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Understanding the Joomla Content Structure

Filed Under: Joomla! General, Seo Basics

Some people have a hard time understanding the Structure that is used in Joomla to organize the Content.

But it is not that hard to understand if you look at it from a different angle.

Joomla is a Content Management System that in the core can be compared with a Study book.

 
Joomla Section Joomla Sections

The section part of Joomla can be look at as the main parts of a Book.

Like for example an Atlas, the Section are the Continents.
Joomla category Joomla Categories

The categories in Joomla can be classified as the Chapters of a Book

In the Atlas example, these are the country's in each of the continents.
Joomla Content Item Joomla Content Item

The Joomla Content items are the pages in a book, each containing information to make a Chapter.

In the Atlas example, these could be pages that describe the Geological ans Social economics of a Country.

Putting it all in Perspective

If you look at the structure of this site, you will see how its build…
First there are sections about Joomla, WordPress and Drupal.

The Joomla Section is split up into categories as:

  • Joomla General
  • Joomla Modules
  • Joomla Themes
  • Joomla Components
  • Mambots and Plugins
  • Joomla Search Engine Optimization

One example of a content Item is this page, which is in the category “Joomla General”

The Joomla Content Structure explained

Keep this structure in mind if you are going to build your website in Joomla.
Make Sure you have drawn the structure on paper before building it in Joomla, it will save you a lot of headache afterwards…

Joomla explanation of section, category and content

Filed Under: Joomla Basics, Seo Basics

The Joomla Structure of Sections, Categories, and Content

Most people that just started out with Joomla have problems with how to handle the different parts that make up the Content Structure of Joomla.

Especially the Section and category part seems problematic to understand.
But it is actually quite easy to work with if you understand the basic principle.

Start simple and think about a book that You want to write!

Remember this, because with this book reference the idea of giving structure to your website is much easier to handle.

use content structure in joomla

So how-to structure your website?
As said, act like you are going to write a book.

Joomla Section:
These are the parts of your book, not the Chapters!
Let's say we are going to build a site about Microsoft Word, then parts of your site could be like:
• Basics
• Layout
• Documents
• Standard documents
• Scripting Macros and Working environment.

These Book parts can then be divided into different Chapters.

Joomla Category:
Now, these are your chapters!
Here you make the chapter structure of your book part, for instance, the book part about standard documents:
• Standard settings
• Templates
• Layout profiles
• Menu creation and editing
• creating Forms macro's

Joomla Content:
Now You are going to write your pages, your articles for your book.

And again reference your book on word an example:
Your write an article about managing templates in MS Word.
This article is placed on the site under the section(Book part) “Standard Documents” and into the category (Chapter) ” Templates”.

Now Your site has the book structure build in and every visitor can find its way through the site much easier because he/she will see the way it's structured.

If you, later on, should decide that an article is misplaced, you can move it into a new category with the “move” function of Joomla.