Joomla 

This document is a collection of notes about Joomla web sites. Where possible I will point you at 

other published information. 

 

Documentation 

http://docs.joomla.org/ this is a wiki. This does not seem to cater very well for the beginner. 

 

Web site 

• Domain Name e.g. cevsystems.co.uk 

• Sub domain e.g. test.cevsystems.co.uk 

Joomla is a Content Management System (CMS) 

Software is installed on the web server. 

The web site content is stored in a database (MySQL) 

as two parts 

• Front end for users and some content editing 

• Back end  for administrators  (yourdomain.co.uk/administrator) 

Example 

• http://www.derbyramblers.org.uk/ 

 

• http://www.derbyramblers.org.uk/administrator 

 

FTP access is used to first install the Joomla software but after that it is not required. 

 

Test web site 

 

I have a Joomla test web site that you can use to try things. The site is http://joomlatest.cevsystems.co.uk/ To modify the site you go to http://joomlatest.cevsystems.co.uk/administrator and log in with the userid and password I have given you. 

The only thing you need on your PC is a web browser. 

 

Users

Users of the web site are divided into different groups. 

 

• Public – can access the normal front end of the web site 

• Registered – can access the front end and optionally the back end of the web site. Registered 

1 Joomla Websites04 users can be given additional access. 

 

Front end 

 

• Registered 

• Author 

• Editor 

• Publisher 

Back end 

• Manager 

• Administrator 

• Supper Administrator 

 

Web site content 

 

• Articles – what you think of as a page, but may only part be of the page 

• Contacts – so people can contact you. 

• Web links 

• and more 

A Web page is divided up into a number of areas such as 

• Header 

• Footer 

• Left and right columns containing Modules 

• Centre containing content. 

To see these areas add tp=1 to then of your url 

i.e.  http://www.yourdomain...uk/?tp=1 

 

Content and presentation 

 

The content of a web site is separate from how it is presented. 

 

• The Database contains the content 

 

• a Template defines how to "Present" the content on the web page. This includes how the 

screen is divided up into areas, the colour, fonts etc of all the items. Most people don't need 

to worry about Templates. 

 

Adding content 

Log in to back-end of your site, e.g. yourdomain/administrator 

 

Go to Content menu 

 

Articles are categorised by Section and Category or are Uncategorised. 

 

Articles are edited using software called JCE – this is a bit like Word for the web! 

 

Documentation http://www.joomlacontenteditor.net/support/documentation 

 

NOTE: Do not add special styles to the text as this will be done by the Templat2 Joomla Websites04

You can make items into headings, or use bold, italics but do this sparingly. 

 

Importing Text 

If you import content from another source such as a Word document then you may also carry across the styling of the text.  You should avoid this as the page will NOT have the same look and feel as others in the web site. 

 

If you wish to copy/paste text from word then 

 

• Go into word and copy the text (Ctrl+C) 

• Go into the Joomla article and click where you want the new text to appear. 

• There is an icon in the editor menu with a small W , if you hover over it you will see Paste 

from Word. Click this icon 

• A new window is opened and you type Ctrl+V, hold control key down and press V as well. 

• This will copy the text into the new window and remove any special Word formatting. 

• Click Insert to accept. 

 

Images 

• Make sure images are a suitable size. 

• Possible programs you could use to do this are Irfanview, Google Picasa, Paint.NET 

• Check the maximum dimension of an image. 

• Max of 640 for full screen, 160 for a thumbnail. Resize the image, if necessary, before uploading it.. 

• Up load images using Media Manager 

• Insert images using JCE 

 

Privacy/Dates 

 

Each article can be set to be viewable by the public, registered or special users. Only registered 

users who log on to a site will see articles that are restricted to “registered”. Only users with extra functionality will see the special arcticles. 

 

For each article you can specify the date you want it to start being viewed and also the date after 

which it should stop being viewed.  

 

Simple Image Gallery PRO 

This is a plugin added to your web site, It allows you to browse a set of pictures. 

Documentation is at http://www.joomlaworks.gr/content/view/51/41/ 

 

Web site navigation 

 

Menus 

 

You can have more than one menu. 

A menu item can point at a number of things 

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• Article 

• A category of articles 

• A section of articles 

• A blog – all articles in a category say 

• A Contact or a category 

• A web link or category 

• An external URL 

•

Privacy 

Access is set as Private, Registered or Special

 

How to publish information for you to review 

A simple way of checking new content is to make it only visible to a registered or special level of user and then login to the site to see this content. When you are happy make it viewable at the 

Public level. 

