Managing your school web site
Joomla roles: Registered, Author, Editor, Publisher, Manager, Administrator, Super Administrator
Managers must belong to Administrator or Super Adminstrator groups and Login to the backend to edit the structure of their site. They may also edit content from the frontend in the same manner as a Publisher. Minimum requirements: Windows XP or Mac OS X 10.2.8; Firefox 1.5+, IE 7+, or Safari 2+ What you CAN do from the backend: virtually anything (Super Administrator.) What you SHOULD NOT do: edit template HTML and certain CSS files unless you really know what you are doing. Do not touch anything you dont thoroughly understand.
Glossary: refer to the appended Contributors pages for basics. Content - in Joomla-speak, articles assigned to a category and section. We use the term more liberally to refer to all basic units of information on the site. Article and item are used interchangeably. Component - an extension utilizing the underlying architecture of Joomla to accomplish additional features and functions. Components are often bundled with modules and may also require bots (plugins). Specific components may be version-specific and have dependencies or conflicts with other features. Module an instance of a component, menu or custom content associated with a position on a page. Page a collection of content displayed in a screen defined by the creation of a menu item. This is counterintuitive for the traditional web page author. Creating a new menu item instantiates a page. For simplicitys sake, well refer to page and screen interchangeably. Position a location on a page where modules are displayed. Positions are page regions defined in the active
template. Examples of common positions are: left and right (columns), header, footer, inset, and various user positions. Not all positions displayed in a module edit screen are available in some templates. The order of modules within a position is managed within the Module Manager.
Plugin Collective name for components, modules, templates. Strictly speaking, a plugin is a helper application, formerly called a mambot or bot. Global default settings for the sites display and editing features. Many can be overridden in other backend

menus.

Template skin or theme controlling the layout and style of your web pages. It is independent of your content.
If you are preparing a new site or reorganizing your existing one, it is wise to request a development site from ITS. Dont waste time on the appearance of your site until you have first created a content outline with items organized under categories and categories grouped under sections.

Logging in

Your administrative access to the backend is through http://yoursite.guhsd.net/administrator Never, EVER,
under any circumstances share backend access with a non-employee or student.
Global Configuration: Most can be left alone. Recommend user self-registration and activation be No Debug site, also No Default editor: if more than one is installed, selection can be overridden in the Site User Manager. Content tab:
Do you want the # of hits and the modification date for items displayed? Do you want the PDF, Print and Email icons to display next to every item by default? Can be overridden at the item level.
Database and Server tabs: leave alone Cache tab: No Statistics tab: logging OK but not by date. Youll fill the server with log files. SEO tab: search engine friendly OK to say Yes.
Media Manager The stories directory is the default location browsable from most editors and components This is the asiest way to get images onto the site. The JoomlaFCK editor will upload pictures to the image subdirectory and other file types to the file subdirectory. The server file size limit is 8 MB. Trying to set it higher in Joomla wont work.

Site Templates

You can assign a template to specific pages. All others assume the Default skin/theme. Only if youre convinced you know what youre doing! You can disable positions and simplify templates here. If you are familiar with CSS, you can edit all of your css files here. They control your sites styles and colors. Install templates via Extensions > Install/Uninstall

TIP: Never use

your browsers back button or quit your browser with an edit window open. This can lock the item. Always use the cancel button instead
Customizing Before making significant changes, it is wise to backup the index and css files for your template located in /yourrootfolder/templates/templatename/index.php and /yourrootfolder/templates/templatename/css respectively. You can do this via FTP (Dreamweaver, Transmit, CuteFTP, Fetch, etc.) Unless youre a PHP whizkid, it is not advisable to do any more than comment out un-needed portions of a page with <!-- --> for HTML and /* */ for PHP within index.php, or add code for graphics or text. Assigning You can assign different templates to different pages but should avoid mixing in too many disparate templates in your site. You should also make certain that assigned templates support at least those positions as in your default template. New Default Templates Changing templates is potentially a major endeavor. Request a development installation of your site from ITS. This will be a copy of your existing site that you can play with without risking your live site. If you are in a backend screen that indicates the file you are attempting to edit is UNWRITEABLE, you may need to contact ITS to temporarily change permissions. When a change doesnt stick, this is one of the first things to suspect. Its a hassle but the its necessary to help ensure your site against hacking.
As tempting as it may be to assign easy usernames and passwords, please stick to Performance Profile credentials as these will be used for single sign-on access to all online district resources in the future, including Internet access. While v1.0.x does not support LDAP, v1.5 does, which will make user management much easier down the road.
Author appropriate if the user will manage existing articles assigned to them and they will not need to add any new ones. Publisher the lowest level of access that will permit a user to add new items without requiring approval.
Exceptions: content managed by a component, e.g., the calendar component can be configured to let any registered user add events. The trade-off is that the Publisher can edit items site-wide, not just within an assigned category, section or page.

