How to Create a Joomla Menu Item For Your Blog

How to Create a Joomla Menu Item For Your Blog Carrie Webb: Norman says, “Hello, I just found your show on YouTube.” Robbie Ferguson: Hey, Norman. Carrie Webb: “It’s great.” Robbie Ferguson: Cool. Carrie Webb: That’s awesome. Robbie Ferguson: Thanks. Carrie Webb: Thanks Norman. I hope one day you can join us live in the chat room and Norman says, “I’m following a Joomla 1.5 tutorial to create, create a web page. I did the following: created a new section called Test Section, created a new category called Test Category, created a new article called Test Article and then told this article to be in the above section and category. Robbie Ferguson: Okay. Carrie Webb: I know what he is talking about. Robbie Ferguson: It sounds like what we’re doing last week. Carrie Webb: Yeah, “When I go to the page it is not there, no section, no category, no article. I have the same problem. The only way I can see the article is to tell it to be on the front page. Do I have to do something with modules to make this appear? Thank you. “ Ffrom Norman. Robbie Ferguson: Okay, I think what Norman is describing is different from what had happened last week. Carrie Webb: Yeah. Robbie Ferguson: Carrie was working away on her blog this week and I was happy to see that you actually post on the blog and then I actually smile then it was— Carrie Webb: Yeah. Robbie Ferguson: You see she can write but you go read and tell me if she can write CarrieWebb.com, click on Carrie’s blog but what happened to you was that you had written the article and then you want to save it and then some went weird and just the file disappeared. Carrie Webb: Yeah. Robbie Ferguson: So, I was thinking that have you ever want wireless at the time there? Carrie Webb: No, I think I probably didn’t follow the directions exactly. Robbie Ferguson: Oh, okay. Carrie Webb: But then I wash the meat. I’m going to figure it. Robbie Ferguson: You’ve got to figure it out. Carrie Webb: Yes. Robbie Ferguson: Okay, and then you’ve got your post done. Carrie Webb: Yes. Robbie Ferguson: What’s happening here to Norman is that he’s gone through the steps that we showed last week, but then it goes to his website and there’s no Carrie’s blog button, right? There’s no Norman’s blog button on the menu, so he has not actually finding his blogger articles. Carrie Webb: Oh yeah, unless that’s on the front page. Robbie Ferguson: Right, so what we need to understand Norman is when Carrie is doing her blog we’ve already setup her website, the menu systems are already intact. Carrie Webb: Right. Robbie Ferguson: And that’s already configured just like the Carrie’s blog section was already created. It’s already been setup for her, so what I’ll do is I’ll teach you just how to get your setup the same way to Carrie’s setup, why don’t we use yours as example Carrie. Carrie Webb: Sure. Robbie Ferguson: Just because we’re going to be working on your site tonight, anyways. Carrie Webb: Okay. Robbie Ferguson: So, I’m just going to go into the Administrator panel for Joomla 1.5 alright. Have you been finding getting around in Joomla? Carrie Webb: A bit of roaster, but yeah I’m getting much I’m getting used to it. Robbie Ferguson: Start to find your way around. It’s pretty sleek. How do you like it? Carrie Webb: Yeah. Robbie Ferguson: It’s nice. It’s web based but it’s trying to feels like a program. Like there’s certain you know once again it used to the interface you know where to find stuff. Carrie Webb: Yeah. Robbie Ferguson: So that’s cool. Carrie Webb: I don’t know with all the buttons being here but yeah it’s been pretty, pretty good. Robbie Ferguson: Good, so Norman what we want to do is go up to your menus and then Main Menu. I’m guessing that that’s the menu that you’re currently using because you probably haven’t created a custom menu yet. So, you’ll see that Carrie’s blog is already on the menu, so what you need to do is go up here when you’re adding this menu, go new and see this is one of the things that I’ve already done for you Carrie, so you don’t have to think about it, so now the interface I used Joomla 1.0.X so it’s little different. I think it is under on guessing articles, so we’re actually creating a new menu here yeah, here we go, so we want to do either a section blog layout or a category blog layout. You guess what the difference there is Carrie, knowing what the difference between the section and the category is now. Carrie Webb: Yeah, like the categories are what specifically in general I’m talking about like whether it’s Category5 or 188. Robbie Ferguson: Yeah. Carrie Webb: Then a section I forget what section is. Robbie Ferguson: Carrie’s blog. Carrie Webb: Oh, Carrie’s blog. Robbie Ferguson: So that’s like the top level. You think of it like a tree. A top level is Carrie’s blog or Norman’s blog. I think you seriously just kick the camera. Carrie Webb: Did I really? Oh, sorry. Robbie Ferguson: There’s a first time for everything. That was awesome. You’ve got the top as Carrie’s blog and Norman’s blog and then below that are all the different tree branches of the categories, right? Carrie Webb: Okay. Robbie Ferguson: So, if you’re used a section blog layout you’re going to have what Carrie has which it’s going to show all of the current blogs no matter what category they’re from. Carrie Webb: Right. Robbie Ferguson: If on the other hand you want to have a section like a link on your menu that is specific to one blog category. Let’s say you actually want to put Category5 blog entries on the menu you can do that with the category blog layout. Carrie Webb: Okay. Robbie Ferguson: In our case and for you Norms what we want to do is click on Section Blog Layout if you want it to be a blog layout, okay so now give it titles that’s going to be Norms blog and then set your regular parameters and you can change things over here if you want to change how many articles are leading that’s like the one that shows at the top. Carrie Webb: Right. Robbie Ferguson: And then the ones that show the intro which is they’re going to show little differently because they’re going to have you’re going to have the one big one taking up the full top area that’s the leading one then you’ve got the intro ones which is going to be one here, one here, one here, one here kind of thing, so that’s where the four comes in there okay. How many columns you want to have and how many links, so you can play with those and you’ll actually see the difference as you modify this menu entry but you can leave these all as default the first time and just hit Save. When you the section see how it tells you if you missed something. Carrie Webb: Oh, yeah. Robbie Ferguson: And because I’m zoomed in that makes it hard for me to make sure that I’ve click everything okay, select the section Carrie’s blog okay, so I’m going to go Save and now if I go to Carrie’s website —let’s just bring that up we have CarrieWebb.com. Carrie Webb: Okay. Robbie Ferguson: So you’ll see that I created a link Norm’s blog and that’s actually taking us to Carrie’s blog because we are not in Norms website then alright, so essentially you just need to be able to create the menu item for that. Carrie Webb: Alright. Robbie Ferguson: Great, that makes sense. Norman you know how that it goes and let me know if it doesn’t answer yet but we need to have a link on that menu in order to able to click on, so then you should have a link that says Norm’s blog you click on it. It’s going to take you to the section that you specified when you are creating that menu link. And if you want to change the layout or whatever all you have to do is just edit that menu item in main menu which is access again from hitting menus and then main menu.