How to create a new Joomla Article
This document is to help show how to do basic article maintenance thru the Joomla back end. The document will describe how to create a new article.
This article assumes the following knowledge level.
- The JCE editor is being used as the article editor.
- Ability to login to Joomla backend.
- Appropriate user security to maintain articles.
- Ability to navigate around Joomla back menu system.
- Understanding of defined Sections.
- Understanding of defined Categories.
This document will not go into more advanced editing and formatting topics, such as the following:
- Tables
- Image Resizing
- Item Bulleting
- Embedding Video
- Attaching Files
- And other items that may not mentioned in this document
Step 1 - After signing into Joomla, Click on Article Manager to go to the list of current articles on the website. There are 2 ways to get to the Article Manager as noted below.
Control Panel view
Drop down menu view
Step 2 - The following menu will appear listing all articles of various publication stages.
Step 3 - Click on the “New” icon in the upper right of the screen to bring up a new/empty article.
Step 4 - Enter information in the following fields:
- Title – Name of the Article
- Alias – Do not enter information, Joomla system will populated with appropriate information.
- Published – Should be “Yes”
- Front Page - Should be “No”, unless the article is suppose to be a Front Page only article
- Section – Select the appropriate Section
- Category – Select the appropriate Category
- Open Content Area – Area where article information is captured along with images and formatting of article information
Note: when assigning Section and Category insure that the correct Section and Category is selected so that article appears in the correct website area. This is important especially if article is a News article or a Blog entry. Uncategorized Sections and Categories are usually manually assigned to Menu or Module areas.
Fields that are optional for entered information
- Author – Individual who created the article.
- Access Level – Should be “Public” unless article is only suppose be seen be registered users
- Created Date – Date the article was created
- Start Publishing – Should match Created Date unless the article is to be published at a later date and time. (Format CCYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS ) HH – Hours in military time 00-23.
- Finish Publishing – Should be Never unless the article is to stop publishing on a given date and time. (Format CCYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS ) HH – Hours in military time 00-23.
Step 5 - Enter Article information in the Open Content Area that you would like as part of the article. Images and formatting can be done using the JCE editor.
Clicking on the Question Mark in the Upper Left Hand will bring up a menu that describes the buttons on the JCE Editor. Selecting Buttons Overview shows information on icons that are used to format the information in the Open Content window. Example “B” – Bold, “I” – Italicized. The editor is a similar format/usage to Word editor options.
Step 6 - When done editing the article click the Save icon to save the article and return to the Article Manager.
Step 7 - Once saved, and if the article is published, check the website to verify that the article appears on the website and has all the correct information entered.
Note: Remember to Click on the “Apply” icon periodically to save the changes, as there is NO automatic save feature for the article in Joomla.
