J1.5:Global configuration

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Introduction to Global Configuration

This wiki article to expand on the information given about Global Configuration in the Joomla online Help, and also to provide hints and tips about use of the settings found in this part of the administrative interface. This article is written to support Joomla versions 1.5.x to 1.7.x.

The Global Configuration area is part of the administrative interface, accessed via http://example.com/pathtojoomla/administrator (also referred to as the “back end”). This area is accessible only if you are logged-in as a member of a group having the attribute of being Super Administrators (by default the Super Users group only). Once logged in, to access the page, go to Site > Global Configuration or click the Global Configuration icon from the main control panel.

Overview

As the title implies, Global Configuration is the area of the Joomla administrative interface where a user with Super Administrator attributes is able to make changes that globally affect the behaviour of the web site and also some default settings for the presentation of, and access to site content.

All the parameters under the Site, System and Server tabs in the Global Configuration are stored as values in the file config.php, found in the root folder of Joomla installation. This file is set up automatically by the software installation process and thus many of the parameters appearing in the Global Configuration screens are best left in their initial settings.

The parameters controlled by a third tab, Permissions, (present only with Joomla v1.6.x and later) differ from those controlled via the other tabs in that they are stored within the site's database.

The Toolbar

The Global Configuration toolbar consists of four buttons to enable the user to save changes, move away from the Global Configuration page and call up online Help pages. Toolbars differ between Joomla v1.5.x and the later versions., in respect of naming and order of buttons.

The Joomla 1.5.x Toolbar

• Save. Saves the any changes made under any tab and returns to the Administrator welcome screen.
• Apply. As Save, but the Global Configuration screen remains open so that editing or checking of global parameters can continue.
• Close. Returns to the Administrator welcome screen without saving any changes to the Global Configuration.
• Help. Opens the Help Screen for Global Configuration.

The Joomla 1.6.x and Later Toolbar

• Save. Saves the any changes made under any tab and and the Global Configuration screen remains open so that editing or checking of global parameters can continue.
• Save & Close. As Save, but returns to the Administrator welcome screen.
• Cancel. Returns to the Administrator welcome screen without saving any changes to the Global Configuration.
• Help. Opens the Help Screen for Global Configuration.

The Site Tab Options

Note: the order in which these items appear on the screen vary slightly between versions of Joomla

“Site Settings” Group

This group of options control a miscellaneous collection of parameters that broadly control the behaviour of the public web pages of the Joomla site.

• Site Name. The name of the web site. This text provides an single-point of update of the site name and is typically used by site templates as the header text of each web page.

• Site Offline. This setting provides a means of putting a site offline to general users by changing the default setting of “No” to “Yes”. When offline the public pages of the web site will be replaced by the Offline Message (see below) and a log-in form. Only Administrators are able to to log in the site when set to offline using this option. Once logged-in, Adminstrators are able to see the the web site and work on it as normal.
• Offline Message. The message that will be displayed on the site when the site is offline. It may be changed to provide something more helpful than the default message. This could be a date or time when the site will be back online, or the URL of an alternative web site that any visitors could use.
• Default Editor. The default text editor for use when creating or updating articles on the site. This may be “No editor” (edit raw HTML code only), one of editors pre-installed in Joomla, or an editor installed subsequently as an extension. The editor loaded when a registered site user starts editing text content may be overridden on a user-by-user basis, but in the absence of any such override it will be the Default Editor as set here.
• Default Access Level. (only present in Joomla v1.6.x and later) The access level given by default to new content items, menu entries, etc. By default this is “Public”, but could be changed to other levels if – for example – it was undesirable for newly created items to be visible to all site users. The access level for any items may be overridden when created, or changed at a later point by anyone logged-in with the appropriate permissions.
• Default List Limit. This sets the maximum number of items per page in lists displayed in various pages of the Joomla administrative interface, although this value may be overridden temporarily within the list pages themselves. . By default, this parameter is set to 20 but may be changed to any of a number of values ranging from 5 to 100.
  Tip: Use a larger value (50 or 100) than the default as it is usually easier to scroll up and down a list on a single page than to move between lots of short pages. Also if all items are on one page, it is much easier to a global search, for example for text in an article title.
• Default Feed Limit. The number of content items to be shown in any RSS newsfeeds set up on the web site. By default, this is set to 10, although unless the site is very active a smaller number may be better.
• Feed Email. Atom and RSS newsfeeds generated from site content by the Joomla “Syndicate feeds” (“Syndication” in Joomla v1.5.x) site module may include an e-mail address as part of the author's identity. This parameter determines the source of that email address: the “Author Email” setting will use the email address held on the site for content author, “Site E-mail” will use the “From email” address set up under the Server tab (see below) for emails generated automatically by the web site.
  Tip: “Site E-mail” is usually the preferred setting if content syndication is being used on a web site. This is because the alternative will expose the content authors' email addresses to collection by spam lists.

“Metadata Settings” Group

This group of options control the presence or content of several of the metadata entries (i.e. code like <meta name = …. \>) in the header of each page of the web site. Although not visible to the site user, metadata entries may be used in various ways by web search engines and their appropriate use can significantly aid the search rankings and visibility of a web site. Note that several of the following metadata parameters my be overridden at the content category and individual content item levels.

