Joomla! 1.6 First Look

Table of Contents

Joomla! 1.6 First Look

Credits

About the Author

About the Reviewers

www.PacktPub.com

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Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Errata

Piracy

Questions

1. Stepping Up to Joomla! 1.6

Upgrading from 1.5

Joomla! 1.5 extension compatibility

Changes for templates

When should you move to 1.6?

Migrating content from Joomla! 1.5

What's new? A quick overview

1 - Usability enhancements

A friendlier interface

The great new time-saving toolbar

2 - Working with content

The endless joy of unlimited categories

No more fiddling with menus

3 - New ways to manage user access

Do you want it simple? Keep it simple

4 - Working with extensions and templates

Updating extensions? Just lean back

Templating to your taste

SEO improvements

Summary

2. Exploring your Enhanced Workspace

Before you start: choosing a safe root user's name

Changing the root user's name after installation

Logging in to the backend

What's changed in the backend?

What's gone: no more sections

What's been added: the Users menu

What's been moved: some tools and odds and ends

User Settings and Media Settings have been moved

Five great new time-saving features

Timesaver # 1: going home in one click

Timesaver # 2: adding new items in one click

Timesaver # 3: Save & New

Using the new Save & New button

Timesaver # 4: Save as Copy

Creating dummy content using Save as Copy

Timesaver # 5: tabbed screens

One great life-saver: two-step deletion

Deleting an item

Exploring and restoring thrashed content

Permanently deleting items

Customizing the looks of the backend

Selecting another backend template

Setting the backend template to suit your taste

Summary

3. Organizing and Managing Content

Organizing content using nested categories

Improvement #1: categories can now be one level deep

Improvement #2: creating multiple category levels

Creating a set of 'nested' categories

Using nested categories in the sample data

Exploring the sample data

How can different categories look like different sites?

New category settings: notes and metadata

Adding category metadata

Fresh ways to display category contents on the frontend

New category view # 1: List All Categories

Creating a link to a site map

Tweaking the site map display

New Category View # 2: Articles Categories Module

Creating an Articles Categories module

Adding some more category listings

New Category View # 3: Articles (in) Category Module

Using the new Articles Category Module

Working with the updated article editor

Creating a link to an article

Inserting an article title as a hyperlink

Using the updated Media Manager

Enabling the Flash image uploader

Archiving articles

Summary

4. Managing Menus and Menu Modules

Goodbye to a spartan Menu Manager

The all-new tabbed Menu Manager screen

Exploring the new Menu Manager

New ways to manage and edit menus

A new shortcut to jump straight to selected menu items

A new shortcut to jump to menu module settings

Changing the menu module settings in the Menu Manager

New ways to manage and edit menu items

Filtering the list of menu items

Menu selection filter (About Joomla!)

Select Max Levels filter

Select State, Access, or Language filter

Changes in the way you assign a menu item to the homepage

New buttons to copy and move menu items

Trashing menu items

Creating or editing individual Menu Items

Choosing from new Menu Item Types

New Menu Link Item type # 1: List All Categories

New Menu Link Item type # 2: List All Contact Categories

Exploring the use of Contact Categories in the sample site

Creating a database overview using the List All Contact Categories Menu Item Type

Setting the template for an individual menu item

An overview of Menu Item Options

Layout Options

Article Options

Integration Options

Page Display Options

Metadata Options

Module Assignment for this Menu Item

Changing the module settings from the menu item

Summary

5. Managing Site Users with Access Control

What's new about the Access Control Levels system?

What are the default user groups and permissions?

The default site-wide settings

Default user groups

Public—the guest group

Registered—the user group that can log in

Author, Editor, Publisher—the frontend content team

Manager, Administrator, Super User—the backend administrators

Shop Suppliers and Customers—two sample user groups

Are there also sample users available?

Action Permissions: what users can do

Permissions are inherited

What do the available action permissions mean?

Level 1—site-wide permissions in Global Configuration

Level 2—permissions for components

Level 3—permissions for categories

Level 4—permissions for articles

Viewing Access Levels: what users can see

Wrapping up: the ingredients of ACL

ACL at work: how to control user permissions

ACL example 1: allow specific users to manage contacts

Step 1: create a user group

Step 2: tell Joomla! what the group can see and do

Step 3: add users to the group

Check if it works

ACL example 2: allow users to edit one specific article

Step 1: create a user group

Step 2: tell Joomla! what the group can see and do

Step 3: add users to the group

Check if it works

More on Access Control

Summary

6. New Flexibility in Using Templates

What's new? Finally, table-less templates

What does that clean output look like?

Why clean code is good for everybody

Introducing the tabbed Template Manager

The Styles tab: selecting templates and settings

Selecting a template

Template Styles

The Templates tab: exploring templates and editing code

Customizing templates using Template Styles

Changing the site color and layout options

Customizing the site logo

Using a text logo

Changing the header image file

Creating Template Styles to style individual pages

Creating and using a Template Style

Assigning templates from the menu item itself

Choosing a template from a menu item

Exploring and editing installed templates

What templates are available?

atomic

beez5

beez2

bluestork

hathor

Previewing templates

Exploring available module positions

Editing template code

Removing the Powered by Joomla! text

Installing and assigning a new template

Summary

7. Unleashing the New Power of Extensions

Changes in the extensions that come with Joomla!

