If this is your first Joomla! site or your first website, you have come to the right place. Joomla will help you get your website up and running quickly and easily.
Start off using your site by logging in using the administrator account you created when you installed Joomla.
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Your Window to the World
It's easy to get started creating your website. Knowing some of the basics will help.
What is a Content Management System?
A content management system is software that allows you to create and manage webpages easily by separating the creation of your content from the mechanics required to present it on the web.
In this site, the content is stored in a database. The look and feel are created by a template. The Joomla! software brings together the template and the content to create web pages.
Site and Administrator
Your site actually has two separate sites. The site (also called the front end) is what visitors to your site will see. The administrator (also called the back end) is only used by people managing your site. You can access the administrator by clicking the "Site Administrator" link on the "This Site" menu or by adding /administrator to the end of you domain name.
Log in to the administrator using the username and password created during the installation of Joomla.
Logging in
To login to the front end of your site use the login form or the login menu link on the "This Site" menu. Use the user name and password that were created as part of the installation process. Once logged-in you will be able to create and edit articles.
In managing your site, you will be able to create content that only logged-in users are able to see.
Creating an article
Once you are logged-in, a new menu will be visible. To create a new article, click on the "submit article" link on that menu.
The new article interface gives you a lot of options, but all you need to do is add a title and put something in the content area. To make it easy to find, set the state to published and put it in the Joomla category.
Learn more
There is much more to learn about how to use Joomla! to create the website you envision. You can learn much more at the Joomla! documentation site and on the Joomla! forums.
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As you make your Joomla! site you will control the details of the display using options also referred to as parameters. Options control everything from whether the author's name is displayed to who can view what to the number of items shown on a list.
Default options for each component are changed using the Options button on the component toolbar.
Options can also be set on an individual item, such as an article or contact and in menu links.
If you are happy with how your site looks, it is fine to leave all of the options set to the defaults that were created when your site was installed. As you become more experienced with Joomla you will use options more.
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If you are an experienced Joomla! user, this Joomla site will seem very familiar but also very different. The biggest change is the new administrator interface and the adoption of responsive design. Hundreds of other improvements have been made.
Extensions
The Joomla! content management system lets you create webpages of various types using extensions. There are 5 basic types of extensions: components, modules, templates, languages, and plugins. Your website includes the extensions you need to create a basic website in English, but thousands of additional extensions of all types are available. The Joomla! Extensions Directory is the largest directory of Joomla extensions.
Components
Components are larger extensions that produce the major content for your site. Each component has one or more "views" that control how content is displayed. In the Joomla administrator there are additional extensions such as Menus, Redirection, and the extension managers.
Modules
Modules are small blocks of content that can be displayed in positions on a web page. The menus on this site are displayed in modules. The core of Joomla! includes 24 separate modules ranging from login to search to random images. Each module has a name that starts mod_ but when it displays it has a title. In the descriptions in this section, the titles are the same as the names.
Content Modules
Content modules display article and other information from the content component.
User Modules
User modules interact with the user system, allowing users to login, show who is logged-in, and showing the most recently registered users.
Display Modules
These modules display information from components other than content and user. These include weblinks, news feeds and the media manager.
Utility Modules
Utility modules provide useful functionality such as search, syndication and statistics.
Navigation Modules
Navigation modules help your visitors move through your site and find what they need.
Menus provide your site with structure and help your visitors navigate your site. Although they are all based on the same menu module, the variety of ways menus are used in the sample data show how flexible this module is.
A menu can range from extremely simple (for example the top menu or the menu for the Australian Parks sample site) to extremely complex (for example the About Joomla! menu with its many levels). They can also be used for other types of presentation such as the site map linked from the "This Site" menu.
Breadcrumbs provide users with information about where they are in a site.
