Seven default Joomla components

Banners. Shows advertising banners.

Contacts. Creates contact forms.
Messaging. Sends private messages to other site
administrators.
News feeds. Shows news from other Web sites.
Search. Allows people to search your site.
Web links. Creates a directory of links to other sites.
Redirect. Tracks when people try to visit pages that don’t
exist on your site and allows you to redirect them to
the correct page.
The Banners component has two main tasks:
• Shows advertising banners
• Collects all the data about those banners, such
as the number of times each one has been
shown and the number of times each one has
been clicked on
 Setting Up an Advertising Banner
Categorize
Just as with our articles, our banners are organized into categories. So we
need to create a category for them:
1. Go to Components in the main drop-down menu, then click on Banners,
and then Categories.
2. Click New.
The Banner categories will each be used for different areas of
the site, so naming them according to their position (Leaderboard, Left
Column, Right Column) is a good idea.

Title : RIght Column

Create 2 Other categories Footer and Left column
3. Click Save & Close when you’re finished.
Add
Now let’s create the banner that visitors will see.
1. Go to Components in the main drop-down menu, and then click on Banners.
2. Click New, and you see the banner setup page. I recommend you fill in five
fields as you create your first banner:
Name. Right Column Joomla.org Banner.
Category. Choose the RightColumn category
Image. Click Select, and you see a pop-up. This takes you to the
banners folder in Media.
Alternative Text. This is the descriptive text that appears if the
image doesn’t show. Enter Joomla.org Banner.
Click URL. The Web address to send people when they click the
banner. Let’s put http://www.joomla.org in here.
Show
1. Go to Extensions, then Module Manager, and click New.
2. You see a pop-up screen where you can decide which type of
module to create. Click Banners.
3.There are four key options to choose:
Title. Give the module a logical name such as Left Column
Banner.
Show Title. Hide.
Position. Select Position-7, which is where all of our other
modules such as Main Menu, Attractions Menu, and Transport
Menu and are located.
Category. Choose the Left Column category you created earlier.
4. Click Save & Close, and you’re finished. Click
View Site, and you can see your banner in the
left column as in Figure 7.4.
Go ahead and click on the banner a few times to
test that it works. It should hopefully send you
to http://joomla.org.
Banner Options
• By default, Joomla collects only basic data
about how often the banner is shown
(Impressions) or how often it’s clicked on
(Clicks).You can find that information by going
to Components, then Banners, and looking in
the Impressions and Clicks columns as in
Figure 7.5.
1. Go to Components, then Banners, and click on your banner
name: Left Column Joomla.org Banner.
2. You see the same screen you saw earlier in this process, and
this is where we can enable tracking. Depending on your
needs, set Track Impressions and/or Track Clicks to Yes
3. Click Save & Close and then go to the Tracks link.
4. Every day the impressions and clicks will be recorded here.
You can sort and organize them according to category, client,
or date. If you want to immediately see how this works, visit a
few pages on the front of your site and come back to this
page.
 Contacts Component
The Contacts component has one main task:
It allows visitors to contact you.
Contacts allows you to easily set up Contact Us
forms. If you just want one contact form for
the whole site, that’s easily done. You can also
set up a whole directory of contact forms for
different people or different departments.
Contact forms look like Figure 7.8.
Categorize
Just as with our articles and banners, our
contacts are organized into categories:
1. Go to Components, Contacts, and then
Categories.
2. Click New and enter a general name for our
category, such as Two Trees Contacts
Add
Open Chapter 8 >> 08_03
To create the contact form, follow these steps:
1. Go to Components and then click on Contacts.
2. Click New.
Name. Give the contact form a descriptive title.
Category. Choose the Two Trees Contacts category you created earlier.
Email. Click the Contact Details tab on the right-hand side of the
page and enter your e-mail address into the Email field.
3. Click Save & Close to complete this contact form.
 Messaging Component
• The Joomla Messaging component is by far
the simplest: It allows you to send private
messages to other members of your site.
 Here’s how to add another user:
1. Under the Users drop-down, click on User Manager
>> Add new user.
2. Create details for the ff. field:
Name: muser
Login Name: muser
Password: muser
Block this User. No
3. Assign User Group:
Check the box next to Administrator. This allows
the user to access the administrator area of your site.
Now we can go ahead and try the Messaging
component. Here’s how we do it:
1. Go to Messaging under the Components
drop-down and then click New.
2. Click Select User and click on the muser name.
3. Set a title and enter the message.
Subject: test
Message: This a test message. Kuha mo?
4. Click Send to finish and send the message.
5. Click Log Out in the very top-right corner of the
screen.
6. Log in as the muser using the account details you
just changed.
7. Up in the top-right corner you see a new
notification that you have a new message.
8. Either click that link or go to Components,
Messaging, and then click on Read Private Messages.
 News Feeds Component
• The News Feeds component allows you to
automatically show news from other Web
sites.
• News Feeds use a technology called RSS or
Real Simple Syndication to pull in the feeds
from other sites.
 Categorize
• Just as with our articles, banners, and
contacts, our news feeds are organized into
categories:
1. Go to Components, Newsfeeds, and then
Categories.
2. Click New and enter a general title for our
category such as News from Other Sites
 Add
• First, we need to find the feeds that we’re
going to import.
• The normal way to do this is to browse to the
sites you’re interested in and look for a little
RSS icon.
• The common design for an RSS icon is a square
image with a dot in the bottom-left corner and
two waves coming out of it toward the top-
