Structures and Terms

Submitted by Hagen Graf on 16. July 2011 - 11:04 Thank you for your contribution: SKEPSIS Consult SRL

I would like to explain and clarify some structures and terms before we begin with the configuration.

Frontend
With the frontend we mean the areas of the website as visitors or registered users see it. A registered user normally works only in the frontend. It is like in a store, where the goods are displayed in shop windows and on shelves. Here you can have a look around.

Backend
This is your administration area, therefore, we call it just administration. You can give registered users the right to work in your backend. This privilege is mostly limited to several employees, who should administer some tasks on the website. You can access the administration login via /administrator. http://localhost/administrator There you can register with your login details and choose your preferred language. (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Joomla! Administration registration

Once logged in successfully, you'll have access to the administration, which is structured according to your user rights. (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Administration You may access each function either by using the combined menu tab system or by simply clicking an icon on the start screen.

Files
Joomla! consists of hundreds of files: Images, PHP scripts, CSS files, JavaScript files and a many more. You probably already noticed this when you unpacked the compressed package and copied it into the htdocs folder. Basically, you have already installed two Joomla! packages: one for the frontend and one for the backend. The 'Backend Joomla!' is located in the administrator folder (Figure 3). This folder is addressed when you call /administrator in the browser. Inside that folder are other folders like cache, components, language, modules and templates. The specific backend files are stored in these directories. You will find the same folder names again outside the administrator folder. These folders contain the frontend files. These are not really two Joomla! packages, but there is a clear separation between backend and frontend files. For example, all files uploaded with the Media Manager will be saved in the /media folder. All files have to be saved with a backup.

Figure 3: Joomla! files and folder

Database
Additionally to files (graphics, documents, system files, etc.) Joomla! also needs a database. During the installation procedure, the Joomla! web installer creates 33 tables in your specified database (Figure 4). In these tables, all content will be managed.

Figure 4: The Joomla! data base tables When I say content, I mean texts and configuration settings. The tables in the screenshot are displayed by means of phpMyAdmin. phpMyAdmin is a part of XAMPP and MAMP and is available via http://localhost/phpMyAdmin Usually, no changes need to be made in these tables. In case you forget your admin password, phpMyAdmin is very helpful. This software can also be used for backing up your database by creating a so-called SQL dump, as your tables have to be secured regularly. In chapter Must have extensions you will learn about a more convenient option to backup your database.

Elements of Joomla!
The structure of Joomla! is simple, sophisticated and efficient. Joomla! assumes that you want to write an article. An article usually consists of a title, text and some configuration settings.

Article
Articles can be displayed in single or list view. On the frontpage of your recently installed Joomla! website you will see these four articles (Figure 5).

Figure 5: Article on frontpage The articles are sorted in a certain manner. The first article is displayed by using the full width of the website. The other articles are placed below in three columns. If the articles are too long, you may insert a read more link. This representation is a list view. By clicking on the read more link you will be redirected to the single representation of that article (figure 6). The type of display can be changed by setting options in the backend, however, only by the user with corresponding access rights.

Figure 6: single display of an article Articles can be published (publish) or not published (unpublish). You can feature articles on your frontpage, you can archive them or put them in the trash and retrieve them. You can copy and move them.

Categories

In order to display articles clearly, you may create categories, and then assign an article to them. Each article can be assigned to exactly one category (Figure 7). The categories can be nested to any depth. Articles from one or multiple categories can be assigned to one menu item and displayed in various ways. By clicking on the menu item, all articles from different categories will be shown. This principle is used by online newspapers, for example. You click on Sports and get all categorized articles for this topic. If the newspaper discerns between different forms of sports, they will use nested category trees:

Sports
o o

Football Handball Domestic Europe World

Politics
o o o

Figure 7: Category assignment

User
Users are needed to produce content. At least one user is registered on each Joomla! site, namely the one you created during the installation, with the rights to configure everything on your site. Depending on the user's rights, he can work in the frontend and/or backend to write an article. Each user requires a username, an email address and a password. Every user can be assigned to any user group as well as to any access level. This enables the user to create articles that are only visible to certain user groups.

