MLDS - All the Webhost You Will Ever Need

Content Items

The meat of any site is content (like this article).   To add content you have three ways to get to the content listings.  The first is to click on 'Content Items Manager' from the Control Panel. The second is to use the menu along the top:

Content -> All Content Items

The final way is to jump only to the content belonging to a specific Section.  This helps for large sites with lots of content.  Using the top menu select:

Content ->  Content by Section -> [Section Name] -> [Section Name] Items

If you use the top menu and click 'All Content Items' you should see all articles for the entire site.  This page will look very similar to the Section and Categories listings but again with the small change it will now list each article's Section and Category to which it belongs.   NOTE:  each article can only belong to one Section and Category at a time.

To add a new article use the top right menu and click 'New'.  Now the new content page looks very similar to the new category page and it is, but there are also many differences-- enough that it will be covered in another article.  

First fill in your 'Title' and 'Title Alias'.   To the right of this select first the Section it will belong. Joomla! will then automatically fill the Category drop down box with that Section's member Categories. You should then see two editor boxes, one on top of the other; the first marked 'Intro Text (required)'  is important.  This box will have the intro text that is shown when you list articles on a page.  This should be a "teaser" to encourage users to read the entire article.

The editor below the 'Intro Text' box is the 'Main Text (optional)' box. While marked optional any article of size should be placed in this editor.  Once you are finished click 'Save' from the top right menu.  While writing articles the 'Apply' button becomes handy,  use it often to avoid losing work in the event of a power or network failure.  

NOTE:  The text in the 'Intro Text' box does not need to also exist in the 'Main Text' box to make the article complete.  The text from the Intro will be placed on top of the main text when the site visitor clicks the 'Read More....' link located next to the Intro Text.

Where to go from here?

 Now that you can add items to Joomla!  you should learn how to use the Joomla! editor.  

You should also learn what the options in the Content Item page do.

You should also learn  how to add menus.