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Joomla! 3 Beginner's Guide Second Edition

By : Eric Tiggeler
Book Image

Joomla! 3 Beginner's Guide Second Edition

By: Eric Tiggeler

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Joomla! 3 Beginner's Guide Second Edition
Eric Tiggeler
Jul, 2014 | 476 pages
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Table of Contents (22 chapters)
Joomla! 3 Beginner's Guide Second Edition
Joomla! 3 Beginner's Guide Second Edition
Credits
Credits
About the Author
About the Author
About the Reviewers
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Preface
Free Chapter
1
A New and Easy Way to Build Websites
A New and Easy Way to Build Websites
Join the CMS revolution
Why would you choose Joomla!?
What kind of sites can you build with Joomla!?
Learning to use Joomla!
Summary
2
Getting Joomla! Up and Running
Getting Joomla! Up and Running
What do you need to start?
Installing Joomla! on a web server
Time for action – downloading the Joomla! files
Time for action – placing the files on the web server
Time for action – creating a database
Time for action – running the Joomla! installation wizard
Installing Joomla! on your own computer
Time for action – installing XAMPP
Time for action – creating a MySQL database
Time for action – downloading Joomla! and running the installation wizard
Upgrading from previous versions of Joomla!
Got stuck? Get help!
Summary
3
First Steps – Getting to Know Joomla!
First Steps – Getting to Know Joomla!
Building websites the Joomla! way
Introducing the frontend and backend – the Joomla! interface
Exploring the frontend – the website as the user sees it
Time for action – touring the example site
Administering your site in the backend
Time for action – logging in to the backend
Getting your feet wet – start administering your site
Time for action – publishing your first article
Time for action – adding a module to the site
Time for action – setting Joomla! preferences
Summary
4
Web Building Basics – Creating a Site in an Hour
Web Building Basics – Creating a Site in an Hour
What you will be making
Removing the sample data
Time for action – deleting articles and categories
Time for action – deleting menus
Building your new site in three steps
Time for action – creating a copy of the current template
Time for action – preparing a new logo image
Time for action – tweaking the design details
Time for action – creating a news category
Time for action – creating an article
Time for action – adding a menu link
Time for action – adding uncategorized articles
Time for action – assigning articles to the home page
Time for action – creating a contact
Time for action – creating a Contact Form menu link
Time for action – creating a message block
Wrapping up – changing site settings
Time for action – changing the site configuration
Summary
5
Small Sites, Big Sites – Organizing Your Content Effectively
Small Sites, Big Sites – Organizing Your Content Effectively
Building on the example site
Grouping content – a crash course on site organization
Time for action – creating a future-proof site map
Creating categories and subcategories
Time for action – creating a category and subcategories
Displaying main categories and subcategories on your site
Time for action – creating a link to point to a main category
Refining your site structure
Time for action – moving content from one category to another
Time for action – renaming a category
Using tags to label and organize content
Time for action – creating a tag
Summary
6
Creating Killer Content – Adding and Editing Articles
Creating Killer Content – Adding and Editing Articles
Articles and content pages – what's the difference?
Creating and editing articles – beyond the basics
Making your words look good – formatting article text
Time for action – adding styles to the article text
Extending the text editor
Adding images to articles
Time for action – uploading images
Time for action – inserting and aligning images
Changing the way the article is displayed
Time for action – creating intro text
Time for action – using page breaks to split up an article
Displaying images and links with articles
Time for action – adding images and links to an article
Restoring a previous version of an article
Tweaking the details – changing article settings
Archiving articles
Time for action – creating a News archive
Summary
7
Welcoming Your Visitors – Creating Attractive Home Pages and Overview Pages
Welcoming Your Visitors – Creating Attractive Home Pages and Overview Pages
Why do you need overview pages anyway?
Mastering the home page layout
Time for action – rearranging the layout of articles on the home page
Time for action – showing the most recent items first
Time for action – creating a different home page
Creating category overview pages
The first type of overview page – creating Category Blog layouts
Time for action – creating a face book using the Blog layout
The second type of overview page – lists
Time for action – adding a link to a Category List layout
Creating overview pages that show tagged articles
Time for action – creating a tagged items overview page
Summary
8
Helping Your Visitors Find What They Want – Managing Menus
Helping Your Visitors Find What They Want – Managing Menus
How many menus can you have?
Creating user-friendly navigation – cleaning up Main Menu
Time for action – changing the order of menu items
Time for action – creating a secondary menu item
Time for action – create a new, empty menu
Time for action – moving hyperlinks to the new menu
Time for action – telling Joomla! where to display the menu