Navigation

To find your way around the website, you will need navigation with corresponding links. In Joomla! we call this a menu. You may create as many menus as desired and nest them into as many different ways as you wish. Each menu is a module which can be positioned on a provided area in the template.

Module
A module is something that you can position next to an article. A menu, for example, is a module. The small registration block on the left side is also a module. You can create as many modules with smart functions as you need and position them on the predefined area in the template.

Templates
A template is the graphical pattern for your website. It mostly consists of HTML and CSS files. Joomla! delivers several templates for you to choose from. Templates are configurable, which allows you to upload a different logo, change the background color, etc. Each template provides areas where modules can be positioned (Figure 8).

Figure 8: Template Positions You can group modules around one or more articles.

Plug-ins
A plug-in provides practical services but is usually invisible to the visitors of the site. A wysiwyg editor, for example, is a plug-in. Plugins are extensions, which can be installed unlimited amount of times. The core package already consists of numerous useful plug-ins.

Components
Components are the little surprise packages that help you create nearly anything on your site. You want to have a booking system for workshops? A platform for properties? A forum? An image gallery? You just have to install the right component! The Joomla! core package already comes with some components, e.g., the contact component, which enables you to integrate contact

forms into your site. There are many components to enhance your Joomla! system.

Options
You will need individual configuration settings for your website; we call them options. These options are applied to the whole website, for users, categories, modules, components. You will always find an icon named Options like, e.g., that one (Figure 9), which provides you with the possibility to see the position of modules (Figure 8) by inserting http://localhost/index.php?tp=1 The initial tp stands for template position.

Figure 9: Options

Other structures
Other structures for user interfaces, templates and technical relations are also available. For the time being, you are well equipped by remembering the described structures above.

Managing Content
Submitted by Hagen Graf on 15. June 2011 - 16:37 Thank you for your contribution: redWEB

A content management system is made for managing content - who would have thought?! So the next question is: What is content? In media production and publishing, content is information and experiences that may provide value for an end-user/audience in specific contexts (Wikipedia). Ok, I see, but what is it that provides value?

This question is indeed very hard to answer and quite individual but I think you now get the idea of content and a content management system like Joomla!. A content management system is useful for managing information that provides value for your audience (Hagen Graf :-) ).

Types of content
In core Joomla! you have articles, categories, web links, banners, contacts and feeds. I am not sure whether creating value with banners is possible but banners are also a kind of content. Modules can be used for content creation as well. Often you may want to enrich your content with files like photos and other media types. For this Joomla! has its Media manager. This is what Joomla! core provides as your toolbox to manage all these bits and pieces to create value to your audience. I am going to cover these tools in the next chapters. If this isn't enough for you, you can enhance Joomla! with so-called content construction kits like K2, FlexiContent or CCK jSeblod and many other extensions, but that's another book entirely. :-)

How to Create an 'About Us' Page

Submitted by Hagen Graf on 17. June 2011 - 14:01 To give you a first real challenge, let's create a first page on your new website. It will be an about us page on which you can write about your company, your project, or yourself. Most of the time, a page like this contains a title, text and perhaps a few images.

Static vs. dynamic content

An "about us" page is usually created once, is accessible via a menu link, and in the future all you will have to do is change it as you go. It has a static character. A press release or blog entry, however, has a dynamic character.

For static pages, in contrast to dynamic pages, the creation date and author do not really matter. Static pages are usually accessible via a menu link whereas dynamic pages can be accessed through lists.

The plan
The 'about us' page should consist of the following components:

a title, a text, an image. The page should not appear on the front page. We want a link to the page in the top horizontal menu (top).

This may sound simple at first :-). Go ahead and log into the administration interface!