• Site Meta Description. Text added here appears in web page headers as the “description” metadata entry. Search engines often use this to provide descriptive text for your web pages in place some (possibly inappropriate) text from the content of the web page. A description of around 20 words is recommended. This metadata entry is omitted from web pages if this entry is blank.
• Site Meta Keywords. Words and phrases (separated by commas) added here appear in web page headers as the “keywords” metadata entry. Search engines may use these words to refine their indexing of the site's web pages. This metadata entry is omitted from web pages if this entry is blank.
• Content Rights. (Only present in Joomla v1.6.x and later.) Text added here appears in web page headers as the “rights” metadata entry. If appropriate, describe here what rights others have to use this content. This metadata entry is omitted from web pages if this entry is blank.
• Show Title Meta Tag. (Only present in Joomla v1.5.x and v1.6.x.) When this parameter is set to “Yes” a “title” metadata entry is added to the page header (in addition to the <title> … </title> header element). This only takes place for pages carrying individual content items and uses the title of the item as the metadata entry. Joomla v1.7.x and later do not have this option and do not generate a “title” metadata entry on any pages.
• Show Author Meta Tag. When this parameter is set to “Yes” an “author” metadata entry is added to the page header when appropriate, using the content item's author name as the metadata text.

“SEO Settings” Goup

SEO is an abbreviation of Search Engine Optimization. Settings in this group alter the format of URLs for pages in the web site, and this may have a significant effect of the search rankings of individual pages, as well as making URLs more human-friendly.

Tip: after making any changes to the settings in this group, refresh any of the web site's pages already open in your web browser (usually Ctrl+R will do this). Failure to so this will likely mean that the format of web links internal to the site no longer match that which Joomla is expecting and give the appearance of broken links.

Tip: Avoid if at all possible altering the SEO Settings once a web site is established. Changing any of the first three items below will mean that nearly all of a site's URLs will also change and result in broken links from other sites and perhaps a temporary drop in search engine rankings.

• Search Engine Friendly URLs. Joomla's internal representation of URLs tends to be lengthy and also difficult to interpret by humans and search engine spiders. This is a typical example of the internal URL for a page displaying a content item: www.example.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=22&Itemid=437If this Global Configuration option is set to “yes”, the URL is modified into a shorter and more meaningful form: www.example.com/index.php/getting-startedThe identifying text in the URL (in this case “getting_started”) is derived from the Alias text set up for each Category, content item, and Menu item. The default setting is “No”.
• Use Apache mod_rewrite. When this parameter is set to “Yes, Joomla will use the mod_rewrite function of Apache web servers to eliminate the index.php part of the URL. Thus when this is operating the “search engine friendly” URL shown above will become:www.example.com/getting-started
  Note: This parameter is set to “No” by default. It should not be set to “Yes” unless the web server uses Apache software and has been set up so that mod_rewrite is installed and will work with your web site. Also for this function to work, the htaccess.txt file installed in the root directory of the web site (or preferably a copy of it) should be renamed to .htaccess. As an incorrectly configured .htaccess file can easily cause major server errors, do not modify the .htaccess file unless you understand how it works.
• Adds Suffix to URL. When set to “Yes”, Joomla will add .html to the end of the most site URLs thus simulating static file-based web content. The URLs shown above will then become: www.example.com/index.php/getting-started.htmlorwww.example.com/getting-started.htmlThis setting is largely down to personal preference, but bearing in mind that it is easy to confuse .htm and .html suffixes when typing URLs, the advantage my lie with having this feature switched off. The default setting is “No”.
• Unicode aliases. (Only present in Joomla v1.6.x and later.) Choose between “Transliteration” and “Unicode” aliases. When saving edited content, the former setting attempts to convert, where appropriate, any alias text into the corresponding Latin characters. The latter setting leaves unchanged any non-Latin characters in the alias text. Changing this parameter does not retrospectively change aliases, it just changes the behaviour of automatic alias generation for future content editing and creation. “Transliteration” is default.
• Add Site Name To Page Titles. (Only present in Joomla v1.6.x and later.) Appends the site name to page titles in the <title> tag of each web page header. (This text usually appears in the top bar of the web browser window and/or on the browser tab.) Joomla v1.6.x introduced this feature as an option to either include the site name text before the page title (e.g. Site Name – Page Name) or omit it. With Joomla v1.7.x the options also include inserting the site name after the page name (e.g. Page Name – Site Name) as well as before.

“Cookie Settings” Group

Only present in Joomla v1.6.x and later, these settings allow the site cookies to be modified to suit certain circumstances. For the majority of web sites these entries may be left blank.

• Cookie Domain. Overrides the site's default cookie domain with .the domain added here. The most likely situation when this would be needed is when the Joomla sit is “bridged with other sites (e.g. forum or ecommerce) in subdomains of the Joomla site. The default cookie domain may be like www.example.com, but using .example.com (note the leading dot) here will deliver cookies valid for any subdomain of example.com.
• Cookie Path. Overrides the site's default path for which the cookie is valid with the path added here.

The System Tab Options

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The Server Tab Options

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The Permissions Tab Options

This tab is only present in Joomla v1.6.x and later as it reflects the enhanced flexibility of access control introduced with V1.6. It provides the means to set up the default permissions for all of the groups of users in terms their ability to edit site content and other settings of the site, and to access administrative functions.

There are comprehensive descriptions of the use of the settings under this tab at --- needs reference here --- and the general principles of permissions in Joomla V1.6 and later at --- needs reference here---.