Getting Help

There are lots of places you can get help with Joomla!. In many places in your site administrator you will see the help icon. Click on this for more information about the options and functions of items on your screen. Other places to get help are:

• Support Forums
• Documentation
• Professionals
• Books

The Joomla! Project

The Joomla Project consists of all of the people who make and support the Joomla Web Platform and Content Management System.

Our mission is to provide a flexible platform for digital publishing and collaboration.

The core values are:

• Freedom
• Equality
• Trust
• Community
• Collaboration
• Usability

In our vision, we see:

• People publishing and collaborating in their communities and around the world
• Software that is free, secure, and high-quality
• A community that is enjoyable and rewarding to participate in
• People around the world using their preferred languages
• A project that acts autonomously
• A project that is socially responsible
• A project dedicated to maintaining the trust of its users

There are millions of users around the world and thousands of people who contribute to the Joomla Project. They work in three main groups: the Production Working Group, responsible for everything that goes into software and documentation; the Community Working Group, responsible for creating a nurturing the community; and Open Source Matters, the non profit organization responsible for managing legal, financial and organizational issues.

Joomla is a free and open source project, which uses the GNU General Public License version 2 or later.

Getting Started

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 web site you envision. You can learn much more at the Joomla! documentation site and on the Joomla! forums.

Using Joomla!

With Joomla you can create anything from a simple personal website to a complex ecommerce or social site with millions of visitors.

This section of the sample data provides you with a brief introduction to Joomla concepts and reference material to help you understand how Joomla works.

When you no longer need the sample data, you can can simply unpublish the sample data category found within each extension in the site administrator or you may completely delete each item and all of the categories.

Options

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.