Step 1 - Create content

Go to the Article Manager (Content -> Article Manager). There you might still see your unpublished sample data (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Article manager Click the icon to get to the appropriate form and then add the title and text. In the upper pane, below the title, select "uncategorized" as a category. This category was created by installing the example data. The field Featured indicates whether the content should be displayed in the featured blog layout, which is mostly used as the front page.

This still works in Joomla! 1.7 but the terms can easily be misunderstood. Select No. In the editor window, you may now enter your text. Joomla! comes with the default editor TinyMCE (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Article edit form

Inserting an image from a URL

As a first example we are going to use an already existing image on the web. For example, this one: http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1198/898250237_78a0e75cba_m.jpg (Figure 3)

Figure 3: Example image Move the cursor to the position in the text at which you would like to insert the image. Click on the image icon in the editor toolbar and paste the URL of the image to the pop-up window. Configure the image with a left alignment and use 10 pixels vertical and horizontal space (Figure 4).

Figure 4: Insert image The image will appear in your editor window. Click Save and your item is stored. There are several ways to save it:

Save - Item is saved. Form is not closed. Used for saving when you still want to continue working. Save & Close - Item is saved and form will be closed. Save & New - Item is saved, form will be closed and a new empty article form is called.

Exit the form.

Step 2 - Creating a Menu Link

The post has been created but is not appearing on the website. For it to appear, we need a link! Click the New icon in the Menu manager in the top menu (Menu Top). Hint: Top is the name of the position in the default template. If you are not using the default template and the example data the Top menu doesn't exist or may have another name. Click the 'Select' button next to the field Menu item type. A window with various links will pop up. Click on the link single article (Figure 5).

Figure 5: Select a menu item type Now you need to choose the desired article. Click the button Select / Change in the right pane (Select Article) to select it. You will see a search box with all articles. In case you can't find your article on the page right away, you can filter the list by typing a part of the article's title in the search box and then clicking on the title of the correct article in the result list (Figure 6).

Figure 6: Menu type - single article - select article Enter a title for the link "About us" and make sure that top is selected in the menu location. We can leave the remaining options with their settings for now.

Step 3 - 'About us' on the website

If you now load the frontend website, you will discover the new link in the top menu. Click it and you will see the about us content congratulations on having created your first page (Figure 7).

Figure 7: About us page

Step 4 - Image Upload

If your image is not already available on the Internet, you will need to upload it from your PC. Let's go through the example together. Go to the Article Manager (Content Article manager). If you can't find your article, locate it easily by using the search box. Select the article's title and the edit form will open. Delete the linked image from the text. Below the editor window you will find the Image button. This button launches a dialog box to upload an image. You can choose between existing images or upload new ones (Figure 8).

Figure 8: Image upload Once the image has been inserted into the text, the formatting can be changed by using the image icon in the editor's toolbar. This separation of functions in Joomla! was purposely chosen because you have the possibility to use different editors. The Joomla! Image button will always remain the same but the image formatting in the editor might differ. Attention: Joomla! uses the images as they are. The images will not be resized!

A Typical Article
Submitted by Hagen Graf on 18. June 2011 - 9:41 Thank you for your contribution: joomla4all

The following items usually have to be taken into consideration when it comes to creating an article on your website: 1. 2. 3. 4. a text with one or more images a teaser text for list views with a read more link pointing to the full article page the article should appear on the front page and needs no menu link nice to have: a scheduled publication date

5. nice to have: a printer-friendly version for visitors who would like to print the article 6. nice to have: an option to forward the article by email

Start
The article should appear on the front page of your website. If you deleted, did not install or change your sample data, your Joomla! front page will look like the one in Figure 1. It is, of course, not a bad thing if posts should appear. :-)

Figure 1: Empty website When you log into the administration area, you will see an icon called Add New Article. You may either click on this icon or access the form via the main navigation Content Article Manager Add New Article (Figure 2)

Figure 2: Administration area

Article form
You are now in the article form, in which you will probably write all articles you will ever write in Joomla!. A very important place! The form is structured as in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Entry form for contributions The minimum requirement for an article is a title (1), a category (2), and a text (3). If you look at the form more closely, you will notice the help texts that appear when you move the mouse across the description of a field. I have marked the areas in the form in Figure 3 with six digits.

