Joomla! Discussion Forums

A question from a Newbie. <grin>

Can I think of Articles, Sections and Categories as hierarchical in structure? If so in which order do they belong? After reading one book on Joomla, and beginning another, this is still not clear to me.

Thanks in Advance.

See if this helps...

Section One
-Category SecOne 1
--Article
-Category SecOne 2
--Article

Section Two
-Category SecTwo 1
--Article
-Category SecTwo 2
--Article

So the heirarchy is...

Sections
Categories
Articles

There is a little quirk. The default status for an article is for it to be uncategorized. You'll see it in the editing screen.

Side Note: Joomla 1.6 will do away with Sections. I think it will be replaced with ability for sub-categories. Here's a Joomla pdf on what can be expected (see page eight): http://downloads.joomlacode.org/frsrele ... la_1.6.pdf

Thank you for the reply Sir.

I was hoping for an explanation slightly along a different line. I will explain what my aspirations are.

I have a directory called Archives. It has subdirectories: Almanacs, Books, Miscellaneous, Newspapers, etc. In the Almanacs directory are subdirectories: 1872, 1873, 1874, etc. The same also applies to the newspapers. The others are slightly different but hopefully you get the rough idea.

/Archives

/Almanacs

/1872
/1873 ...
/Books
/Misc
/Newspapers

/1876
/1877...

My question is as to how the use of Sections, Categories and Articles relates to this. I will worrry about how the displaying of the graphics themselves will work out after I get more comfortable working with Joomla.

An example of the present Almanac site can be viewed at http://brethrenarchives.com/almanac/index.html. Don't worry about the Login portion as it is not active yet. My site will be metadata centric as it pertains to the images themselves. Click on the "Image Info" button of an almanac page to see what I mean.

Even then some of the "Image Info" html files have clickable links within them. In 1906 the calendar page's "Image Info" html files have links that open other site files or off site links. This was all coded by me by hand using Dreamweaver, and it took two months to figure it out so please don't be too critical. It does what I need.

Thank you for taking the time to answer the questions of a Newbie. My expertise is more in the archival and historical fields.

/Archives -> Menu item
/Almanacs - Submenu item
/1872 -> Section
/1873 ... /Books -> Category

Thank you Gentlemen. Now I understand more fully. At least enough to be dangerous! <grin>

Now back to book learning and playing with the CSS of a template to see what changes what. I need to see exactly where to change the width and height of modules, their positioning, etc.

I am sure that different themes will have this hidden in different spots so the learning, and more importantly the discovering, will be quite enjoyable.

I agree with @dhuelsmann. You may have to put your top level categories into the menu system.

Sounds like you want to categorize three or more levels. Unfortunately, Joomla can only do two levels deep.

So you might think of doing it as one of these...

For three levels:
Archives > Almanacs > 1872
menu item > section > category

For four levels:
Archives > Almanacs > 1872 > fourth level
menu item > sub menu item > section > category

Wisdom of the ages.

It seems that I might run into another problem then. At present I have four levels with likely fifth, sixth and seventh levels. In my digital archives I have some directories that are up to eight deep. I will figure out a way around it!

The best part is that after the almanac collection is complete (I still have others to do) it will need to be broken up by church group (German Baptist Brethren, Church of the Brethren, Brethren Church, Mennonite, United Brethren, etc.). Just wait until I get to my digitized county court record digital collection. <grin> They get real hairy!

But in the meantime I have it this way in my mind, and thanks Gents for the explanations. Hope this displays properly:

Archives --> ---- Almanacs -----> ---------1872 --------> 00a.html, ... >
Archives --> -- Newspapers ----> --------- GM ---------> ----- 1883 ----> 001.html, 002.html, ... (Gospel Messenger)
Archives --> -- Newspapers ----> --------- PC ----------> ----- 1877 ----> 001.html, 002.html, ... (Primitive Christian)
menu item > sub-menu level 1 > sub-menu level 2 > --- section --> category

I just LOVE this stuff. Something new every day keeps the mind fresh!

Stumbled across this thread while trying to find out if it's possible to go another layer or two deeper in Joomla than the standard Section > Category > Article. Forgive me for still being a newb, but I'm not sure if I follow how you're creating the deeper levels via menu item / sub menu item... could you please expand on what you're doing there? Is this done within the Main Menu* section from the backend...?

