Joomla! Documentation™

Description

Featured Articles are often displayed on the web site Home page but they may be in any page in the site created using a Menu Item with the 'Featured Articles' Menu Item Type.

The Featured Articles list is used to control the Article display order and, if necessary, to unfeature or unpublish selected articles.

How to Access

• Select Content → Featured Articles from the Administrator menu.

Screenshot

Column Headers

In the table containing Featured Articles, these are the different columns:

• Checkbox. Check this box to select one or more items. To select all items, check the box in the column heading. After one or more boxes are checked, click a toolbar button to take an action on the selected item or items. Many toolbar actions, such as Publish and Unpublish, can work with multiple items. Others, such as Edit, only work on one item at a time. If multiple items are checked and you press Edit, the first item will be opened for editing.

• Ordering. You can change the order of an item within a list as follows:
  • If the list Filter Options include a Position filter select the desired Position. This will limit the list to items that are assigned to that Position.
  • Select the Ordering icon in the Table heading to make it the active ordering item. The ordering icons in each row will change from light grey to dark grey and the pointer will change to a drag arrow on hover.
  • Select one of the Ordering icons and drag it up or down to change the position of that row in the list. The items will display in the new order within the Position.

• Featured Articles. (Show/Hide/Only) Choose whether featured articles are displayed or not in the list of articles. Selecting only means only featured articles are displayed.

• Status. Status of Articles, Published or Unpublished are shown with icons as follows:
  • Published Article.
  • Unpublished Article.

• Title. The name of the item. For a Menu Item, the Title will display in the Menu. For an Article or Category, the Title may optionally be displayed on the web page. This entry is required. You can open the item for editing by clicking on the Title.

• Access. The viewing Access Level for this item.

• Author. Name of the Joomla! User who created this item.

• Associations: Shows which language this item is associated.

• Language. Item language.

• Date Created. The date this Article was created. This date is added automatically by Joomla, but you may change it in the Parameters - Article section of the Content Article Manager Edit.

• Hits. The number of times an item has been viewed.

• ID. This is a unique identification number for this item assigned automatically by Joomla. It is used to identify the item internally, and you cannot change this number. When creating a new item, this field displays "0" until you save the new entry, at which point a new ID is assigned to it.

List Filters

Search bar. This is a common feature of most Lists. The layout is as shown below.

• Search by Text. Enter part of the search term and click the Search icon. The search may be of one or more fields. Hover to see a Tooltip indicating which fields will be searched. In some cases a different format is required. For Example, to Search by ID enter "id:xx", where "xx" is the item ID number (for example, "id:9").
• Filter Options. Click to display or hide the additional filters.
• Clear. Click to clear the Filter field and restore the list to its unfiltered state.
• Ordering. Shows the current table ordering field. Select from the drop down list to change the order or click a column heading. Ordering may be in ascending or descending order. The column heading toggles between ascending and descending order.
• Number to Display. Shows the number of items in a list. The default for a site is 20 but this may be changed in the global configuration. Select from the drop-down list to change the number displayed. If you select too many complex items they will be slow to deliver and display.

Filter Options

• Select Status. Select from Trashed / Unpublished / Published / Archived / All.

• Select Category. Select from the list of available categories.

• Select Access. Select from the list of available viewing access levels.

• Select Author. Select from the list of available authors.

• Select Language. Select from the list of available languages, if the site manages more than 1 language.

Filter by Tags. Lets you show only items that have a specified tag. The list box will show the tags created for your site, similar to the example below.

• - Select Tags -: Show items with any (or no) tag(s).
• <tag>: Show items only with this tag.

• Select Max Levels. Select from the list of available levels.

Pagination

Page Controls. When the number of items is more than one page, you will see a page control bar near the bottom of the page shown in the Screenshot above. The current page number being viewed has a dark colour background.

• Start. Click to go to the first page.
• Prev. Click to go to the previous page.
• Page numbers. Click to go to the desired page.
• Next. Click to go to the next page.
• End. Click to go to the last page.

Toolbar

At the top of the page you will see the toolbar shown in the Screenshot above. The functions are:

• New. Opens the editing screen to create a new article.

• Actions: Reveals a list of actions for selected Items. Check one or more Item checkboxes to activate the list.

• Transitions. If Workflows are enabled ...
• Publish. Makes the selected article available to visitors to your website.
• Unpublish. Makes the selected article unavailable to visitors to your website.
• Unfeature. Changes the status of featured articles to unfeatured. Works with one or multiple articles selected.
• Archive. Changes the status of the selected article to indicate that they are archived. Archived article can be moved back to the published or unpublished state by selecting "Archived" in the Select Status filter and changing the status of the article to Published or Unpublished as preferred.
• Check-In. Checks-in the selected article. Works with one or multiple article selected.
• Trash. Changes the status of the selected article to indicate that they are trashed. Trashed article can still be recovered by selecting "Trashed" in the Select Status filter and changing the status of the article to Published or Unpublished as preferred. To permanently delete trashed article, select "Trashed" in the Select Status filter, select the article to be permanently deleted, then click the Empty Trash toolbar icon.

• Options. Opens the Options window where settings such as default parameters can be edited.

• Help. Opens this help screen.

See Article Manager Options for more information.

Quick Tips

• Only the Articles that have already been added to the Front Page will display on this screen. Articles can be added to the Front Page in the Article Manager or when an Article is added or edited in Article Manager - New/Edit.
• You can control the number of columns, number of articles, and other features of the Front Page layout in the Menu Item Manager - New/Edit - Front Page Blog Layout.

Related Information

• To change the way Articles are displayed on the Front Page Layout: Menu Item Manager - New/Edit - Front Page Blog Layout
• To work with Articles: Article Manager
• To work with Categories: Category Manager
• To work with Users: User Manager