1. Title
The most important part is the title or headline. The title appears as a headline on the website (usually in the biggest size of the HTML headline tags <h1>) and in the browser bar at the top (you can enable or disable this behavior). The title is the foundation for the alias field below. The alias is automatically generated by Joomla! when you save the article and and its appearance can be changed as well. Basically, the purpose of an alias is to have a simple, short and legible URL in the browser address bar, which can easily be used in emails or chats as well. In the example of http://example.com/firstarticle - first-article is the alias.

2. Category
This is about the classification or categorization of the article. Every item MUST be assigned to a category. If you explicitly do not want to categorize the article, you can assign the category uncategorized. This is especially useful for more static content pages like legal notices and the About Us page. In this area, other important

attributes can be configured, including State (published or not), who has Access (Access, Permission depends on various settings), Language and Featured. Featured replaces the former attribute frontpage and ensures that the items are in a predefined blog layout for your website frontpage. The article ID is created after saving and consists of a serial number.

3. Text
In this section you can write your text, which should be of value to your audience. Sounds really easy, doesn't it?! :-) Technically, you are dealing with a WYSIWYG editor (What You See Is What You Get) here. The editor converts your written text into HTML text format. Joomla! uses the TinyMCE editor as default configuration. TinyMCE is an independent open source project, which has so many functions that you could write a separate book about it. (May not be a bad idea.) It basically works like any other word processor: write text, highlight text, then click on a toolbar icon and the function is applied or a dialog box opens. The buttons below the input area are unusual and can be confusing at times. These buttons are Joomla! specific and only have an indirect relationship with the editor. The Joomla! core comes with five of these very practical additional buttons. You can add more buttons by adding Joomla! extensions: 1. Article: allows you to link to other existing Joomla! articles 2. Image: You can insert an existing image or photo from the Media Manager or upload a new image. 3. Pagebreak: inserts a pagebreak in your article 4. Read More: allows you to stipulate where to place the read more link 5. Toggle Editor: switches the editor on and off. If it is off, you will see the HTML code of your article.

4. Options
What was called Parameter in Joomla! 1.5, is now called Options since Joomla! 1.6, like, for example, the Publishing Options. Here you can specify who wrote the article (Created by). The user who created the article is usually allowed and responsible for making changes to the article later. Which name is really shown below the title at the webpage is configured in Created by Alias. The three fields below allow you to schedule the publishing. Simply enter the appropriate dates and Joomla! takes care of the rest.

5. More options
In this section you can configure many options by switching them on and off. You can change the article layout to suit the reader's and

search engine's needs. Just start experimenting - it's the best way to learn.

6. Permissions
The sixth and final area concerns the permissions for this article. This selection will help us in many places in Joomla! 1.7 and I will cover this in chapter Users and permissions.

Sample article
Let's create the article outlined above together:

A text with one or more images

Just write your text. To add an image or images, there are numerous possibilities: 1. The image is already available online, for example, on Flickr. In this case, click the image icon in the editor toolbar and copy the image URL to the dialog box. 2. The image is already in the Joomla! Media Manager. In this case, click the image button below to select the image and insert it into your text (Figure 4).

Figure 4: Insert Image from media field 3. The picture is on your hard disk. This is the most complex case. Basically, you will also use the image button below the text. There you will find an upload dialogue through which you can upload your image "easily". Remember that Joomla! will NOT resize the image. If you upload a photo from your digital camera, it will be displayed in its full original size (width > 3000 pixels). You have to resize the image before uploading. If all goes well - congratulations! If it doesn't work, this could be due to many things, such as lack of permissions in the directories of the media manager. At best, you will get an error message. If it still doesn't work, try posting a comment here. :-) Once you have inserted the image from the media, you can select and format it by clicking the image icon in the editor's toolbar.

