1. How to think about content management

Most people who use the web are used to thinking about web sites in terms of pages and how they are linked to each other. Each page contains static content – once you create the page, it doesn’t change (until the web designer changes it). You might think of your site as having a tree structure: the home page links by menu to six sub pages, the “articles” sub page contains links to ten article pages, etc.

Joomla is organized differently because much of what will appear on your site is dynamic – it changes based on visitor input, newsfeeds, or other members adding content to the site. Dynamic content is updated whenever the visitor opens or refreshes the page. There is NO WAY in Joomla to look at what’s on a particular page (until you publish it on your site), so you need to think about it differently. (For more about pages, see tip #4.)

Each page of your site will contain various blocks of content (these blocks are called Positions). You set the layout for pages with a Template (more about Templates in tip #3), including the placement of blocks on the page as well as fonts, colors, & backgrounds. Then you place modules in the blocks (more about Modules in tip #4). Finally, you add content and assign it to the main body of your pages (actually you will assign it to menu items, but just think about them as pages).

Okay, enough about content management. Let’s get to your site!
Next tip: How to organize your site.