Welcome to the Day 7 of your Joomla Website Setup series. Today I am introducing you to Joomla Section Manager. Any content which is created in Joomla is in the form of articles. So if you create articles in Joomla, we say we are building content of the website.
What is Section Manager
Sections are the topmost entities in the grouping of the Joomla website content. Before creating any articles or categories we have to create sections, if these are not already there. Sections are created in Section Manager. In Joomla an article can belong only to a single section and single category.
How To Access Section Manager
Sections are accessed through “Administration Control Panel “ or “Joomla Administration Top Menu.”Content Menu item of top menu as shown in the picture below:
Clicking on Section Manager takes us to “Section Manager” area of administration. The section manager looks like the picture below:
Elements of Section Manager Environment
The section manager environment has several elements. These are listed and explained as below:
Section Manager Top Menu Portion
- Publish
- Unpublish
- Copy
- Delete
- Edit
- New
- Help
Section Manager Listing Portion
- Filter
- Title
- Published
- Order
- Access Level
- #Categories
- #Active
- #Trash
- Id
Section Manager Top Menu Portion
Publish
If you tick on sections in the listing and then click on Publish, the sections are published. From published we mean that the data categorized under the section will be displayed in the frontend.
Unpublish
Selecting sections from the listing and then clicking on Unpublish will take them off. Means the data under sections will be unpublished and will not be available for view on frontend.
Copy
When you tick on one or more than one sections and then press copy button in top menu, the categories and articles under those categories are copied to the new section. This action asks you for the name of the new section. Sections can not be copied to the existing sections through these buttons. Always new sections will be created.
Delete
Selecting one or more sections from the listing and then clicking on this button will delete those sections. But the sections should be empty. Means no categories or articles should exist under the sections to be deleted. If any categories or articles exist then you have to delete those first.
Edit
Selecting any section and then clicking on this button, edits the information about the section. Anything and everything about the section can be edited except its id. Edit action is possible on one section at a time. If you select multiple sections and then click on edit button, the first section in the list will be edited.
New
Clicking on New button creates new section. How to carry out various actions on section will be explained in the tomorrow’s tutorial.
Help
Clicking on Help takes you to the help page defined in your Joomla configuration. By default it will take you to http://help.joomla.org
Section Manager Listing Portion
Filter
Entering anything in filter box will filter the section list as per the words in filter list. Two more buttons are there “Go” and “Reset”. Clicking on “Go” is equivalent to pressing enter and you see the filtered list of sections. Reset empties the filter box and brings you to the initial screen.
Title
Clicking on Title will sort the sections list according to Title in descending order. Clicking subsequently will reverse the order of sections according to Title.
Published
Clicking on Published will sort the the sections in the order of their publishing status. Subsequent clicking will reverse the order of sections according to Publishing status.
Order
Clicking on order will sort the sections in the order, in which these are stored in the database. Subsequent clicking will reverse the order of sections according to the section order.
Access Level
There are three types of access levels for a section. These are specified at the time of creating a section. Later on these can be changed. There are three access levels:
- Public: The content under public status sections can be viewed by all.
- Registered: The content under Registered status sections can only be viewed by registered users only.
- Special: The content under Special status sections can only be viewed by special users.
Clicking on “Access Level” sorts the sections according to the access level of sections. Subsequent clicking results in reverse order sections according to the sections access level.
#Categories
This shows the number of categories under particular section. It does not matter whether the categories are published or not.
#Active
This shows the number of articles under that particular section. It does not matter whether the articles are published or not.
#Trash
This shows how many articles under a particular section have been deleted. The deleted articles are still in article trash and not deleted permanently.
ID
This is the id of the section. It uniquely identifies the section. Any two sections can not have same id. So due to this you can have multiple sections with the same name.
That’s all for today. In day 8, I am gonna discuss about creating, editing, coping sections. That will be concluding article about Joomla Sections. Remember to come back and grab your tutorial session.
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