This article is the first place to look when you wish to add content to your Joomla! site managed by MLDS Premium. By the end of this article you should understand the layout of sections, categories and content. You should also know how the administration interface in Joomla! works and how to navigate it.  I will not go into using the Joomla! editor which will be covered in another article.

the Joomla! administrator interface

Joomla! administrative interface is located entirely inside the website.  This means no special software is needed nor a high powered computer.  All you need is an up to date web browser (Internet Explorer, FireFox, Opera).  

Logging In

To access the administrator interface, go to your regular website and append '/administrator' to the address.  For example if my site is located at:

'http://www.mycompany.org'

the administrative login is located at

'http://www.mycompany.org/administrator' 

You will be presented with a login form like below.

In the 'Username' box, put the name of your user.  This will be the same user you use to login into the regular Joomla! site.  The same password is also used.

Understanding Sections Categories and Content

Now that you can log into Joomla! you must first understand how Joomla! organizes content.  Joomla! forces the user into a hierarchy.  In a Joomla! site the highest unit of organization is the 'Section' inside these go 'Categories' and in those go the actual content 'items'.  This is illustrated on the left.

Good organization and planing is crucial to a good site.  It is best to sit down  and sketch out on paper first what you will have on your site.  In the future, when you start adding menu items, good organization is even more important.  

 Adding a new Section or Category

Joomla! likes to keep things the same for similar operations.  This is great for doing something new, because we do not need to learn anything else.  It can also cause problems in that we are in a different 'add' page than we think we are, so always watch the title at the top of the page.   

From the menu look for the 'Section Manager' button. You can also get to the Section Manager from the menus along the top of the screen.  It is under Content->Section Manager.  In the future you will find that using the menus along the top is much faster than always clicking 'Home' and selecting from the main menu.

The Section Manager will give a listing of created sections showing if or not they are published, who has access (Public or Member) and a few other statistics, such as number of member categories and total articles.  A menu across the top right gives all the actions possible on Sections.  In this example let's create a new section.  If you were deleting or copying an existing section you would want to first select a section by placing a check mark in the [left hand] box of that section, but if we are creating a new Section, just click on 'New'. Once in the new screen you will see the screen at left; click on it for a larger version.

 Fill in the 'Title' and 'Section Name' fields.  Generally the same name for both will be fine.  The Title will be the one shown to users and the Section Name is just internal to Joomla!.  Most of the other options on this page you can ignore.  You can modify them if you want but MLDS recommends for starting users to not fill in any other fields.  The exception might be to write a small description to have as an intro for what is in that Section, but most of the time just leave it blank.

Once finished click the 'Save' button on the top right menu.  If you make a mistake and want Joomla! to forget your changes use the 'Cancel' button.  If you want to save your work thus far but are not finished with the section, use the 'Apply' button.  You may also use the 'Help' button but it has very detailed information outside the scope of this document.  

What's different between 'Save' and 'Apply'?

Ahh-- a common point of confusion!   Save saves your changes and takes you back to the sections listing.  Apply on the other hand saves but does not exit back to the content listing. Use Apply often because if you lose power or network connection, only the work prior to your last Apply or Save will be recovered!  YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

CatEgories

Categories, if you remember from Sections Categories and Content ,  are held inside Sections and they will eventually hold our Content Items.  To add a new Category is trivial because you can add a Section.  From the main menu click 'Category Manager' or if we use the fast menu across the top of the screen it is located by:

Content -> Category Manager

 The Category Manager will look almost the same as the Section Manager.  The major changes will be the title (Category Manager)  and that once you have listed categories they will also include to which Section they belong.  Again click the 'New' button from the top right menu.  All fields here are the same as when adding a new section (Simple Hu?).  Go ahead and fill in the 'Title' and 'Category Name' fields.  Now something that must not be over looked! After the Category Name is put in is a drop down box labeled 'Section'.  This is how you tell Joomla! to which Section this Category belongs.  Again, for the most part you may ignore the rest of the items on this screen.  When you have finished adding your Category click 'Save' from the top right menu.

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.