Book Image

Joomla! 1.5 Content Administration

Book Image

Joomla! 1.5 Content Administration

Overview of this book

Often a company hires consultants or web developers to build a Joomla! web site, and then takes over running the site in house. If you are a content administrator concerned with creating and maintaining the 'product' of a content management site, and not modifying its code, this book is all you need. This practical, hands-on guide will give you all the knowledge needed to maintain and edit your web site as a content-rich place that visitors return to again and again. There are many books available to help you administer a Joomla! site, but this is the only one specifically for Content Administrators. It is a quick-start guide that best serves content administrators and editors and doesn't cover designing or creating a site. However, anybody who has built their own site but needs help with article management, multimedia management, search engine optimization, and more will also benefit from it. To explain all the features, we will work on developing and maintaining the content and structure of a fledgling web site for a fictitious company "The Party People". Beginning with the basics, which includes an exploration of how to access and navigate around the administration interface, you will move into managing and creating content, including adding images, video, and audio material. There is advice on how to make the most of your multimedia material and how to choose the right file type for your needs. As your skills develop, you will work through techniques for making the site search-engine friendly and securing it against potential malicious attacks. All of these techniques and processes are explained step by step, and by the end of the book you will be able to take advantage your new-found knowledge and skills and maintain your Joomla! site with ease. Keeping your content fresh and engaging becomes easy, once you know how and that's what this book aims to do. It will help you become a more effective and efficient manager of Joomla!-based web sites.
Table of Contents (14 chapters)
Joomla! 1.5 Content Administration
Credits
About the Author
Acknowledgement
About the Reviewer
Preface

Where to begin


What you see in the web browser is referred to as the frontend of your site and presents the online face and personality of your organization. Managing this pleasant face is easily achieved when you access the backend of the site. The kind folks at Joomla! have made this as fuss free as possible by providing a graphical and easy to navigate administration interface.

It is also important to mention here that editing your website can be done through the frontend of the site as well, depending upon the level of access the user has been granted. There are also certain extensions to Joomla! that allows access to particular areas. Chapter 5, User Management looks at the level of access in detail.

However, access to the administration requires logging in and your website developer will have provided you with the appropriate level of authority to do so. The administration interface called the Control Panel, is a "members only" area.

Note

If your developer has not given you the level of authority as a user to do this, you will need to approach them and ask them to change your user profile. The developer should allocate access to you as a manager at least for administrative rights. Chapter 5, User Management covers user management in a detailed manner.

Logging into the Control Panel

Access to the Control Panel is through a link relative to the website address. Using the Party People example, the content editor will type in http://partypeople.com/administrator/ and be presented with the login panel to enter a Username and Password before proceeding to the Control Panel.

Having logged in successfully, you are presented with the Control Panel screen (the central hub for managing your content). This is where you begin creating and managing articles, uploading images, as well as a host of other functional activities. Clicking one of the icons (as seen in the following screenshot) gives you access to various sections of the administration interface. We'll address these progressively throughout the chapter.

The icons presented are quick links to the most frequently accessed content editing and management activities and are supplementary to the main menu structure located at the top of the administration interface. Use either the icon or the menu to take you to the section.

The icons on display are determined by the level of authority the website developer has created for your role.

As the Control Panel is the central hub of the administration interface, it can also be accessed from other areas of the site through the top menu.

Click the Site | Control Panel link from anywhere within the administration interface to return to this screen. You will need to close or save your current updates in order to enable the link.