Joomla! Documentation™

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This is a 'hands-on' tutorial which introduces you to the editor and shows how an Article can be modified. Top tip - don't try to be too ambitious to start with unless you have a lot of experience with this kind of editing.

An Article is the main way that content is displayed on a Joomla! site. A collection of Articles are the building blocks of a Web site on any subject.

Readership

• Everyone
• You have access to a Joomla! site with an Article to edit
• You are logged in with a username with an appropriate level of permission

Starting

• Login using your username and password, which must have permission to edit Articles.

• Find the page you want to edit using the Menu.

There is a pencil icon by the title for the entries that you can edit

• An orange pencil icon means that it is published and any information you enter can be seen by others (with the right access rights) as soon as you save it.
• A blue pencil means that the information is not published and can only be seen by those with high level access rights. Those with standard Author permissions will not be able to view (and thus edit) unpublished information.

Edit the Article

• Click on the edit button.

This will open the editing screen. In some editors, this is called "Submit an Article"

the edit part of the screen here: as there are different editors availabe to different sites - sigh I shall probably show the default one - and point out that the principles are the same.

If you are using the 'localhost' example, the editor is a very simple one. Most sites install a better editor - such as JCE - so what you actually see will vary. So too will the range of editing that you can do.

All editors have small icons for the various functions needed. They are less sophisticated than a word processor but the principles are the same. Underneath the editor window there is a section called Publishing. This has details about where the Article is located and who can read it. There is more about this part elsewhere.

• Scroll down the screen to see the full extent of the editor.

The editing icons

screen of the icons - Tiny and JCE.

Different editors have different choices but the way it is done is the same. The icons along the top of the editing window enable you to format text and do other things. The standard keyboard short-cuts also work - (for example Ctrl-b makes highlighted text bold). Most editing is done using one of the icons, so it is worth exploring them:-

• Point your mouse pointer over each of the icons. A balloon help gives some clue about what it does.
• The HELP button tells you about the editor - the JCE one is quite extensive: Tiny tells you very little.
• Some buttons are in grey which shows that they are inactive until that action is possible

Doing some editing

In the editor, part of the screen displays the content of the article and there is a box with the title of the document. The text in both can be altered.

For people with some experience: There is HTML code behind the text so if you are experienced with HTML you may find it interesting to look at the code. Some editors allow you to Toggle between the text and the code. Some have an icon (sometimes called HTML or Edit Code). You can edit the code and then Update the WISIWIG edit screen. Be warned that the code does not always translate into text as you might expect.

Title

Alter the title. Make sure it is meaningful as it will appear in some menu lists and if the page is printed.

Add a paragraph

Alter or add some text.

Format words

Alter or add some text. You can highlight parts of the text and add text much as you would in any editor/ email screen.

(you can also use Ctrl-b for this)

Put a word into italics (you can also use Ctrl-i for this)

• The Save and Cancel buttons: When you have done some editing, click on one of these. The Cancel button reverts to the previous information. It is good practice to save frequently incase something goes wrong.

When you Save or Cancel, it does not return to the edit screen, so if you need to continue editing, click again on the edit icon. (Irritating but there you are!)

Layout - headings and paragraphs

refer to the main image

More detail here

Copy and Paste - Cut and Paste

Most people who have used a keyboard have done this - but it is worth a go here to assure yourselves that it can be done.

• use the keyboard short cuts - Ctrl-C for copy, Ctrl-X for cut and Ctrl-V for Paste.

Highlight the text that you want to copy or paste

Press Ctrl-c for copy or Ctrl-x for cut. If the text is cut - it is removed when you press the keys.

Position the cursor to where you wish the text to go

Press Ctrl-v to paste the text into that position

You can copy/paste text from a word processor to the editor. If you do this, you will probably need to alter some of the layouts, but this does depend on how complex the layouts were in the original document.

Keep it simple

Summary - and where next

This has introduced the editing window and demonstrated that you can alter text by simply typing new content. You can also do useful formatting to include headings, bullet points and different layouts using the icons at the top of the screen. If you are adding a lot of new content it is good practice to save frequently incase something goes wrong.

• If you are new to doing this kind of editing - go next to the tutorial on creating your own article.
• If you are an experienced editor - there is another tutorial on including more varied content - such as tables, images and links to other pages or web sites.

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--Lorna Scammell December 2010