Organize, Manage and Publish Web content

Joomla is a web based content management system included in

PCQLinux 2006. It's a fork of the Mambo system (www.mamboserver.com).

One feature of Joomla which gives it an edge over other CMSs is its polished and

feature-rich administration interface. This coupled with other features like

free plugins, easy menu creation and organization of the content is why we chose

Joomla this year.

Server Configuration



Joomla is part of the portal server installation.  During installation, on
the package selection screen, make sure that you select Servers>Web Server

and PCQLinux Specials>



Enterprise



. Additionally, click on “Details” besides Web Server and select the

php-mysql package.  Joomla will require a database like MySQL. If you want

to install the database on the same machine, select Servers>mysql Database.

Alternatively you can have the database running on a different machine. For this

article, we assume the former. After the installation, start the MySQL database

server, issue '/etc/init.d/mysql start'. The default installation of MySQL

allows anonymous logins from localhost and has the root (root MySQL user and not

the Linux root user) password set to blank. To set up a password for the root

MySQL user, issue 'mysqladmin -u root password passwd'. Substitute passwd

with your preferred password. To delete anonymous logins, issue: 'mysql -u

root -p'. When prompted, supply the password that you had specified in the

previous step. You will be dropped into a mysql> prompt. Issue the following

at this prompt.

use mysql;







delete from user where user='';

Now create a database (cmsdb) in MySQL by issuing

'mysaladmin -u root -p create cmsdb'. When prompted, supply the password set

for MySQL's root user in the previous step. That's all for the database. Next

start the Apache web server as 'service httpd start'.

Joomla Setup



Let's assume that the IP address of the PCQLinux 2006 portal server is

192.168.3.1. Fire up the following URL in a web browser — http://192.168.3.1/cms/

and follow the installation wizard. On the “Step 1” screen, type in

localhost for hostname. Type in root for the MySQL user name and the

corresponding password that you had setup above. Do not uncheck the box

“Install Sample Data”. We will take you through the working of the CMS using

the sample website bundled with Joomla. In Step 2 screen, note down or change

the “Admin password”. This password will be required to log into the admin

panel of the CMS.

When you reach step 4, delete the directory /var/www/html/cms/installation.

Subsequently click on the “View Site” button. And voila, you should be able

to see a website with latest news, news flashes, popular or the most visited

pages, polls, search form, login form and RSS link for the content of the site.

Next, access the admin console by typing in the URL http://192.168.3.1/cms/administrator/.

Login as admin using the password that you had specified in the Joomla

installation wizard.  You will get access to the many buttons and menus

which allow you to add, edit and control all aspects of your site.

Adding Content



Joomla gives you the opportunity to organize your web content at the backend
(admin panel) under sections and categories. Let us add a new content page

talking about the features of PCQLinux 2006. We will organize the content under

a section named PCQLinux and a category named 2006. Click on Content>Section

Manager. Click on New. For the title and section name, type in “PCQLinux”.

Click on Save. To add a category, click on Content>Catgeory Manager>New.

For the Category title and name, type in “2006”. Select PCQLinux from the

Section dropdown. Click on Save.

Next click on Content>Content by Section>PCQLinux>PCQLinux

Items>New. For title, type in 'New features in PCQLinux 2006'.  For

title alias, type in '2006 features'. For section and category, select pcqlinux

and 2006 respectively. For the Intro Text, type in: PCQLinux 2006 released in

March 2006 with a gamut of new features. Note that Intro Text provides a HTML

editor to edit the content. Feel free to format the above content — make it

bold, apply a style, underline it, etc.  For Main Text, type in some

features of PCQLinux 2006 like 'Includes the Beagle desktop search' and 'auto

mounts windows partitions' each on a separate line.  Select all features

that you typed and click on the bullet icon (below the B icon). The features

list become a bulleted list. Click on Save. To make this content page appear on

the website, you will need to link it to one of the menu items on the website.

Don't like the bundled website template ? Go to sites like www.joomla-templates.com to download your own.

Creating menu items



Let us create a new menu item called PCQLinux 2006 on the vertical menu on

the left side. For this, click on Menu>mainmenu>New. On the 'New Menu

Item' page, select 'Link — Content Item' under 'Content'. Click on Next. On

the next page, type in PCQLinux 2006 for name and select PCQLinux — 2006/New

features in PCQLinux 2006.  from the 'Content to Link' dropdown. Click on

Save. Click on Site>Preview>'In New Window' and notice the new item 'PCQLinux

2006' on the left menu. Click on it to go to the features page.

Editing  content in place



Each time, you need to edit a content, you could go through the

Content>'Content by Section' menu and edit the content. But there are better

option. You can edit the content in place on the website. For this, you will

need to create a new user called a Frontend Editor. Click on Home>User

Manager>New. Type in the name, username, e-mail and password. For the

group, select Public Frontend>Editor. Click on Save.  Now, at the site,

login with the username and password and click on PCQLinux 2006. On the

subsequent page, click on the edit icon. This will show up the content in the

same HTML editor as in the admin panel. Edit the content in place. When done,

click on Save.

Hide what you don't want



In Joomla, elements on the site like menus, newsflash RSS, login form and

polls are called modules. Click on Modules>Site Modules on the admin panel.

You will see a tabular list of all the installed modules. Of these, only the

modules which are published (note the column named Published), are visible on

the site. For example, out of the box, Banners (the banner advertisement on the

right of the main menu), Main Menu,  Login Form and Polls are enabled.

Click on the published icon besides Banners. This will toggle the published

Banners to unpublished. If you want to publish the PCQLinux features page on the

main page, click on  Content>Content by Section>PCQLinux>PCQLinux

Items. Click on the cross icon in the 'Front Page' column.  Preview the

website for the intro text of PCQLinux page now appearing on the main page with

a read more link, which will take you to the full content page.