A teaser text for list views with a read more link to the full article
This is easy. Move the cursor to the position at which the read more link should appear and click on the read more button below the text area.

The article should appear on the frontpage and needs no menu link
Select Yes in the field Featured in Area 2.

A scheduled publication would be nice

Avoid this at first, so you don't have to wait for the article to appear on your website :-). If you would like to try it later with a different article, simply fill the fields Start Publishing and Finish Publishing with the appropriate information or select the dates by clicking the calendar icon.

A printer-friendly version of the article

If you do not know at this point where the global settings are located, have a look at the chapter Website and Content Configuration and verify the current settings. In area 5, you may switch the Show Printer icon to 'show'.

Forwarding of the article by e-mail

Simply set the options in area 5, switch the Show Email Icon to show.

Result
After saving you can reload your site and will see your article on the frontpage as in Figure 5.

Figure 5: Article on the frontpage

Media Manager
Submitted by Hagen Graf on 18. June 2011 - 9:56 Thank you for your contribution: Vistamedia The media manager is Joomla!'s little Digital Asset Management System (DAM). If you are managing content, you will need a place to store the files. Files are all the images, PDFs and whatever you decide to mention in your content. Usually these digital assets consist of the file and additional meta data. In this case, we need an easy-to-use tool to manage our files. Let's have a look at what is possible with the Joomla! core media manager.

How it works
To me it looks more like a file manager. Everyone knows the Windows explorer or the OSX finder. In Joomla! they call it "media manager". It has a base directory where all the files are stored. You can look at your files in two different ways using your browser: via a Thumbnail View (Figure 1) and a Detailed View (Figure 2). It is possible to navigate through the folders by clicking on them.

Figure 1: Media Manager - Thumbnail View

Figure 2: Media Manager - Detailed View You can create as many additional folders as you wish. In the Detailed View, you are able to delete folders and files. Youll find the same structure in the Joomla! administration backend as you can see in your FTP client (Figure 3), but you have to be careful: In core Joomla! you will also find a media directory. This directory is NOT the home of the media manager. The home of the media manager in core Joomla! is the images directory.

Figure 3: Media manager directory in ftp client When you look in the toolbar you will discover the Options icon - go ahead and click on it (Figure 4).

Figure 4: Media manager options If you go through the options, you will notice that you can limit file types by extension, maximum size of a file and you can also separate images from files. Well, an image is a file, too, but I like the idea of separating them. The thumbnail view, e.g., makes a lot more sense for images but not for non-image files. The biggest advantage of that separation is the possibility to Restrict Uploads to users lower than the manager role. You can allow registered users to upload images but you do not have to give permission to upload other files. This is, in some cases, very useful. The next options you see are MIME types, nowadays often called Internet Media Type. If you are a Windows user, you usually only distinguish different file types by their extension. Internet Media Type is another way to recognize the type of a file even without a file extension. You can permit or forbid as many file types as desired. The Flash Uploader is one of the most sophisticated features that is often forgotten about. In Joomla! 1.5 it didn't always work properly but the version coming since Joomla! 1.6 is excellent for uploading more than one file at a time. The Flash Uploader simply works and is easy to use, even in 1.7 :)! Try it! (Figure 5).

Figure 5: Media manager Flash Uploader As you notice, the Joomla! media manager is no rocket science but it is a reliable, easy to use tool to manage your images and other files.

If you need a more sophisticated product, Joomla! offers other solutions in the extension directory in the category File Management.

Media manager and the editor

Now you know about the central place of your files but how can you manage to connect them to your content? Anywhere you see an editor in Joomla!, it is usually possible to add media from the media manager by clicking the image button below. We have already talked about this when we created a typical article with a photo (Figure 6).

Figure 6: Media manager in content areas

Media Manager in other places

There are other places where the media manager plays a role, like in categories. It is possible to link an image to a category (Figure 7).

