Part II (view part I of What is Joomla, Why Use It? here)

Using Joomla to Build Web Pages and Navigation

There are some basic concepts to understand. Joomla works with 'Articles' and 'Components'. An article in the Joomla sense is a web page. Components are basically building blocks of functionality that you plug into positions on your web page. Components are comprised of 'Modules' and/or 'Plugins'.

Joomla has inbuilt rules that will help you keep your work organized. For example, before creating a new Article (web page), you'll want to create a 'Section' and within it a 'Category". So for example, you might create a Section called 'Web Design' and then Categories within that section of 'Joomla', 'Dreamweaver', 'FrontPage' etc.

You add sections, categories and articles via the 'Content' button on the Joomla Navigation bar.

Once you have a Section and Category, it's time to add an Article. Inside the Content panel, click 'New Article' and you'll see the article panel. Tip! - if you want extended editing features, so you have more formatting options for your Article, click here.

Give your article a Title and enter the content (text) into the description panel. You can format the text and add images quite easily. Once you have the body of the article entered it's time to configure the parameters using the links to the right side of the article page. First, it's always a good idea to save your work periodically by using the green 'Apply' button at the top of the page. Hitting 'Apply' in preference to 'Save' will save your work but keep you on the page, whereas using 'Save' will save your work and navigate you away from the page.

Tip! - If you're working in Joomla and you get a 'Time Out' message that directs you back to the login page, it can be very frustrating resulting in lost work! - You can adjust the length of time to remain logged-in without activity by clicking on the 'Site' - 'Global Configuration' then select the 'system' tab and under 'Session Settings' adjust the time to something more realistic like '60 minutes'.

Back to those parameter settings on the article page - you can manually set what information will be displayed with your article, such as whether or not to display email links, PDF links etc. If you want to do this at a global level so you don't have to set each article, go to the main 'Content' panel and click on 'Configuration'.

After you set the parameters (Article and Advanced) you need to click the 'Metadata' tab and enter a Description for your page and keywords (these will be displayed to search engines and will present information about the content of your page).

Click on 'Save' and you've built your first web page in Joomla!

Joomla Navigation -

Now that you have a page built you need to make it visible to your visitors, you do this by adding a 'Navigation' button to a 'Menu'.

By default Joomla always has a 'Main Menu' with a 'Home' button. Click on 'Menu's' 'Main menu' and you'll see the 'Home' button. Now lets add a button to the page you just built. Perhaps your 'Article' or web page was an 'About Us' page. Click on 'New' to add a new menu item (nav button).

You'll be asked to specify what type of menu item this is, and for now you're going to select 'Articles'. On the next panel select 'Article Layout' and you'll be taken to the menu item configuration screen.

There isn't much you need to set in here, simply give the menu item a Title, like 'About Us' and then using the tab to the right select an Article to link to. You'll see the article you created within the category/section you selected.

Click save and you'll be taken back to the Main Menu layout where you will see the new menu item you have created. Make sure it is 'published' as indicated by the green arrow in the 'Published' column. If it is not, click on the red checkbox to publish it.

That's it! if you navigate to your website you should see the new Nav button and it should take you to the page you created.

That's a basic overview of Joomla. Obviously there are many other ways of developing your website on the Joomla platform and scaling functionality to suit your needs.

But that should get you started. And, don't forget Artisteer for creating your Joomla Templates - Here's a review of Artisteer

If you have questions, submit them below and we'll try to get back to you ASAP!