Joomla! Content Structure
Before you can add content (words and images) you first need to create Articles like this one.
Note that Articles have to be held somewhere!
They are held in Categories.
Before you begin re-structuring, we recommend that you map out a proposed structure for your site on a piece of paper.
If your website was, for example, about a farm then your map or structure might look something like the example below.
An Example
Create a Mind Map
First note down a list of what you want to include in your website.
Note
Categories placed inside other Categories are called Nested Categories.
Tabulate Your Notes
Follow the example below when tabulating your notes.
Please note that any one Category can hold any number of other Categories within it!
Articles however must be held in a Category or be 'categorised' as Uncategorised in the Joomla! Content Management System.
Keep it Simple
Keep things simple by focusing on Articles. And we propose at the outset that you focus on creating Menu Links to Single Articles rather than to Categories.
For a site you intend to keep small in size your Articles could all be kept in one Category.
For example:
We are here treating each Article rather like a page (or file) in a traditional website.
If you plan to 'grow' your site in due course then it makes sense to create an outline content structure which will hold future Articles which you create.
Your site could then have Menu Links to each of these Articles.
Here, we could have created all the above Articles in one Category called Farm, but if we plan to expand our website content in due course, it makes sense to prepare for this expansion at the outset. When ready to expand the site we can insert more Articles in each Category.
We can also move Articles between Categories.
Further Develop Your Website Structure
For example: add more Articles to any given Category.
Later?
If your site were to expand further then you could create a Category for Cows and simply move the four Cows Articles to it.
Any Menu Links to these Articles which you have created in the meantime will be automatically updated.
