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…
If you need more than an explanation and would like a developer to build or restructure your site, our Joomla development company has been working with Joomla clients since its early versions.
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
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.
