Day 11-Working With Joomla Front Page Manager!

Welcome to the Day 11 of your Joomla Website Setup series. Yesterday, I wrote article on “Day-10-Working-With-Joomla-Article-Manager-I.” Today I am introducing you to Joomla Front Page Manager. Now, we’ll discuss Front Page Manager. Almost all of the options available for Front Manager are same as those in Article Manager and except the few. So, I’ll be omitting those from this discussion and discuss only the ones which are new.

What is Front Page Manager

The Front Page Manager controls the Content Items that are set to appear in the Front Page (Home Page) of the web site. Individual Content Items are identified for publication here in the Content Item itself where the Show on Front Page check box is checked.

How To Access Front Page Manager

Select Content → Front Page Manager from the drop-down menu on the back-end of your Joomla installation. Or click on the ‘Front Page Manager’ button in the Control Panel screen as shown in given figure.

Toolbar

• Archive. To change one or more Articles to Archived status, select them and press this button. Archived Articles are retained on the site and are available for viewing on Menu Items with a Type of Archive Layout. They can not be published to other pages while set to Archived status. Note that Articles assigned to the “Uncategorized” Section will not show on the Archived Article List layout.

• Publish. To publish one or more items, select them and click on this button.

• Unpublish. To unpublish one or more items, select them and click on this button.

• Remove: To remove one or more items, select them and click on this button.

• Help. Opens this Help Screen.

Column headers

Click on the column heading to sort the list by that column’s value.

• #. An indexing number automatically assigned by Joomla for ease of reference.

• Checkbox. Check this box to select one or more items. To select all items, check the box in the column heading. After one or more boxes are checked, click a toolbar button to take an action on the selected item or items. Many toolbar actions, such as Publish and Unpublish, can work with multiple items. Others, such as Edit, only work on one item at a time. If multiple items are checked and you press Edit, the first item will be opened for editing.

• Title. The name of the item. For a Menu Item, the Title will display in the Menu. For an Article, Section, or Category, the Title may optionally be displayed on the web page. This entry is required. You can open the item for editing by clicking on the Title.

• Published. Whether the item has been published or not. You can change the Published state by clicking on the icon in this column.

• Order. The order to display items. If the list is sorted by this column, you can change the order by clicking the arrows or by entering the sequential order and clicking ‘Save Order’. Note that the display order on a page is set in the Parameters – Advanced section for each Menu Item. If that order is set to use something other than ‘Order’ (for example, ‘Title – Alphabetical’), then the order value in this screen will be ignored. If the Menu Item Order parameter is set to use ‘Order’, then the items will display on the page based on the order in this screen.

• Access Level. Who has access to this item. Current options are:
  • Public: Everyone has access
  • Registered: Only registered users have access
  • Special: Only users with author status or higher have access

You can change an item’s Access Level by clicking on the icon in the column.

• ID. The ID number. This is a unique identification number for this item assigned automatically by Joomla. It is used to identify the item internally, for example in internal links. You can not change this number.

• Section. The Section this item belongs to. Clicking on the Section Title opens the Section for editing. See Section Manager – Edit.

• Category. The Category this item belongs to. Clicking on the Category title opens the Category for editing. See Category Manager – Edit.

• Author. Name of the Joomla User who created this item. Clicking on the Author opens the User for editing. See User Manager – Edit.

Points to watch

If an article is unpublished, the page will still show in the back end Front Page Manager. It will not be shown in the Front End (on the site itself). The Publish Status takes precedence over the Front Page parameter.