HTML Coding on Joomla
Joomla provides Web developers with an automated way to create and manage website content. Using Joomla, you can build a website without ever having to alter HTML code. However, it is useful at times to be able to amend the HTML for a Joomla site. Although the templates Joomla uses construct reliable, flexible sites, the ability to make changes to the underlying code is a key aspect of Joomla's usefulness as a system.
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CMS Principles
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Joomla is a CMS (Content Management System) for websites. This means that it creates the structures of a site without the developer having to write HTML markup code. The Joomla Web interface also allows website administrators to create, edit and manage the content of a site, without ever coming into contact with the various elements of programming and other code involved. Joomla sites are constructed in HTML code which is created and outputted by server side programming, mostly in PHP. The principle of a Web CMS such as Joomla is a level of automation in terms of both site creation and content management.
Templates
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Joomla uses templates to create different page and site layouts. The templates for a Joomla site consist of HTML code, CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) declarations and normally a set of images used for styling. The HTML within a Joomla template determines the ways in which site content presents itself within sections and pages. Users can manage the number and categories of content items appearing within each page in a Joomla site, but ultimately it is the template HTML that will create the structures which hold the site content in its presentation to users.
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Code Access
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You can access the HTML code for a Joomla template through the Joomla Web interface, while logged in as a site administrator. You'll find the template "HTML" within the Template Manager section of a Joomla site account. Sometimes a Joomla site will have more than one template installed in it, in which case you can select the template in use, and then choose to edit the HTML for it. When the HTML for the current template appears within the browser, it includes the HTML markup for each page, as well as the internal system code for populating the pages with website content. Within this display, you can alter, remove or add HTML markup as you require and the changes will reflect throughout a site.
Considerations
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Although Joomla does provide a useful level of flexibility by allowing user access to the HTML structures in a site template, negative issues may arise if you amend the HTML in a way that upsets the overall layout. For this reason, only users with adequate HTML knowledge should edit the markup for a template within a Joomla site. It may also be useful to store copies of the HTML for a template before making amendments to it, so that you can revert the site to the original markup if something goes wrong.
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References
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