Parameters > User Editor
-Select Editor- will allow the user to select their preferred editor. If you select one for them, they will not be able to override your selection.
With the exception of the default mainmenu, only those menus you create appear. When you create a new menu, a new module is automatically created as well. See the Module Manager to assign a menu to a position. Temporarily hiding an entire menu is accomplished by unpublishing it within the Module Manager. (You can only add or delete menus within the Menu Manager.) Hiding menu items is accomplished by unpublishing under the specific menu. Use the arrows within the specific menu administration page to reorder menu items.
This only edits the name of a specific menu. To add a new menu item, select the specific menu and click When doing so, there are a few important points to remember: A menu item creates a new page or view of a prescribed item or collection of items. The content must exist before you create the menu item. In other words, you cant create the link before you have the stuff to link to, as you can with regular HTML web sites. If the type of link changes (say from a collection of blog-style articles in a specified category to a URL link to somewhere out on the Internet), you must delete and recreate the link (changed in v1.5). Menu item types (see Help within Joomla for other menu types) Articles Article Layout : displays a single article from a list of all blog-style articles from all categories and sections Category Category Blog Layout : displays all articles from a category. (Command-click (Mac) or CtrlSection Section Blog Layout displays all articles from all categories within selected section. Lists (various) same as above but creates a link index showing a listing of categories and the number of items published within each. Similar to the display used by threaded discussion lists. Table Content Category : displays a linked index of items within a category. Link URL : link to an Internet page. Can also be a link to an internal resource like a specific DocMan folder, e.g., index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=32&func=select&id=3 Components : create a link to the interface of a specific component, e.g., a calendar page (Jevent component) or a document library (DocMan). Wrapper embeds the content of another web page (often external to your site) within your page using an iframe. Test to see if the URL you are using embeds well. Framed or excessively wide pages do not work well.
Wrapper example: the page is Joomla but the list comes from a separate district data source.

Page layout For blog section or category pages, the display of items in the center region is controlled within the editing screen for the specific menu item.
Basic Parameters Example:
Leading: 1 Intro: 4 Columns: 2 Links: 2
If a category contains only one item by the same name, you can avoid repeating the display of the name by setting Page Title: Hide Category Order and Primary Order The order that items are displayed on a page is controlled both in the menu item parameters and, in the case of a blog category or section page, within the list of categories or category items. Ordering lets the order you specifically assign items take precedence. This isnt helpful for Publishers who do not have ordering privileges but makes sense when the number of items on a page is normally static and just the items themselves are edited. The menu parameters can override the settings for the content category from which the pages items come, or can accept that order: Primary order. Category order is only important where a page is comprised of content from multiple categories. News pages / categories should probably assume a chronological order (most recent first). To further complicate things, the front page manager (Content > Front Page Manager) allows one to assign a specific of items for that page alone. This order supercedes all others on the home page. If a page is of the Blog Content Section type, then the order of the categories within the category manager will determine article order on the page just as much as the order of items within each category.

Content

The Article Manager lets you select, create, or edit entries. You can apply section ad category filters to narrow the list of displayed articles or scroll through them. See contributors guide for details regarding managing articles.
Section and Category Management New sections and categories are defined here. You can also change their names. Again, starting with a good site outline will help keep you organized.
Front Page As mentioned earlier, this screen lets you set a unique order for published items on the home page alone. Note: when a Publisher checks Show on Front Page for an item, by default that item appears at the top of the list on the home page. To reorder, use the Front Page Manager.

Components

Standard installed components include Banners, Contacts, Mass Mail, News Feeds, Polls, Syndicate and Web Links, several of which are virtually worthless to a school web site. Your list will also include additional installations that meet your needs. From a security and performance standpoint, you should uninstall any unused components. http://extensions.joomla.org references over 3000 available components. When considering an addition to your site, consider: Does it do what you need? Is it native for v1.5? Does it run in legacy mode, meaning you must have the System Legacy Plugin enabled. Is it highly rated by other users? What dependencies or conflicts does it present? Is the component itself and add-on to another component? Are their known conflicts with other components? Must it be installed with an additional mambot or module?

