Tips for Using The Joomla Content Manager and Editor

These are some of my favourite handy tips in using the editor within the Joomla Content Management system. I hope to add to this list as time goes on so be sure to check back now and again for more, and please feel free to comment your own ideas I can add to the list.

Joomla CMS Hints and Tips

• When making a lot of changes to a web page, copy the original code and save it, in case you want to revert back. To do this just click the show/hide text at the top to view the code, select and copy all of it and paste it in a text editor until you are happy you do not need it anymore.
• The site width is wider than the default width of the content, so it may not look lined up in the content manager. So expand the content manager editor window by dragging the bottom right corner. Then you can resize to see the same size as the web page and everything lines up OK.
• In order to keep conformance with web standards it is not best to use the Bold, Italic, Underline etc. text formatting in content editors (even though they are there to help content managers). The code they may enter may not conform. So it is always best to have the web developer create your styles in the “stylesheet” then you can choose the styles you need to apply (e.g. bold, italic) by choosing this style in the Styles drop down. Stylesheets are the preferred method for formatting and layout so get to know them!
• Clicking “Save” will save your changes and exit out of the page, but maybe you have not finished and need to edit it some more. It can be annoying to keep exiting out and going back in all the time, so use Apply instead of Save, this will keep you within the editing screen.
• Regularly use “Apply” or “Save” to ensure your changes are saved often
• Editing a page locks it so no one else can make changes at the same time. So if you just want to exit out of the page and have not made any changes to save do not just close the browser which many people do as the page will remain locked. Be sure to click “Close” because this unlocks the page for people to edit later.
• By clicking the Meta data Information tab on the right you can enter your a META Description which is good for search engines.
• You can enter your own custom page titles (with important keywords) following the process on this blog Joomla Tutorial – Creating a Custom Page Title (Title Tag) to Improve SEO.
• Sometimes I want the page heading to be different to the page name in the editor, so choose “Show Title = No” in the right hand “Parameters (Advanced)” tab and enter your own heading at the top selecting Format H1.
• If you have content in Word you would like to paste into a page, then be very careful! Either use the “Paste from Word” button or paste plain text only. See this blog for more information: Why You Should Not Copy and Paste from Word into Your Content Management System.
• Check your spelling! It’s easy to miss but there is a spell checker included in the editor, so use this before publishing any content.
• Using cache is a great way to speed up your website. See this blog for more information: Speed Up Your Website By Using Cache.
• Filter content to help manage articles and modules when you have quite a lot – when viewing the list of Articles or Modules use the Filter drop downs on the top right to filter by Section or Category for Articles or Position or Type for Modules. So for Articles this is useful to only list your News items for example, or in Modules to only list the right hand column modules.
• Similarly you can use the Filter search box on the top left to search for specific words within the article or module title.