing the content.
The same content may appear differently depending on the template and extensions you have activated on your site. It may also appear in different forms on different pages of your site.
Articles can be organized by assigning them to Sections and Categories. Categories are a subset of Sections. See the Blog entry for how Sections and Categories are used to control content.
Joomla uses the term Blog differently than WordPress or normal cyber-literate people. A blog in Joomla is a way to display multiple articles on single web page.
The Joomla Blog option is selected when creating a menu item to display content. It is quite flexible in how you choose to display a bunch of articles. You can choose from the following options:
A very minor limitation of this option is that if you want to combine these different display types on single web page, then they must be in the order listed above. For example, you could not start with a list of article titles and then show teasers followed by full length articles.
The blog layout uses either a Section or a Section/Category combination and displays all the articles in that section or category up to the number of articles you have defined for each display type. The last article shown is based the limits you have set within the sort order defined.
Although this is blog-like and can easily be used for showing news items or other blogish content on your site, it is missing some essentials such as comments. This can be corrected using Joomla extensions. However, if you want to do serious blogging I recommend WordPress. However, the Joomla Blog Layout is useful for display content on your site - just understand it doesn't mean blog as in WordPress.
An extension is a piece of software written to work with Joomla as an add-in - to extend the functionality of Joomla. Joomla uses the term extension as a generic term covering all types of software that can be added to a Joomla website. Extensions are written by independent software developers and most (but not all) are free. Joomla versions 1.5x and higher recognize the following extension types: Components, Modules, Plugins and Templates.
Components are extensions which add major features to your website. They can be configured from a menu item which is added under the Component menu in the administrator section of the site. Joomla comes with some default components such as Contacts and Banners. I typically add a Site Map component and a form manager. SEO, gallery and document management components are also often useful to my clients. Many components include required or optional plugins and modules that work with the component.
Joomla content display is controlled by a template (an extension). Templates organize each web page into positions where different types of content can be placed. Examples of position names are header, footer, left, right, top, user1, and so on.
Modules allow the display of special content in one of your templates positions. For example, in a three column template layout, you could display a side menu in the left position, a copyright notice in the bottom position and a poll in the right position. Although the position of your main content cannot be controlled other than by the template you use, there are modules that allow you to display an article in a chosen position.
There are some standard positions most Joomla templates will use, but not all templates use the same names or number of positions for modules. One of the things which sets some Joomla templates apart is the number, position and sophistication of the template positions they have defined for modules. Many positions automatically “collapse” (are hidden) if no content is placed in them.
The default is for any active module to appear on all pages. However, you can control where modules will appear on a page by page (menu item) basis. Thus you could show a poll in a right column on your home page in a three column template. The rest of your pages could have no poll and if no other modules were in the right position in a collapsing right position you would have only two columns displayed on your other pages.
You can also place more than one module in a position. You could add all of the following in the left position: a side menu, the user login form, a poll and feed showing the most recent post on your blog. Each of these would appear on the left in the order you designated.
A plugin adds some function to your site but isn't directly connected to specific content. Content editors and advanced search functions are examples of plugins that can be added. Before Joomla 1.5 plugins were called mambots (Joomla is a fork of Mambo, another CMS).
One of the advantages of Content Management Systems over static web pages is the separation of content from design. You can change one without affecting the other. The template is the software which controls the design of your website. This includes typography, menus, module positions, colors, logo placement and so on. You can change the look and feel of your site without affecting the content just by changing the template. Many templates are flexible and multi-purposed so you can change your design significantly by just changing the settings in your template.
All Joomla sites have a Main Menu by default. You cannot delete this menu. You can control the position where this is displayed but usually it will be on the top, the left or the right side of your web page. (The top position may be named something else in your template but left and right are standard position names).
You can create multiple menus and have them display in different positions or on different pages. You can also hide some menus from visitors and only show them if your visitor has logged into the site as a user.
Menu items are the individual selections that can be chosen from a menu. Each menu item is linked to a web page which is displayed. When adding new menu items you must select the type of content and specific content that will be displayed. Content options for menus are from the components that are installed on your site.
Some types of content that can be linked to menus are: Articles, Contacts, News Feeds, Polls, Search and External Links.
Sections and Categories are organizational designations which are applied to articles. Other components may also use separate categories or sections to organize the content from those extensions. Categories are a subset of Sections. An example:
Imagine you have an online store. You might organize your content into sections for Products, Services and News. Within the News section you might have categories for Company News, Promotions and Specials. You could then display all of the products you sell by creating a menu item linked to a Section Blog Layout for the Products section. You could display all specials by creating a menu item linked to a Category Blog Layout for the News/Specials section/category combination.
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