Figure 7: Media manager in category This image will appear in a list of categories if you configure it in the Menu Items Options.

Plug-Ins
A plug-in adds specific capabilities to a component. The term plug-in is also used in other places. For example, plug-ins are commonly used in web browsers to play videos. A well-known plug-in example is Adobe's Flash Player. A good example for the use of plug-ins in Joomla! is the search component. Five search plug-ins work together to find content from different Joomla! components. Dlm joomla ada 8 jenis plugin: 1. authentication, 2. content, 3. editors-xtd, 4. editors, 5. extension 6. search 7. system 8. user. These are also the names of the website sub directories where the plug-in files are located. For example, plug-ins with a type of authentication are located in the website directory plugins/authentication.

Authentication
You authenticate with your username and password, and you are authorized because you are a member of some permission group (see chapter Users and Permissions) Joomla! offers three possibilities for authentication (Figure 1). Be careful with deactivating plug-ins. You must have at least one authentication plug-in enabled or you will lose all access to your site.

Figure 1: Authentication Plug-ins

Joomla!
The plug-in provides the standard behavior for Joomla!. You fill in the login form with your username and password and your login information is then verified.

GMail
If you activate the GMail plug-in, users will be able to log onto your site by using their GMail address and password. Prior registration is not necessary. With the first login, the System plug-in Joomla! will create a user account in its database. The GMail password is stored encrypted in the database, so your users GMail accounts cannot be hacked. This plug-in facilitates the login process for your users. Unfortunately, there is no advisory in the login form that loging in with GMail is possible. You'll have to add additional text or find another creative solution.

Content
Besides the Joomla! content plug-in, all other content plug-ins are related to the text you insert into an article. The Custom HTML module (see chapters Modules) can use the content plug-ins as well (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Content Plug-ins

Joomla
The Joomla plug-in has two tasks: 1. When you attempt to delete a category, it verifies whether the category is 'empty'. Empty means, no article or sub category is assigned to it. You can turn this feature off in Basic Settings. 2. If a new article is submitted via the frontend, the plug-in will send an email to all those users for whom Send Email is turned on (User Manager - Edit User). This feature can be turned off in Basic Settings.

Loading Modules
This plug-in loads the HTML output of all modules assigned to a template module position into an article. All you have to do is write {loadposition position-14} in the space where the modules should displayed. This feature is especially useful for putting banner ads into the content.

Email Cloaking
This plug-in transforms an email address entered into the content in the form of [email protected] into a link, and cloaks the email address by means of JavaScript. The advantage of this is that email address collection programs can't read your email address very easily.

Code Highlighter

The GeSHi plug-in makes Syntax Highlighting possible and creates an impressive listing on your website if you embed the code to be formatted within <pre> </pre> HTML tags:
<pre> if ($number > 0) { echo $number; } else{ $number++; } </pre>

Pagebreak
The Pagebreak plug-in takes care of pagebreaks in articles. Just like the Image plug-in, it is easy to integrate into the content. Besides a simple pagebreak, various headers and page titles can also be defined. You can set pagebreaks using the pagebreak dialog. The page break will be displayed in the text window as a simple horizontal line. In the HTML code, the pagebreak looks like this:
<hr title="Page Title" alt="Table of Contents Alias" class="system-pagebreak" />

The plug-in has to be activated together with the Editor-xtd Pagebreak plug-in.

Page Navigation
This plug-in integrates the Next and Previous functions under the articles.

Vote
This plug-in adds voting functionality to articles.

Editors-xtd
The four editors-xtd plug-ins generate the buttons below the editor window (Figure 3).

Figure 3: Editor-xtd Plug-ins

Article

Displays a button for linking the actual article to other existing articles. After clicking the button, a pop-up will be displayed allowing you to choose the article to link to.

Image
This plug-in displays a button for inserting images into an article. After clicking the button, a pop-up will open allowing you to choose an image from the media directory or upload new files and configure its properties.