 

Web site page names 

SEO – Search Engine Optimisation. The web site is set up so that the web pages are of the form. http:/yourdomain.org.uk/index.php/members/members-articles.html 

where http:/yourdomain.org.uk/index.php is the actual web file that will handle the display of a page  and members/members-articles.html specifies the web content to me displayed. 

This format should be okay for search engines such as Google. 

4 Joomla Websites04

 

 

check your web site looks okay in a number of Web Browsers, e.g. Internet Explorer, Firefox, 

Opera, Chrome, SafariWell at least the first two! 

Most people use the default Windows browser, Internet Explorer, the next most popular browser is 

Firefox.Screen size. Remember that people use different screen sizes, and anyway there Web Browsers 

window may not fill the screen, and hence you should check that the site looks acceptable with 

different window sizes. 

 

Firefox 

Firefox can be downloaded free from http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/ 

There are two add ons for Firefox that can be useful when testing a web site, particularly when 

setting up a new Template. These are 

• Web Developer – this provides a new toolbar with options to show and control various 

options. These include viewing the images displayed on the site, setting the browser window 

to specific sizes. When Firefox views a Web developer displays 3 symbols on the  right of its 

toolbar. These indicate if any coding errors have been encountered by a red circle, and no 

errors by a green tick. 

• Firebird -  allows you to inspect parts of the web page and see the HTML and CSS relevant 

to that part. 

 

How to check all the links in your site work okay. 

There are a number of programs that will check your site for broken links, both internal and 

external. 

Xenu is a free program. Xenu's Link Sleuth (TM) checks Web sites for broken links. Link verification 

is done on "normal" links, images, frames, plug-ins, backgrounds, local image maps, style sheets, 

scripts and java applets. 

Download it from http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html 

How to check the HTMl and CSS for errors 

There are sites that will check the HTML and CSS code of your web site 

• Check the CSS at  http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator 

• Check the HTML code as http://validator.w3.org/ 

 

Web site usage 

The next thing you will want to see is how much your web site is used and how people find your 

site. 

On my server it records basic usage. I run a program each week that analyses these usage logs and 

8 Joomla Websites04

puts the result on to a web site associated with the normal site 

The address is of the form http://admin.yourname.org.uk 

Note that the statistics are listed for the last week and the last 12 months. 

The usage information on this site is not that useful. This because the logging method only knows 

what files (pages, images etc) have been downloaded and not what makes up a visit to the site. See 

Google Analytics for a much better usage monitor. 

But you should look at the errors recorded for your site. Errors can occur in two main ways 

• Your web page references a file/image that does not exist 

• Another web site links to your site and that information is no longer available or has been 

renamed. 

Look at the Failure Report to see what errors are occurring. 

 

Google Analytics 

“Google Analytics is the enterprise-class web analytics solution that gives you rich insights into 

your website traffic and marketing effectiveness. Powerful, flexible and easy-to-use features now let 

you see and analyze your traffic data in an entirely new way. With Google Analytics, you're more 

prepared to write better-targeted ads, strengthen your marketing initiatives and create higher 

converting websites. “ 

Analytics is free to use, just create a Google account and define the web site you wish to monitor. 

http://www.google.com/analytics/ 

You will be asked to add code to every page of the web site, in Joomla this can be done my adding 

the code to the index.php file in the Template that you use. If you are lucky the Template will do 

this for you. In the code below, "UA-xxxxxx-y", defines the account, xxxxxx, and web site, y, being 

monitored. Note that you should use the code Google supplies rather than the sample below. 

Once you have it working you can set up a report to be emailed to you on a regular basis. 

Sample Google Script 

<script type="text/javascript"> 

  var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); 

  document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js'     

  type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); 

</script> 

<script type="text/javascript"> 

  try {var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-xxxxxx-y"); 

  pageTracker._trackPageview(); 

  } catch(err) {} 

</script> 

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Below is a list of other subjects that need describing 

Email 

Forwarding or mailbox 

A CAPTCHA or Captcha is a type of challenge-response test used in computing to ensure that the response is not generated by a computer. The process usually involves one computer  asking a user to complete a simple test which the computer is able to generate and grade. Because other computers are unable to solve the CAPTCHA, any user entering a correct solution is presumed to be human. 

 

Web site Caching 

A cache  is a component that improves performance by transparently storing data such that future requests for that data can be served faster. The data that is stored within a cache might be values that have been computed earlier or duplicates of original values that are stored elsewhere.