Using the horizontal drop-down menu as the main menu
Time for action – displaying Main Menu links in Top Menu
Exploring menu module settings
What types of menu links are available?
Creating plain text links
Time for action – creating text links
Summary
9
Opening Up the Site – Enabling Users to Log in and Contribute
Opening Up the Site – Enabling Users to Log in and Contribute
Working with the default set of user groups
Time for action – adding a user with frontend authoring permissions
Time for action – putting Login Form on the home page
Time for action – logging in as a frontend content contributor
Time for action – reviewing and publishing submitted content
Enabling self-registration – allowing visitors to register
Time for action – registering yourself and logging in
Time for action – hiding content for nonregistered users
Time for action – partially hiding content from nonregistered users
Creating custom-made user groups
Time for action – creating a user group
Time for action – telling Joomla! what the group can see
Time for action – telling Joomla! what the group can do
Time for action – adding users to the new group
Summary
10
Getting the Most out of Your Site – Extending Joomla!
Getting the Most out of Your Site – Extending Joomla!
Extensions in all shapes and sizes
Enhancing your site using core extensions
Time for action – adding the Newsflash module to the home page
Time for action – adding a series of contacts
Enhancing your site using third-party extensions
Time for action – downloading and installing an extension
Time for action – putting the extension to work
Time for action – creating an image gallery
Time for action – replacing the default text editor of Joomla!
Managing the site language
Time for action – removing or replacing default texts
Summary
11
Creating an Attractive Design – Working with Templates
Creating an Attractive Design – Working with Templates
What do templates do?
Why are templates so much fun?
Changing the settings of the current template
Time for action – changing the site color and layout options
Switching to a different template
Time for action – activating a different template
Applying template styles to individual pages
Time for action – creating a template style for one specific page
Downloading and installing a new template
Time for action – downloading and activating a new template
Time for action – adding the logo file
Time for action – adding a menu module
Time for action – placing modules in new template positions
Customizing a template – tweaking CSS styles
Time for action – customizing the background color using CSS
Backing up and restoring a customized template
Where can you get a new template for your site?
Creating your own template
Using a template framework as the base for your own template
Summary
12
Attracting Search Engine Traffic – SEO Tips and Techniques
Attracting Search Engine Traffic – SEO Tips and Techniques
Working on search engine optimization
Optimizing articles to make them easy to find
Configuring HTML page titles
Time for action – setting the HTML page title
Adding meaningful metadata
Time for action – personalizing the site metadata
Using search engine friendly URLs
Adding extra links to the site's content
Time for action – adding a list of links to popular articles
Adding microdata to your content
Redirecting visitors after pages have been moved
Time for action – creating page redirects
Getting to know more about your site's traffic
More SEO resources
Summary
Keeping the Site Secure
Keeping the Site Secure
Choosing a web host that meets your security requirements
Creating a Multilingual Site
Creating a Multilingual Site
Creating a new site with multilingual capabilities
Creating a translated version of an existing site
Pop Quiz Answers
Pop Quiz Answers
Chapter 2, Getting Joomla! Up and Running
Chapter 3, First Steps – Getting to Know Joomla!
Chapter 4, Web Building Basics – Creating a Site in an Hour
Chapter 5, Small Sites, Big Sites – Organizing Your Content Effectively
Chapter 6, Creating Killer Content – Adding and Editing Articles
Chapter 7, Welcoming Your Visitors – Creating Attractive Home Pages and Overview Pages
Chapter 8, Helping Your Visitors Find What They Want – Managing Menus
Chapter 9, Opening Up the Site – Enabling Users to Log in and Contribute
Chapter 10, Getting the Most out of Your Site – Extending Joomla!
Chapter 11, Creating an Attractive Design – Working with Templates
Chapter 12, Attracting Search Engine Traffic – SEO Tips and Techniques
Index
Index

Time for action – preparing a new logo image

Let's first create a new logo image.

  1. Open up your image editing tool. In this example, we'll use Adobe Photoshop, but you can use any image editor.

    Tip

    Living without Photoshop—free alternatives

    Photoshop may be a fine graphic editing tool, but it's not exactly cheap. The standard Windows graphics editor Paint can do the job, but its capabilities are very, very basic. Fortunately, there are many excellent and free Photoshop alternatives. You can even have essential Photoshopping capabilities on your computer without installing a thing. Just go to www.pixlr.com, click on Open Photo editor, and start creating and editing!

    Tip

    If you're looking for free graphic editing software programs, perform a web search for Paint.NET or GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP). Both are very capable programs; Paint.NET is beginner friendly and at the same time quite powerful. GIMP is arguably the most popular free Photoshop contender. It's an open source program that...

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