Thanks in advance for the clarification...

TPRT

Yes, the above suggestion is done via the Menu Manager and is a workaround to the current version's lack of subcategory ability. It's crude but it serves the purpose.

However, version 1.6 (release date unknown) will have the ability for sub-categories. So you can either wait and save yourself the work in the Menu Manager.

Thank you for your reply. Unfortunately, I don't think my company can wait until Joomla 1.6 comes out...

So--what I was asking was whether this would be done in the "Menus > Main Menu*" as opposed to the "Menus > Menu Manager".... to which you replied "yes", but then you say you have to go to the "Menu Manager" to accomplish this...? Sorry, I think I'm still a bit confused. :-0

So if I want to do this, are you suggesting that I create an individual menu for every item at the first level, as opposed to putting all first level items in the "Section" area...?

Apologies again for my newb questions. And thanks again for the replies.

TPRT

How many levels you need to create is dependent on your needs. If you need only two levels then you can stick to the Sections/Categories.

If you need three: Main Menu > Menu Item > Section > Category

If you need four: Main Menu > Menu Item > Sub Menu Item > Section > Category


Menu Manager: used to create "menu buckets" to hold different menu sets. The sample data that Joomla provides has menus for Main Menu, Resource menu, etc. You can then put these menus into modules you create in the Module Manager and then place the modules into your templates. In other words, you can place the Resources Menu in the left side position.

Main Menu: This is usually the default menu that is used as the main navigation. If you template has the ability to display drop down menus such as Suckerfish, then the submenus you create should appear in the drop downs.

I hope I clarified some of your confusion.

Thanks for the additional clarification, SFGolfer. I think I might be seeing what you're trying to do...

So in the default Joomla installation, there are six default "menus": (1) Main Menu, (2) User Menu, (3) Top Menu, (4) Resources [Menu], (5) Example Pages [Menu], and (6) Key Concepts [Menu]. Instead of leaving these in their default locations, you would slide them all over into the left-hand module position and re-name them (or perhaps create new menus..?), one each for everything in the second sub-level.... correct?

The site I'm working on is supposed to have three levels; it's a test preparation company, so the hierarchy currently looks something like this:

-------------------------------------------------------------
[ROOT ---> Section ---> Category ]

Home
---> High School
---> ----> PSAT
---> ----> ----> classes
---> ----> ----> tutoring
---> ----> ----> test info
---> ----> ----> applications
---> ----> SSAT
---> ----> ----> classes
---> ----> ----> tutoring
---> ----> ----> test info
---> ----> ----> applications
---> College
---> ----> ACT
---> ----> ----> classes
---> ----> ----> tutoring
---> ----> ----> test info
---> ----> ----> applications
---> ----> SAT
---> ----> ----> classes
---> ----> ----> tutoring
---> ----> ----> test info
---> ----> ----> applications
---> Graduate
---> ----> GRE
---> ----> ----> classes
---> ----> ----> tutoring
---> ----> ----> test info
---> ----> ----> applications
---> ----> GMAT
---> ----> ----> classes
---> ----> ----> tutoring
---> ----> ----> test info
---> ----> ----> applications
---> ----> LSAT
---> ----> ----> classes
---> ----> ----> tutoring
---> ----> ----> test info
---> ----> ----> applications
---> English
---> ----> TOEFL
---> ----> ----> classes
---> ----> ----> tutoring
---> ----> ----> test info
---> ----> ----> applications
-------------------------------------------------------------

SO it sounds like I need to create four menus for the current Sections (high school, college, grad, English), move the test-types (SAT, GRE, TOEFL, etc.) up to the Sections, and that would then free up my third level in the Categories area for all the specific details (classes, tutoring, etc.)... right?

Thanks in advance,

TPRT

The menus in the Menu Manager appear in your template only if they are associated with a module in the Module Manager. If you don't want the menus to appear then all you need to do is to disable the module which in turn disables the menu.

You can leave both the module inactive in the Module Manager and the menu standing by in the Menu Manager. They simply sit there until you call them into action.

Not four menus but four menu items in your Main Menu so they appear at the top of your site. You can then create sub-menu items which will pull the content from your Sections/Categories.

You will have to play around with it to get a feel for it but you'll get the feel for it soon enough.