The new Redirect Manager

New modules to display category contents

Switching languages

No more polls

Exploring pre-installed extensions

The new Extension Manager screen

Tab 1: Install

Tab 2: Update

Tab 3: Manage

Tab 4: Discover

Tab 5: Warnings

New module features

Setting a time span for publishing modules

Creating a scheduled module

Making use of the new Note field

Assigning a module to specific menu items

Assigning a module to all pages except a few

Assigning modules from the menu item settings

Changing module settings via the Edit Menu Item screen

Displaying available module positions

Finding and downloading extensions for Joomla! 1.6

Summary

8. SEO Improvements

The SEO bonus of well structured layouts

Proper use of HTML heading elements

Adding H3 through H6 headings

Adding an alternative H1 page heading

Page Heading and Page Title—what's the difference?

Configuring HTML page titles

Setting the HTML page title

Adding the Site Name to the page title

Entering site metadata

Entering metadata for menu items, categories, and articles

Choosing what metadata to set

Using search engine friendly URLs

Adding a site map

Using the Xmap site map extension

Using the new Redirect Manager

Creating page redirects

Redirecting multiple old URLs in one go

More on SEO

Summary

Index

Joomla! 1.6 First Look

Joomla! 1.6 First Look

Copyright © 2011 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.

Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

First published: March 2011

Production Reference: 1090311

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

32 Lincoln Road

Olton

Birmingham, B27 6PA, UK.

ISBN 978-1-849513-42-5

www.packtpub.com

Cover Image by Duraid (<duraidfatouhi@yahoo.com>)

Credits

Author

Eric Tiggeler

Reviewers

Eric Brown

Mark Kielar

Rita Lewis

Peter Martin

Oleg Nesterov

Acquisition Editor

Dilip Venkatesh

Development Editor

Roger D'Souza

Technical Editor

Dayan Hyames

Indexers

Tejal Daruwale

Monica Ajmera Mehta

Editorial Team Leader

Aanchal Kumar

Project Team Leader

Ashwin Shetty

Project Coordinator

Michelle Quadros

Proofreader

Aaron Nash

Graphics

Nilesh R. Mohite

Production Coordinator

Melwyn D'sa

Cover Work

Melwyn D'sa

About the Author

Eric Tiggeler is the author of Joomla! 1.5 Beginner's Guide! and has written two Dutch Joomla! guides, both of which got excellent reviews. He writes tutorials for several computer magazines and for the Dutch Joomla! community website. Over the last 10 years, Eric has developed numerous websites, big and small, many of them using Joomla!.

Eric is fascinated by the Web as a powerful and creative means of communication; and by revolutionary software such as Joomla!, enabling anybody to create beautiful and user-friendly websites.

On a daily basis, Eric works as a consultant and copywriter at a communication consultancy company affiliated with the Free University of Amsterdam. Over the last few years, he has written more than 10 Dutch books on writing and communication. His passion is making complex things easy to understand.

Eric Tiggeler is married and has two daughters. He lives and works in Hilversum (the Netherlands). On the Web, you'll find him on http://www.schrijfgids.nl (in Dutch) and on http://www.joomm.net (in English).

Any book is a team effort, so I'd like to thank everyone at Packt Publishing for their encouragement and commitment to this project. Thanks also to all reviewers for testing the alpha version of this book and helping me create a thoroughly reliable final release!

About the Reviewers

Eric Brown was born and raised in California. He joined the U.S. Navy at 17 and became a Preventive Medicine Technician. Upon exiting military service, he left the medical field behind and moved to Nebraska and entered college to study art and design, which resulted in a Bachelor's of Science in Graphic Design from Wayne State College in Nebraska. Eric has since branched out by teaching himself (or learning from others) various aspects of HTML, CSS, and PHP as well as a variety of other coding languages and web marketing strategies and tools. He currently owns his own media business located in Manhattan, KS, where he lives with his wife and pets.

Over the years Eric has worked for a local design and development firm in Nebraska on such projects as the Golden Spike Tower website aimed at tourist traffic centered on the Union Pacific's Bailey Yard and with a premier pet industry design and development firm as a project manager. He has also written for such prestigious publications as Trafficology (a purchased print publication on web marketing read by over 80,000 people world-wide), CMSWire.com (a leader in content management news), ReveNews (a highly rated site on various aspects of marketing), and Gadgetell (a well-known gadget news site).

Eric was a reviewer for Joomla! 1.5 JavaScript jQuery by Packt Publishing. He has also been involved in other books as well providing editing, image touch-up, and custom hand-drawn maps for Tagging Along (a Neville Family retrospective) and editing, layout, cover art, and image touch-up on My Life and Community (Biography of Ken Huebner).

I would like to thank all those who have helped to bring my career to this point, but most of all I would like to thank my wife Jaime and my two children, Ariel and Autumn, for all their patience and understanding during the development stages of my career and business.

Mark Kielar brings over 25 years of experience in design, photography, commercial art, analysis, and computing to his understanding of open source content management systems such as Joomla! 1.6. He has applied his expertise in web design and development, writing, and editing to projects for organizations as diverse as the Oakland California Charter Schools and Mark Brand Architecture. Mark currently operates his own web design and content management business, Sparkling Finish, in the San Francisco Bay Area.

I'd like to thank my good friends and Joomla! Mentor Rita Lewis at wordstoweb.net and Mark Brand at Mark Brand Architecture for their support in my work in website design and creation. A special thank you goes out to a special friend, Lynne Wardell, who has supported me for many years in all my endeavors.

Rita Lewis has been creating and managing the content of websites for small businesses and creative organizations for the past 20 years working under the name, Words To Web, Inc. During that time she has created and managed Joomla! sites for independent movies for Shayanne Productions and non-profits such as the Interfaith Community Against Domestic Violence. Rita is a regular blogger on Freelance Switch as well as the author of 15 books on Macintosh computing and the Internet, including titles for O'Reilly & Associates, Peachpit Press, and SAMs. Rita has been awarded by the Computer Book Club and The Society For Technical Communications for her efforts.

Peter Martin has a keen interest in computers, programming,