People who start using Joomla usually struggle with understanding how the content management system works and what things mean.
Here is a very quick Joomla explanation to cover terms like: Sections, Categories, Articles and Menu Items. It’s easy if you think in terms of a book…
Joomla Sections
Consider Joomla sections as broad topics within your book that can include sub-topics or categories. Lets say we are going to build a site about Learning to Drive. A section (or topic) could be:
- Learning to drive
Joomla Categories
The Joomla categories within your section could be “Theory”, “Parking”, “Pass Plus”:
- Theory
- Parking
- Pass Plus
Another way to approach the Learning to Drive site is by creating sections called:
- Theory
- Parking
- Pass Plus
You then have the ability to create a much larger website because you can have several categories for each section. Consider the following example:
- Theory
- Motorway
- Roundabouts
- Pedestrian crossings
- Traffic lights
- Parking
- Reverse parking
- Three point turn
- Pass Plus
- Benefits
- Modules
- Courses
Joomla Articles
Many people come to Joomla from a HTML background and think in terms of web pages. In Joomla, there is no such concept as a “page”, only a Joomla article. Again, think of Learning to Drive: You write a Joomla article about Reverse Parking. This article is placed under the section called Parking and into the category Reverse parking. Now your website has a structure using Joomla Sections, Categories and Articles. Remember you can always move your article into a new or different section or category at a later point if needed.
Joomla menu items are there to help visitors navigate to specific Joomla articles, categories or sections. When you create a menu item you can link directly to a section, category or uncategorised article. You can also create a menu item to link to a component built by a third-party such as a events calendar or image rotator. You can also link to built in Joomla components like contacts, poll, search plus much more.
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