DocMan document management (public license) Many sites were set up using Remository because it was easy to configure. From a users perspective, it is not clean, requiring extra clicks to get at documents, and Publishers get frustrated because they cant delete documents without admin intervention. DocMan is a cleaner tool for end users and frontend managers. In DocMan-speak, a file is nothing more than that. A document is a file united with a title and description, metadata and a folder to call home. Multiple documents can share the same file. You can use DocMan and Remository concurrently but they cannot share a mutual front-end presence. DocMan requires an additional mambot for search capability and modules for added features. No native version for v1.5 at this writing Categories (Folders) Categories can include full article descriptions and nested sub-categories. They can serve as an alternative to a blog-category when the primary information to communicate is in document form. Configuration Default behaviors: Front-end: default order, allowed file types, docs per page, whether or not to include an email link to group members for discussion. Can probably ignore Extra Document Information. Permissions: Who will have permission to upload from the frontend? Who will you allow to assign privileges to others?
Upload: There is a hard-set size limit of 8 MB per file on the server. Dial in your Acrobat Pro settings for web output. Media-rich PowerPoints may be down-sampled or broken into smaller chunks, Please do not remove any of the included file types from the Reject filenames list.
Groups comprised of registered users can be delegated privileges for specific categories of documents
JEvents calendaring (public license) Basic calendar lacking some of the features that WebEvent had but well-integrated for Joomla, including support for listing coming events, color-coding events and embedding a mini-calendar. Consists of a component, multiple modules and optional mambots and modules. - No native version for v1.5 at this writing. Runs in legacy mode. - Editing existing events from the frontend doesnt present the day of the month in the listing. - Cannot make time/place/detail exceptions within repeating events. + Customizable through CSS as well as the components configuration page. Control the listing of latest or coming events in the Latest Events module. Here you can restrict a listing to specific categories of events as needed. Optional installs include a search feature and linking to photo galleries, etc., after an event has passed. You can cram more into a monthly calendar by modifying the CSS. Copying it and pasting it into a new Dreamweaver CSS document will let you quickly identify color definitions you want to change, too. Modify and paste in the replacement.
Modifying the Latest Events tab controls what and when; modifying Latest Events in Modules controls where. A few others: Community Builder extends user management and is requisite for a number of other components that work with user information. FireBoard a threaded discussion forum Gmap incorporates a Google map into a directions page Joomap creates a site index based on your menu structure and/or sections and categories My Content Provides a comprehensive frontend list of all editable items available to a registered user. See http://extensions.joomla.org for more.

Modules

Modules are instances of content or functions associated with specific locations (positions) on specific pages. Modules occupy the rest of the screen space not devoted to the central content of a page. To see the positions available in your template, navigate to Extensions > Template Manager and select your template, then click. The display will show the page with positions overlayed.
Creating a menu automatically creates a module for that menu. Modules > Site Modules lists all modules ordered by position. Selecting a module lets you edit its position, which pages it appears on, whether its title is displayed or not, privileges and any other parameters unique to that module.
Suppose you didnt want the login to appear on the home page. You can open the login module and assign it to the Site Map page, as in the example above. You can make a copy of most modules and differentiate the copies as needed, renaming them, etc., but this should only be done when trying to accomplish something that cant be handled another way, e.g., ordering A over B on page X while ordering B over A on page Y.
If you employ a custom menu extension with your template, be sure to unpublish the old instance. Example: your mainmenu can be assigned as an extended dropdown in some templates. If you choose to do so, unpublish the standard mainmenu module when you publish the extended menu.
Create a new module for any content features you wish to display outside of the standard content areas. Example: a graphic link to the Parent Portal appearing in the left or right position.

Mambots

The only time you may need to visit this area is when you become aware that an unused bot is causing problems or the order of execution may need to be changed. Almost never. More often, youll be installing them from the Installers menu.
Installers A pretty straightforward area. Checklist: Before installing anything, make sure your site meets any prerequisites, e.g, version number, dependencies on other components, modules, permission settings. Read reviews to see if there are any known conflicts. Install packages are always zip files. Some require an initial unzip in order to load individual packages in correct order or on an as-needed basis. If updating an installation, determine whether the old one needs to be uninstalled first and whether there are any backups needed to preserve existing data. Configure the addition immediately after installation to avoid potential security holes.