How to Develop your First Ever Joomla Website

Once you have installed Joomla to your web server, it is time to get started with website development. Creating a website on this platform is a four step process. Let’s get started with the four steps, and introduce how to create a website with Joomla.

Define the Website Structure

It is important to define the structure for your website. You need to make sure that your website is well structured and completely organized, at least on pen and paper. Understand the elements that are important to your website. Include the pages, and sub pages that will be needed by your website. Planning ensures that half the battle is won. The next half is designing and actually creating it.

Adding Content

Once you have defined the different pages that you need for your website, you will need to consider adding the content for the different pages. In Joomla, you will need to add the different content using articles. Before you begin adding content, you need to define the different categories.

Go to Content>Category Manager. Here you can define the categories. In case, you have an article based or news based site, you will need to add categories. Else, you can run your regular pages on default category. Joomla does not offer the category description on front end, so you don’t need to enter the description. But, make sure you have specified the categories that you want displayed on front end perfectly.

Once, you have defined the categories, it is time to add content to those categories. Go to content>articles manager and click on new button. Here, you will need to add the title to your article, select the category and add content to the article. Done with the content for the article, save the article and close the page.

Main Menu

Go to menu>menu manager. Here you will observe a default menu that contains some of the default pages. Here you will need to select the items that you want to display on your main menu. What do you want to be displayed on the home page? If you wish to display a single article, here are the points that will help add the single article

• Go to articles>single article
• Go to settings>select/change button
• Here select the full article that you want displayed on the home page

You can even create some new menu items here. You need to refer to the structure of the website that will help you know which menu items need to be added, and which don’t need to be present on your website.

Where to Place the Main Menu?

Your final step is to define the position of the main menu on your website’s front end. Most joomla templates make use of modules to position the items on the different pages. Go to extensions>module manager>new>menu (from module type popup window). Now, give this menu a title, main menu, and hide the title from the front end.

Now, you will need to position the main menu on the front end. The naming convention for position of the menu differs in every Joomla template. You will need to familiarize yourself with the naming convention used for your template, and work with it accordingly. Choose the position that relates best, save and close.

Now, select where the module, main menu should appear. If you want the module to appear only on home page, then select accordingly.

Conclusion

With these four steps, you are ready to get started with your Joomla website. Now, you can add articles, news or related things whenever there is a need. You have a complete website that can be shared and published to the public. Just optimize it to make sure you are visible.

Author Bio:
Deepa is a passionate blogger associated with Silver Touch Technologies., a leading Offshore Web Development Company in UK. She recommends checking out Joomla Development UK at https://www.silvertouchtech.co.uk.