Pagebreak
Provides a button to enable a pagebreak to be inserted into an article. A pop-up allows you to configure the settings to be used. The plug-in has to be activated together with the Content - Pagebreak plug-in.

Read more
Enables a button which allows you to easily insert the Read more link into an article.

Editors
Joomla! core comes with two editors (Figure 4). In Global Configuration - Site you can set the default editor for your website. Additionally, you can assign a different editor to every user account (User - Manager).

Figure 4: Editor Plug-ins

CodeMirror
CodeMirror is a JavaScript library that can be used to create a relatively pleasant editor interface for code-like content computer programs, HTML markup, and the like. This plug-in has to be

activated if you want to offer textarea fields with the CodeMirror editor. You can configure the behavior of the editor in Basic Settings.

None
This plug-in has to be activated if you want to offer textarea fields without an editor.

TinyMCE
TinyMCE is a platform-independent web-based Javascript HTML WYSIWYG editor control. It is the default editor in Joomla!.

Extension
The extension plug-in type is related to tasks concerning the managing of Joomla! extensions.

Joomla
This plug-in manages the update sites for extensions.

Search
The Search plug-ins for Contents, Weblinks, Contacts, Categories, and Newsfeeds can be activated when needed. They implement the search function of the Search component. These plug-ins have to be activated if you are trying to obtain search results from the respective sections. If you want to search additional components, the respective plug-ins for those have to be available as well (Figure 5).

Figure 5: Search Plug-ins

System
System plug-ins are deeply integrated in the Joomla! framework, and they usually affect the behavior of the entire website (Figure 6).

Figure 6: System Plug-ins

Language Filter
This plug-in filters the displayed content depending on the language desired. It has to be enabled only when the Language Switcher module is published.

P3P Policy
The Platform for Privacy Preferences Project (P3P) is a protocol allowing websites to declare their intended use of information they collect about browsing users. The system P3P policy plug-in allows Joomla! to send a customized string of P3P policy tags in the HTTP header. This is needed for the sessions to work properly with certain browsers, i.e. Internet Explorer 6 and 7.

Cache
This module provides page caching. You can configure whether you would like to use the client's browser for caching pages.

Debug
This makes the debug function available, which is very important to programmers. You can configure the parameters to determine which information to display.

Log

This plug-in makes the system log files available. You can determine the location of the log file in Global Configuration System - System Settings. This is an example of such a log file (/logs/error.php):

#Version: 1.0 #Date: 2011-07-06 12:39:38 #Fields: date time level c-ip status comment #Software: Joomla! 1.7.0 RC1 [ Ember ] 28-Jun-2011 23:00 GMT 2011-07-06 12:39:38 - 92.143.161.32 Joomla FAILURE: Empty password not allowed

Redirect
Provides the redirect feature in conjunction with the redirects component.

Remember Me
This is a method for saving access data locally in a cookie in the client browser. Once a user visits your website again, the data is already in the form. This storage is only enabled by explicitly marking a checkbox below the login form.

SEF
SEF is the acronym for Search Engine Friendly. This plug-in creates search engine friendly URLs for content elements, which can be configured in Global Configuration - SEO Settings.

Logout
The system logout plug-in enables Joomla! to redirect the user to the home page if he chooses to logout while being on a protected access page.

User
User plug-ins are related to user specific functions (Figure 7).

Figure 7: User Plug-ins

Profile

The user profile plug-in gives you the opportunity to ask the user for additonal profile fields, which can be configured in Basic Settings. It can also be combined with the contact creator plug-in to automatically create a contact item for every user (also see Users and Permissions).

Contact Creator
A plug-in to automatically create contact information for new users. It works in conjunction with the profile plug-in (also see Users and Permissions).

Joomla!
This plug-in creates a user in the database after the first successful authentication.

Multi-Language Websites
The Joomla! 1.7 core is available in more than 40 languages languages and more languages are expected to come soon. Let's build a multi-language website by using Joomla! 1.7 core in this chapter.

