Difference between revisions of "Lab Manual:Joomla"
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| − | ==Joomla Basics== | + | ==Joomla! Basics== |
| − | === What the Heck is Joomla? === | + | === What the Heck is Joomla!? === |
[http://www.joomla.org Joomla] is an open-source Content Management System (CMS), which separates the design elements of a website from the content elements of the website, and creates a user-friendly way of creating and updating content. | [http://www.joomla.org Joomla] is an open-source Content Management System (CMS), which separates the design elements of a website from the content elements of the website, and creates a user-friendly way of creating and updating content. | ||
Revision as of 13:26, 1 July 2008
Joomla! Basics
What the Heck is Joomla!?
Joomla is an open-source Content Management System (CMS), which separates the design elements of a website from the content elements of the website, and creates a user-friendly way of creating and updating content.
How does it work?
Joomla can be broken into three essential parts.
- Templates layout the design of a website
- Articles store the content of a website
- Menus define the pages of a website
Joomla uses PHP as a programming language and MySQL as a database.
Joomla Templates
Joomla Templates generally have 4 parts
- index.php - a file which tells Joomla what content to put on a page.
- TemplateDetails.xml - a file which tells Joomla some basic information about the template.
- params.ini - ???
- css files - cascading style sheet files which tell web browsers how to format and layout content.
Unlocking Locked / Checked Out Content
Sometimes you might find a padlock icon next to content in Joomla. This means the content is 'checked out'. Someone else is using it. This can occur if someone is editing a page, or if they fail to close the document they are working on. If you want to force all the content to be checked in, you can do a 'Global Check In' by going to the Tools Menu -> Global Check In. Warning: Careful, because this will lose any unsaved changes.
Edit an Existing Page
Create a New Page
You can create a new page by either
1. Login to the Joomla CMS Administrator panel
or
2. Login to the SPAN Lab website and click on 'Create New'
Inserting Images
Uploading Files
Edit a Menu
RSS Feeds
Joomla has the very cool ability to create RSS feeds.
On pages using the multiple article layout format, you might see a RSS button show up in your address bar, or see it at the bottom fo the page. You can think of RSS as a news ticker, and it is a great tool if you have lots of different websites you get news from. You can grab all their RSS feeds and read the news in one place. Safari and Firefox have built in RSS readers, but you can also use an external program (such as Vienna).
Public SPAN Lab RSS Feeds
Our new Joomla CMS publishes two RSS feeds publically:
We should also create one for publications...
Private SPAN LAb RSS Feeds
We also have a private feed for our internal blog. This is probably not secure, and we could disable it if we like.
