Sections and Categories

filter_articles

Content in Joomla! is organized in a structure of sections, categories and articles.

Most synagogue websites do not require more than one section. If you do need to create an additional section, login to the back end and go to ‘content’ ‘section manager.’ Click on the ‘new’ icon on the right hand side. Enter a title, you do not need to enter an alias. Click the ‘save’ icon on the upper right hand corner.

Each section has one or more categories. To create or edit categories, go to ‘content’ ‘category manager.’ Try not to create more categories than you need. Categories do not need to correspond to menu items. You will 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 section or a category. This is not recommended. Choose the correct section and 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_articles

You can type a word or part of a word in the filter box, and click ‘go’ 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use the drop down boxes on the right hand side, that let you filter by section, category, author, or state (published, unpublished, archived). For most sites, ‘category’ is the most useful drop down.

article_filter_drop_down

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.