Joomla! language packages

You can download the translation packages from Joomla Code (TO DO 1.7 LINK) or the Joomla! extension directory und install them using the extension manager. I have done this with the German as well as the French language package. After installation you will find the three installed languages (Figure 1) by visiting Extensions - Language Manager in the backend.

Figure 1: Installed languages

Language Configuration
As of now, it is still necessary to have a look at the language configuration to see whether the languages are published (Extension Language Manager Installed) and the language content

attributes are correct (Figure 2). Have a look at (Extension Language Manager Content). If there is no content item for the installed language, create one by clicking the new icon. This is what happened to me after I had installed the French language package.

Figure 2: Edit content language

Language Filter plugin

For Joomla! to be able to distinguish between the different languages, the System Language Filter plug-in (Extensions Plug-Ins) has to be activated. You are able to configure the language to be shown to the visitor, whether it is the language version of your website or the client's browser setting, by simply using the Options settings. Another configuration setting is the Automatic Language Change. If enabled, the content language will automatically be changed to the frontend language settings. Every user can configure his frontend language once he is logged in in the frontend. Most of the time, there is a user menu that, depending on your rights, provides you with different menu items. In this user menu, you will also find the Your profile link. By clicking on the link, you will then be able to view and edit your profile data. In the profile edit form under Basic Settings, users can choose among other configurations and set their frontend language (Figure 1). You may use the default website language or one of the available content languages. Depending on these settings, the language plug-in will allow you to view the website in the corresponding language.

Figure 3: User profile - Basic Settings

Language Switcher module

By activating the Language Switcher module, you have the possibility to switch between languages in the frontend, regardless of whether you are a visitor or a logged in user. In Basic Settings you can add text and choose whether you would like the languages to be displayed with the language name or the flag icon. I am sure some third party templates will provide special templates positions for this module in the near future. In the default template Beez2, position-7 works well in combination with the flags.

Figure 4: Language Switcher

Multi-language content items

As I have previously mentioned, each content item, such as an article, can be assigned to a language. The difficulty now lies in creating all these content items in all source and target languages (Figure 5). You can create content items in any language but, unfortunately, Joomla! 1.6 does not yet offer a translating workflow, which means that you have to pay attention to avoid mistakes.

Figure 5: Language field

A multi-language website
My example website consists of

a front page with articles, a blog, an 'About Us' page, a contact form.

All content items have to be available in different languages (Figure 6).

Figure 6: Example website

Front page
To make it easier for you to start I created a screencast I create a few articles for each language with the attribute featured (see chapter A typical article). I create a menu called default with a menu item called default, which links to Featured Articles. I configure this menu item as Home by clicking the Home icon. The menu default needs no corresponding module, it should simply exist (This behaviour is in the actual version of Joomla! 1.7 and will hopefully be changed in the upcoming updates). Afterwards I create a menu per language and the corresponding menu module. I create a menu item for each language : Home, Startseite, Accueil. These menu links have to be configured as Home by clicking the Home icon. If you see the flag beside the menu item, everything works fine, if not ... watch the screencast :)

Figure 7: A frontpage for each language

A blog
In my case I already have a blog at cocoate.com, so I use the newsfeeds component for displaying the external blog entries. I create a feed item for each language and the corresponding menu items (see chapter Newsfeeds).

An 'About Us' page

I create an 'About Us' page as described in chapter How to create an 'about us' page for every language.

A contact form
I use a single contact form for genaral inquiries. I only need one contact item, so it is not necessary to assign a language. Only if contact data differs in different languages, e.g., different address or email, will it be necessary to create one contact item for each language.

Login form
On each page a login form will be visible. I have copied the English login module twice, configured the menu assigment, changed the title and assigned the correct language. Now it is possible to login and register at my site.

User menu
I used the existing user menu, which provides you with a link to your profile as well as for creating an article or weblinks. (Figure 8).

Figure 8: Front-end editing