Joomla! Documentation™

Under Construction

<translate> As a content creator you might have only a rudimentary knowledge of Joomla! Just sufficient for you to carry out your job of writing, assembling and publishing content on the website. You will need information about how to achieve specific goals associated with content creation starting with very basic information such as how to use a WYSIWYG editor. After becoming more proficient you might benefit from information about how to make use of some of the more advanced features that will streamline routine tasks.</translate>

Creating Content

Content Editors

With a typical Joomla! installation, in particular version 1.5x, three optional (Published/Unpublished) editors are included. These editors are the TinyMCE wysiwyg (what you see is what you get), the XStandard Lite text editor, and a generic text editor. For the 1.0x series, the TinyMCE wysiwyg editor and a generic text editor are included. These editors can be set as the site default in Global Configuration, or per user in either the User Manager by an administrator or by the user themselves in their user profile ("Your Details") in the Front-end. Each of these editors have distinct functionality, parameters, as well as controls. For additional information not covered here, please see any references cited in the respective section.

TinyMCE (1.0x and 1.5x)

The TinyMCE editor is the default wysiwyg editor plugin that ships with Joomla!. This editor is used to create content or articles in which the content or article can be viewed as it will appear once completed, while being written. The TinyMCE editor is the default editor set within the Global Configuration parameters. However, a user can set this parameter in their respective profile using the Your Details User Menu menu item, or by an administrator via the User Manager in the Back-end. See the Global Configuration and the User Manager Help Screens for more information.

TinyMCE functionality and parameters

The functions available for use with the TinyMCE editor is rather extensive and cannot be covered entirely here, in particular with regards of usage. However, some of the basic functions and parameters will be briefly covered. See the reference link below for more information regarding additional functions and controls. First and foremost, the TinyMCE editor has two Functionality configurations which control the behavior of the editor. These configurations are "Simple" and "Advanced". The "Simple" configuration is relatively similar to a simple text editor with the exception of a few basic controls. These controls pertain to text formatting, operations, and lists. Specifically, text can be formatted as bold, italic, underlined and be given a strikethrough. With regards to inserting lists, both ordered and unordered lists can be created. The functions available under the "Advanced" functionality configuration allow far more control over content creation. For example, inserting images, formatting text, creating anchors, tables and more. Additionally, template defined CSS classes can be used, as well as end-user defined or Custom CSS classes. This setting can be found in the parameters section of the plugin editor, via the Plugin Manager. To achieve this functionality, simply create the CSS classes file, select the 'No' radio button for "Template CSS classes", and enter the path to your file in the "Custom CSS classes" text entry field, similar to templates/current_template/css/custom_css.css. In addition to end-user defined CSS classes, lower level and advanced level parameters regarding editor behavior, can be chosen. These include, RTL (right to left) formatting, Relative and Absolute Urls, Language, Date and Time format, and more.
References:
http://wiki.moxiecode.com/index.php/TinyMCE:Control_reference

No WYSIWYG text editor (1.0x and 1.5x)

The "Editor- No WYSIWYG" option in the Global Configuration and User Manager Add/Edit screens from the backend, or chosen by the user in their respective profile launches a simple text editor for creating and submitting content. Using this option, requires that users have basic understanding the HyperText Markup Language (HTML) to create and submit content. See references below for more information regarding the use of HTML tags used during the creation of content or articles.
References:
http://www.w3schools.com/tags/default.asp
http://htmldog.com/reference/htmltags/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML

Joomla! specific editor functions

Pagebreak

The Pagebreak function adds the ability to insert a Table of Contents for articles spanning multiple pages. Placing the cursor at the chosen location of the Pagebreak and clicking the "Pagebreak" icon in the lower editor panel launches a configuration screen in which the Page Title and TOC alias may be entered. This function is available for use in both the wysiwyg and text type editors. For those who choose using HTML over the wysiwyg to insert the Pagebreak, the available code(s) are listed in the Content - Pagebreak plugin editor screen, accessed via the Plugin Manager.

Creating and submitting an article from the back-end

Most content or articles can be created from the Front-end by any user belonging to the 'Author' group. This group is allowed to create and edit their own content; in some instances, a user may be given priviledges to access the Administrative Backend. Whether as a Manager, Administrator, or Super Administrator. For all intents and purposes, the following will be written from a Manager(s) perspective. Most likely the access to the back-end could be reserved for those belonging to the editors or publishers group and not normal authors, however in the interest of content creation, those operations reserved for Managers will be briefly covered. More information regarding specific tasks within those mentioned below can be found in their respective Help Screens.

Article Manager

The article manager can be reached by selecting Content->Article Manager from the Administrator's Toolbar in the backend administrator (http://www.yoursite.com/administrator).

Finding Articles

From the article manager you can see all of the articles that have been created on your site. Between the Article Manager toolbar and the list of articles you will see the filter bar. The filter bar will help you quickly find articles on your site by either searching for a string of text in the title of an article or by drilling down into content using the dropdown selectors.

Using the Filter search box

If you know the name of the article you are trying to find, or if you know part of the name of the article, you can use the Filter search box to locate the article. Type some characters from the article title into the filter search box and hit go. The text box is NOT case sensitive. After hitting go you will see a list of all articles on your site containing the search string.

Using the Selectors

There are currently 4 content selectors (Joomla 1.5.14): Section, Category, Author, State. (Sections will be removed from 1.6 in favor of Nested Categories)

• Section - Select from the Sections on your site to see all content in that section.
• Category - Select from the Categories on your site to see all content in that category. This selector can be used in conjunction with the Section box, so if you select a Section first you will then only see categories from that section in the Category Selector.
• Author - Select an Author to see only the content from that Author. This can be combined with the previous selectors so that you can see only content from the selected Author in a particular Section and/or Category.
• State - This will allow you to see only Published, Unpublished, or Archived articles. This can be used in conjunction with any or all of the previous selectors.

Article Manager Toolbar

The article manager toolbar is located above the filter bar and below the Administrator toolbar. It contains the following options: Unarchive, Archive, Publish, Unpublish, Move, Copy, Trash, Edit, New, Parameters, Help.

• Unarchive
• Archive
• Publish
• Unpublish
• Move
• Copy
• Trash
• Edit
• New
• Parameters
• Help