Joomla Administration & Toolbars

Joomla Administration & Toolbars

Configuration of Joomla! Administration

Joomla! offers nearly the same comfort level as any program with a graphical user interface, such as Windows, KDE, Gnome, or Aqua (Mac OS X). This is not self-evident for web pages and is made possible by the generous use of JavaScript. JavaScript is executed locally on your computer and can be deactivated in the browser. If this is done, you can no longer work with Joomla! administration. Browsers, however, have been able to deal with JavaScript quite well for several years now and there aren't any serious security concerns any more. For this reason, you should enable JavaScript. In this context, I would highly recommend the open source Mozilla Firefox browser (http://www.mozilla.org). It is more secure and easier to use than Internet Explorer. The Joomla! administration, just like your site, consists of different elements:

Joomla! Administration

In the top menu bar are the menus and on the right side are two notifications about whether you have received messages and how many users are logged onto your website right now. Below that is a field with a link (infobar) that has information about which components are applicable to the currently shown manager (in this case, Joomla100 / com_admin). On the extreme right is the toolbar with various dimmed icons (in this case, the Help icon) for the most important Joomla tasks. The tasks are organized in managers and the icons that are displayed depend on the manager. If you slide your mouse cursor over one of these icons, it lights up. You can click the icon and implement the appropriate function. The following table lists the common Joomla! icons and their functions:

Toolbar Elements

Under the toolbar is the workspace of the current manager. As shown in Figure 4.4, this is the Control Panel. It is displayed after logging in and offers quick access to the most important elements. If you do not see the Control Panel, simply click Home at the top left corner in the menu bar. On the left, there are icons that refer to various managers. On the right, you find five tabs that give you an overview of the current status of your site. In the lower area you see a navigation bar that extends right across Joomla. Here you can set the number of lines displayed and navigate through the table if say 600 users are online at the same time. This number is quite realistic with well-frequented Joomla! sites. Changing the number of lines displayed is possible with all table displays.

Logged: This tab gives an overview of the currently logged in users. As the administrator, you can log the user out by clicking on the red cross (x) next to the user name.
Components: This tab shows the currently installed software components. If these have several options (for example, Web Links), then this component is represented as a heading with subpoints.
Popular: This tab tells you about the most surfed pages of your site. By clicking the page name, you switch to the Content Manager and see the respective page in editing mode. If you are in Edit mode, you have to terminate the function with Cancel or Save and subsequently click Home to get back to the Control Panel.
Latest Items: This tab is similar to Popular. Here the content is shown in reverse chronological order. Clicking on the name also switches you to the Content Manager.
Menu Stats: This tab displays the number of menu elements in each menu.

The menu bar consists of nine options. On the far left is the Home link that sends you back to the Control Panel. On the far right you can see the Help link. You can configure the Control Panel by clicking Modules | Administrator Modules. Help Menu The Joomla Help work area is divided into three sections. On the top there is a search field and a bar with links as shown in Figure 4.5. On the left is an index of the available help texts and on the right is the main display area. By default, anything new about your version of Joomla! is displayed in this space.

Joomla! Online Help

All but three links refer to the Joomla! server at http://help.joomla.org/. In order to use this search, you have to be connected to the Internet. You have to do this unless you are working with a local version. The other links refer to the text of the GNU Public License, to system information about your server as illustrated in Figure 4.6, and the change log, which documents the modifications of the individual developers. For instance, you can find out that Adam Brown added the madeyourday template on the September 16 and that Ronald Jones installed a new version of the WYSIWYG editor on the September 14.

System Information

 The system information is divided into three tabs.

System Info: This tab displays a summary of the most important data. Right now I am working locally with Windows and the WAMP environment (refer to Chapter 2 for the installation procedure). Therefore I'm running very up-to-date software versions (Apache 2.0.53 and PHP 5.03) compared to the servers rented on the Internet.
PHP Info: This tab displays all information from the phpinfo() function. This is the complete configuration of the PHP interpreter.
Permissions: This tab displays the rights of your subdirectories. All directories must be writable for Joomla! to run error-free.