How to Add Articles in Joomla 1.5

Joomla is a popular Content Management System (CMS) used by web sites around the world to manage the content of any kind of web site. Joomla is a free utility that allows anyone to add, remove, reorganize and syndicate content. Best of all, Joomla allows bloggers and web site owners to do this even if they do not know anything about the Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML). Joomla makes adding articles to a web site very easy, but the process in the latest edition of Joomla (1.5) is slightly different than in previous versions of the CMS. Here is how to add articles to your web site using Joomla 1.5.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• A Computer Connected to the Internet
• Admin Access to Joomla CMS

How to Add Articles in Joomla 1.5

1. 
   Admin Log In

   Log into your admin control panel for Joomla. In the typical Joomla installation, this is done by pointing your web browser to “yoursite.com/administrator/”. Once there, enter the user name and password that you established for the web site’s Administrator at the time that Joomla was installed on the server.

2. 
   Add Article

   Look for the “Add Article” button. In the old version of Joomla, you had buttons for selecting Static Content or Dynamic Content. In Joomla 1.5, all of this is more streamlined, resulting in a single button titled “Add Article”. After you have logged into the admin control panel, click this button to be taken to the article composition screen.

3. 
   Article Title

   On the article composition screen, start by entering the title to your article at the top. There is also a location for an “alias”, or alternate title. The alias is purely optional and will not be seen on the web site, but it does help with more refined search results. You should also use the two pull down menus to select the section and category that the article belongs to. The sections and categories will already be available options, since you would have set them up at the time that you installed the Joomla CMS.

4. 
   Intro Text

   Type the introduction text that starts the article. After the article is finished, this intro text will be displayed on the web site, along with a “Read More” button that takes visitors to the full article. So make your intro text a short summary or overview of the article. Many people like to simply use the first paragraph of the article.

5. 
   Read More

   After you have entered your intro text, scroll down and click the button marked “Read More”. You will now see a red line appear under the intro text. This marks where the “read more” cut off point is located. In the older version of Joomla, there were two separate boxes for typing the intro text and the main body of the article, but these have been merged together in Joomla 1.5, thus creating the red line that you see.

6. 
   Article Body

   Write the remaining text under the red line. This is the main body of your article. Whatever you type here will not be visible to your web site visitors until they click the “Read More” button and are taken to the full version of the article.

7. 
   Author Alias

   Look on the right side of the screen for information about the Author. You can either select a registered member of your site from the pull down menu, or type the name of an Author Alias to attribute the article to. This step is not mandatory, but if you skip this step the site will say that the author is “Administrator”. This is fine for some people, but others feel that it looks more professional to use a person’s name as the author of the article.

8. 
   Meta Data

   Click on the box that says “Metadata Information” to open the area where you type your metatags. This area allows you to write a description about the article, as well as a place to list keyword tags. This step is also optional, but will help you obtain better search engine ranking for the subject you are writing about.

9. 
   Save Article

   Click the save button at the top of the screen. Once you click this button, the article will be published to your web site.

10. 
    Article Manager

    If you ever need to make changes to your article, you can do so by way of the Article Manager. You can get to the Article Manager by clicking the article manager button on the main screen of the admin control panel, or by clicking the “Content” link in the navigation menu, then selecting “Article Manager”.

Tips & Warnings

• If you are not already using Joomla, you can download a copy free of charge at joomla.org. Joomla is an open source software that is released to the public for free under a general public license agreement.
• Although you can type the whole article in the Joomla editor, it is not recommended. You will get logged out of Joomla after a set number of minutes, so that when you click “Save”, you will be taken to a log in screen instead of having the article posted. You should always type your article in your favorite text editor, then copy and paste the finished text into Joomla.

Who Can Help:

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Resources

• Joomla

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