Joomla!® 24-Hour Trainer

6

Defining Section and Category Structure

An article is a piece of content that is displayed on the website in the main body of the web page. If you look at www.joomla.org/about-joomla.html, shown in Figure 6-1, the main article for this page has the title “What is Joomla?” I've drawn a box around part of the article. The article itself on this page is quite long and extends through the white area of the page, down to the blue footer.

FIGURE 6-1

In Joomla, every article must also be assigned a section and a category for classification purposes. A section is the broader classification of the two. You can think of sections as the main navigation of the website. Every section may have multiple categories assigned to it. However, each category can be only assigned one section. A category is a more specific method of classification. It can correspond to the second and deeper levels of navigation for the website.

When creating your website, you must first create its sections, then the categories, and then the articles. This is because an article must be assigned one section/category pair, and a category must belong to a section. You can't create a category without having a section to which you can assign it.

Finally, once you have sections, categories, and articles, you can link these articles to the menu. You'll hear this ordering, or hierarchy, referred to as the SCAM. You must create ...