Joomla Administration Panel & Changing Templates

Joomla Administration Panel (CPanel) & Changing Templates

Admin PanelProspects
After this tour and from your own experience, I am sure you can understand that the administration of contents can be a very demanding task. Above all, it is important not to lose sight of the overview.

Back End
The administration of joomla websites takes place in the back end with the name Joomla! Administration. You can reach the Joomla! Administration in the [Domain name]/administrator/ page.  If you are working with a local installation, the URL will be http://localhost/joomla/administrator/  Log on with your admin ID. You have specified the user data yourself in the web installer during installation.

Figure 3.17: Joomla! Administration Login

You will see an interface with menus, icons, and tabs, identical to the graphic interface of your operating system, as illustrated in Figure 3.18:

Figure 3.18: Joomla! Administration

In a working environment you should, for security purposes, protect the [pathtoJoomla!]/administrator/directory with a .htaccess file. Because of the widespread use of Joomla!, the first successful hacker attempt at the administration is expected. You can find a useful tutorial (in German) for creating such a file at http://de.selfhtml.org/servercgi/server/htaccess.htm.

Administration Conrol Panel

We had our first taste of the Joomla! interface in this chapter. We familiarized ourselves with the Joomla! front end and back end. We are all set to begin configuration of our website.  

Customizing Joomla!
Customizing means adaptating a standard program to the needs of the user. In our case, you  are the user and the standard program is Joomla!, or more exactly the front end of your Joomla! installation.  In the Joomla! administration (referred to in Chapter 3), you can customize your site, make changes, and fill it with content.  Typically, the first thing that the owners of a site want to do is to change the colors and layouts. So, we will first discuss this first.

A Different Look and Feel 
Now that everything looks a bit more familiar, you may want your site to have a completely different web design. You can do this by renaming your menus and changing the joomla template.

Modifying the Menu Name 
In order to rename the Main Menu to, say, Check this Out, open the Module Manager by clicking Modules | Site Modules (Figure 4.1).

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Figure 4.1: Module Manager

Click on the Main Menu link to edit it. Change the text in the Title field to Check this Out and the Main Menu becomes Check this Out.

Changing the Template 

Figure 4.2: Preview

To assign this template to your site, select the radio button before the name of the desired template and click Default in the menu bar. Switch to your site and click the Update button in the browser:

Figure 4.3: A Different Template