Categories

filter box

Content in Joomla! is organized in a structure of categories and articles. (NOTE: If you have used Joomla! 1.5 in the past, you are familiar with the organization of sections, categories, and articles. Joomla! 2.5 does not have sections. Instead, there are unlimited nested categories.) 

You do not need to create dozens of categories. You will have a main category that includes all categorized articles on the site, and a variety of sub-categories. We do not recommend using more than a dozen sub-categories, and in many cases, 4-6 will be sufficient. Also, in terms of depth, we do not recommend creating more than 3 or 4 levels down, and in many cases, the two levels of a site wide category and 4-6 sub-categories will be sufficient.

To create or edit categories, go to ‘Content’ ‘Category Manager.’ Categories do not need to correspond to menu items. You will usually use categories in two ways 1) to find articles quickly in the article manager and 2) to display a blog category layout or a list of all articles in a category. So, for instance, if the Rabbi will have a regular column on the website, you may want to create a category called ‘Rabbi’s Blog’ and put all of those articles in that category. Then you can have a menu item that goes to a list of the Rabbi’s articles, or a page where the first paragraph of each article displays with a ‘read more’ button.

Technically, you can create an article and keep it ‘uncategorized’ and not put it in a category. This is not recommended. Choose the correct category when you create the article.

Finding articles

When you have dozens or hundreds of articles on your website, you want to be able to find an article quickly on the back end. Go to ‘Content’ ‘Article Manager’ or click on the ‘Article Manager’ icon in the control panel. There are several ways to find articles. On the left hand side, you will see the filter box.

filter box

You can type a word or part of a word in the filter box, and click ‘search’ and you will see only articles with that word (or part) listed.

Another way to find articles is to use the drop down boxes on the right hand side, that let you filter by status, category, category level, access, author, or language. For most sites, ‘category’ is the most useful drop down.

filter drop downs

Once you have used the section or category drop down boxes to filter articles – if you then create a new article, it will, by default, be in that section or category.

NOTE: If you are seeing only some of your articles and don’t understand why others seem to be missing – check the filters and clear any selections you may have made.