Article Manager and Editing a Joomla Article

Transcription

1 Article Manager and Editing a Joomla Article Joomla web sites created in the transition from Manila will already have some content created. No doubt, one of the first things school or department web editors will need to do is to edit/update an existing Article. This set of instructions introduces the Article Manager and will demonstrate how to edit and update the contents of an existing Article. Editing an Article is easy in Joomla. When you first login to your web site with your administrator login, you will see the Control Panel display. NOTE: If you have been working on your site and are NOT at the Control Panel display, you can always return to that location by selecting Control Panel from the Site Menu. THE ARTICLE MANAGER SCREEN From the Control Panel, click the Article Manager icon to display the Articles associated with the site. Initially, (unless you know your school or department site is set up differently) all of the Articles for your site will be Uncategorized (not listed in a Section or Category). The pages are listed by title and can be sorted by the various columns by clicking on the column header (such as Title).

2 At the bottom of the Article Manager screen you will find a Display # dropdown (outlined in red above). If you have more than the default (20) articles, you can increase this number to view all of the Titles. Note that one Article will be published to the Front page (see checkmark circled in blue above). For future reference, you might also note that the ID of each article is listed in the far right column. Just to the left of the ID column, the Hits Column displays the number of times the public has accessed a specific page. EDITING AN ARTICLE To edit a specific article, click on its Title in the Article Manager list. The Article [Edit] form will open. This form is just like the new Article form except that it already contains content. You can edit information in the Title area for the Article. Title: Add or Alter text in the Title for your Article, if needed. Alias: Alter the alias, if needed. Remember, it must be unique and it cannot contain spaces or special characters. Alias is used as the name in the web site URL to display the Article. Section: Uncategorized should remain your selection in most cases. Published: In most cases this will remain (Yes). Front Page: Unless you are editing the Article assigned to your Front Page, this will remain (No). Category: Uncategorized should remain your selection in most cases. See below for a screen shot of part of an Article [Edit] screen.

3 In most cases, you will be altering or adding something to the actual Article using the Content Editor box and tools. ALTERING CONTENT EDITING TEXT: To add new text, click to locate your cursor in the appropriate location and type in the new text. To select text to replace it with something else, drag your cursor through the text to highlight it and then type in the replacement text. To paste in new text from a Word document, or other document, select and copy the text from the original source. Then depending on the source, select either the Paste Text or Paste Word icon (highlighted in red box below). A box will open for you to paste in the text. When you paste in Word text, there will be a header included. Highlight and delete it before you click the Insert button at the bottom left. While it is possible to paste directly into the Article Editor, using the Paste Word or Paste Text is preferable. These features keep your code clean and eliminate extraneous markup from Word, or other text sources. EDITING LINKS: To add a working link to an external web site to an Article, you will first enter the text (either the site name, link description or the URL) where you want to place the link. Next select the text to link in the Content Editor. Then click the Insert/Edit Link icon in the Content Editor toolbar. (Note: You must have the text to link selected before the Link icon is active.)

4 Type or paste the Link URL into the Insert/Edit Link window. Be sure that you include the in the link address. In most cases, you will use the default Target to Open in this window/frame. Click the Insert button at the lower left of the Insert/Edit Link window to complete the link. To edit a link that was already created, select the entire text that is currently linked and then click the Insert/Edit Link icon. The window will reappear and you can alter the link as needed. To remove a link, select the text that is linked and then click the Unlink (broken link) icon to the right of the link icon in the Content Editor toolbar. The link will be removed. RESAVING YOUR ARTICLE: You can save your Article using the Apply (check mark outlined in blue below) or Save (disk outlined in green below) icon in the top left Article toolbar. The Apply feature saves the article but keeps it open for you to continue editing. The Save feature saves the article but CLOSES it and returns you to the Article Manager screen. While you are editing, Apply is the save of choice as it allows you to continue adding or editing the text for your article. When you finish your Article, use Save to save and close it. You may open an Article and review it but actually not change the content in any way. In this case you can just close the Article and return to the Article Manager screen using the Close button (red outline). You can also use Close after an Apply to do the same thing as Save.

5 Also note the other features on the Toolbar above. The Preview feature to the left of the Save icon, opens a window over the current screen to preview your content only. Click the X in the upper right to close the preview box. A more useful Preview for editing published articles is available in the Menu Bar directly above the Save button. Click this Preview button to open the public web site in a new window. You will then need to use the side navigation to display the Article you are currently editing. Of course, if you apply more changes while editing, you will need to refresh/reload the web page view in your browser window to see additional updates. After completing this tutorial, you should be able to edit an existing Article for your web site that includes text, sub-headings and external links. For more details about entering text, sub-headers and links, see Creating a New Article. If your article is not yet linked to a menu item for web site display, see the Creating a Menu item document. For editing of table layouts, html code, etc., see the advanced Joomla instruction documents.