Definition: The "Article" is the basic building block of your website. If you're used to thinking of web "pages," then think of a page consisting of one Article or many Articles. We organize articles into Categories. It is possible to create a page that contains all the articles from a category, with the latest article appearing at the top. Or a list of articles, sorted as you wish. Pages can also include Modules, which are usually special content like a login form, which may appear on many or all pages.

Let's get started!

In your User Menu, select "Add Article." An editing window appears.

  • First, give your article a title.
  • Be sure to select the Category the article will belong to. This is important for some of the automatic features that display articles only from certain categories.
  • Decide whether this article will appear as a FEATURED article on the Front Page and select "Yes" if it will.
  • In PARAMETERS (ARTICLE), type in an author alias if you are entering this article for someone else. Just their name is plenty, but if a title would be handy for readers, include that. If you don't enter anything in this box, your name will appear as the article's Author.
  • Choose Access level. Generally this is "Public" unless you are creating content that only logged-in viewers will be able to see.
  • Created Date and Start Publishing automatically fill in when you begin this process. If you have time-dated information, like an event, you may choose to FINISH PUBLISHING at a certain time. Clicking the calendar icon  at the right will allow you to choose the date from a calendar rather than typing it.

You're ready to start typing! Go to the editing window and begin typing or cut-and-paste text from another document.

We strongly suggest that you wait till you get the text into the article editor before you do your formatting (bold, bullets, etc). Pasting text from Word can add pages of unnecessary coding, and may tangle up your formatting.

Next we'll go over the icons and what they're for.

Name / Description

Icon

CMS Content
Use to insert content from other areas of the site,
such as Articles, Media, Page Break, Read More.
Best place to insert Media.

CMS Content dropdown
Toggle Editor
Code Editor (HTML, PHP, CSS, Javascript) with syntax highlighting
INSERT > Anchor
Creates anchor links within an article (also known as bookmarks)
Anchor - Bookmark
Bold
Makes selected text bold.
Shortcut Key - CTRL+B
Bold
Bullet List
Create a bullet (unordered) list or number (ordered) list
Lists
Character Map
Open a character map dialog for inserting miscellaneous characters, such as ®, ¢, ñ, ?, ?.
Special Characters
Clipboard: Cut, Copy, Paste
Cut, copy and paste text and html with automatic Office cleanup. Includes Paste as Plain Text option. USE THIS IF PASTING FROM Microsoft Word or an e-mail.
Cut Copy Paste
Clear Formatting
Remove block and style formatting from a selection
Formatting - clear
Font or background color
Set the font color on the text selection
Colors - Text - Background
Format Select
Format the text selection with the selected block element (see below)
 
Fullscreen
Toggle full-screen edit mode
Fullscreen editor
Horizontal Rule
Insert a horizontal rule
Horizontal line
Indent
Increase or decrease indent
Indent - Increase or Decrease
Insert
A dropdown menu to insert various media, most of which are already included with icons or in the CMS Content dropdown
Insert - dropdown
Italic
Italicises selected text
Shortcut Key: CTRL+I
Italic
Link/Unlink
Add or remove a link from a selection (can be either words or image)
Links - Insert or Remove
Non-Breaking
Insert a non-breaking space
Non-breaking space
Preview
A quick look at the page
Preview
Article (Read More / Pagebreak)
Create Joomla! Readmore and Pagebreak breaks
Read-more break
Tables
Create and edit tables
Tables
Text - Align
Left, Center or Right Align the text selection or element
Not that full justify is not available since it doesn't work well when viewed on small devices.
Text Alignment
   

 

You may be used to working with font style and size in your regular word processing program. In order to keep font selections within the styles that have been set for your website (this keeps it clean and consistent), you will want to work with the FORMAT SELECT feature. You'll see choices such as:

Heading 2

Heading 3

Heading 4

Heading 5
Heading 6

Blockquote: a special style used to set text apart with a pre-determined style.

To Archive an Article

You may want to archive articles that are no longer current. This retains the data so you can find them later. Simply edit the article and change its Status from Published to Archived. Or select Articles from the list and go to Actions > Archive. Or just switch Status to Unpublished to retain the Article in the List for re-use or re-publishing sooner than later.