right corner.
• When looking for RSS feeds on other sites, you
may need to hunt around a little as different
sites put the feed in different places. Some put
their RSS icons in the browser bar, some in the
sidebar, and some in the site footer.
1. Go to Components, Newsfeeds, and then
Feeds.
2. Click New and you see the News feeds
creation page. I recommend you fill in at least
three fields as you create your first contact form:
 Name. Give the contact form a descriptive title. In this
example we’re going to list the latest Joomla
extensions, so a logical title might
be Latest Joomla Extensions. Sometimes this Joomla
stuff is hard, isn’t it?
Link. Enter
http://feeds.joomla.org/JoomlaExtensions.
Category. Choose the News from Other Sites category
you created earlier.
3. Save & Close
 Show
All we need now is to make a menu link to our news
feed:
1. In the Administrator area, go to Menus and then
Main Menu.
2. Click New and you see the menu link setup page. I
recommend you fill in three fields:
Menu Item Type. Choose Single News Feed.
Menu Title. Enter Latest Joomla Extensions.
Feed. Latest Joomla Extensions.
3. Click Save & Close and then View Site.
 Redirect Component
• The Redirect component records broken links that
people try to visit on yoursite and allows you to safely
redirect them to a working page.
• Redirect is as simple as the Messaging component: It
requires no workflows,no configuration, and no
installation. It’s already up and running for you.
• Go to Components and then click on Redirect. After your
site has been running for a while, you’ll start to see this
screen fill up as shown in Figure 7.24.
• The Expired URL column shows the broken links that
people have tried to use.
 Why would there be broken URLs on your
site? There are two likely reasons:
Mistyped URL. Someone may have mistyped the
URL to one of your pages—it may even have
been you. If this is the case, the location of the
broken URL shows in the Referring Page column
so you know where to go to fix the link.
Old URL. If you moved your site to Joomla from
another type of Web site, it’s possible that your
URLs have changed. People may still be trying
to visit those old URLs.
 Our site is new, so you don’t have any broken
URLs yet, but we can still see how it works:
1. Click Components, Redirects, and then click
New.
2. fill in all three fields
Source URL. Enter the URL of a page that
doesn’t exist. For example, you could enter
something like http://joomlaexplained.com/
Chater7, which is almost a valid URL but has had
a couple of characters removed.
• Destination URL. Enter the URL of the page
you want people to be redirected to. For
example, if http://
localhost/joomlaname/index.php/abot is the
broken URL, you probably want to enter
http://
localhost/joomlaname/index.php/about
• State. Set this to Enabled.
• 3. After you have your Source URL and Destination
URLs entered, you can test to see whether it’s
working. Click Visit Site and enter the Source URL
into the address bar of your browser.
• That broken URL should automatically
• redirect to the Destination URL. In this example, I
could type in http://joomlaexplained.com/chater7
and be automatically redirected to
http://joomlaexplained.com/chapter7
 Web Links Component
• The Web Links component is a directory of
links to other sites. It’s most commonly used
for a Resources or Useful Links area of your
site.
• Web links is organized in an identical way to
the News Feeds component, the only
exception being that you’re adding Web site
URLs rather than RSS URLs.
 Categorize
Just as with our articles, banners, contacts, and
news feeds, our Web links are
organized into categories:
1. Go to Components,Weblinks, and then
Categories.
2. Click New. Enter the name Joomla.org Links
for your category.
 Add
Now let’s add some URLs into our newly created
category:
1. Go to Components,Weblinks, and then Weblinks
again.
2. Click New, and you see the Web links creation page.
example we use is the main Joomla Web site:
Title. Main Joomla Website.
URL. Enter http://www.joomla.org.
Category. Joomla.org Links.
3. Save and New.
Go ahead and repeat the process, adding these
links to the same category:
Title. Joomla Support Forum URL:
http://forum.joomla.org
Title. Joomla Extensions Directory URL:
http://extensions.joomla.org
Title. Joomla Documentation URL:
http://docs.joomla.org
 Show
All we need to do now is make a menu link to our useful
links:
1. In your Administrator area go to Menus and then Main
Menu.
2. Click New, and you see the menu link setup page.
Menu Item Type. Choose List Web Links in a
Category.
Menu Title. Enter Joomla.org Links.
Category. Choose Joomla.org Links.
3. Click Save & Close and then View Site
 Search Component
The Search component allows people to search for keywords on your
site.
Of all the components introduced in this chapter, this is the only one
almost guaranteed to be used on every Joomla site.

Here’s how we set it up:

1. Go to Extensions and then Module Manager.
2. Click New and choose Search.
3. You see the search module setup page. fill in two fields:
Title. Give the module a useful name. We’re not trying to make
you think too hard here, so why not try Search Box?
Position. Choose Position-0.(any)
4. Click Save & Close and then click Visit Site
5. Type Two Trees into the search box and press
Enter or Return on your keyboard.You see search
results returned
If you want, you can also make a menu link to this search
form so that people can search and find results all on the
same page. Here’s how we do that:
1. Go to Main Menu under the Menus drop-down and click
New.
2. There are two fields you need to set:
Menu Item Type. List Search Results.
Menu Title: Search This Site.
After you’ve created that menu link, you can go to the visitor
area of the site, click Search This Site under Main Menu
 Options
There aren’t many options you can choose for the Search
component, but one is particularly useful.This option
allows you to track all the searches that people have made
on your site.Those search results give you a good idea
about what is popular or even what is hard to find on your
site. Here’s how to set it up:
1. In your Administrator area, go to Components in the
main drop-down menu, then click Search.
2. Click Options and set Gather Search Statistics to Yes.
Now whenever someone uses your site’s search, it is
recorded here.