Library of Congress: News

Monday, May 26, 2014

Creating a Content Management System with Joomla!




Getting Started


This week we’ve been working with a Content Management System (CMS) called Joomla!, and while I had my challenges, I always enjoy learning to work with a new program.  I started the process by watching the two hour demonstration webinar, in fact, I watched it twice.  When I really started working with the program, it helped to have the webinar open in one video and the program open in another so I could toggle back and forth to watch and then work.  

I decided to stay with the “protostar” template since that was the one demonstrated in the video, and the first thing I did was to play with the template and background colors.

 


I also went ahead and installed the recommended text editor since I knew I would use this for my articles:

 


Categories, Articles, Menus…


Next, I edited the modules by getting rid of the ones I no longer needed and edited the home page article.  I did learn that after you add an image and you decide that you want to edit the layout after you have inserted it, you can simply “grab” the borders of the image and drag them to increase or decrease the size.  You can also click on the “insert image” button and it will re-open the editing window.  I also added a new logo to replace the plain text.

 
I played around with inserting a "Banner" module, but in the end it just looked awkward, so I decided to leave it out.  I composed two additional articles and linked them to the two menus I created.  I did clean up their appearance by hiding the details:
 
 

Finishing Up

To finsih up the site, I added an RSS feed from the Library of Congress and a search function.  I did try to install some of the social media functions, but Joomla! was unable to complete the installation process.  

All in all, Joomla! was a little more complex than I had anticipated.  However, after I started working with it, it became a little easier to navigate.  Check out the finished product!  

vcmlis7505


 
 

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