Restoring my site logo after a backup

Good old Joomla!

I just upgraded from 1.5.9 to 1.5.10. That was straightforward enough, 

1. download the .zip
2. upload it to a /tmp directory
3. go into cpanel and extract the .zip into my /html_public directory
   
4. look at my site and scream!

I didn't scream because the upgrade had failed and destroyed my site. I screamed because the rhuk_milkyway template I use had replace my logo with its own. It's not a bad logo, it's just a big flag toanyone visiting the site that I'm using a template and not a commercial design. Having had positive feedback about the look of rhuk_milkyway, I want ot keep it, bit with my logo at the top!

So now I had to remember (i.e. Google again) the proceedure to install your own logo. I'm putting all the steps here, although in my case the logo was still there from last time so if like me you're just re-selecting the logo, start at step 3:

• Create a logo as a .png file. Make it 298 wide and 75 high, for simplicity's sake.
  
• Upload the logo file to /rhuk_milkyway/images/ Note that this is different from the /images/ file you will find in your /public_html/ directory
  
• Log into  administrator: select Extensions - Template Manager - rhuk_milkyway - edit - edit CSS - template.css - edit
  
• The file opens for editing. About 10% of the way down the file you'll find
  

div#logo {

position: absolute;

left: 0;

top: 0;

float: left;

width: 298px;

height: 75px;

background: url(../images/NAME OF LOGO FILE.png) 0 0 no-repeat;

margin-left: 30px;

margin-top: 25px;

}

• replace "name of logo file" with your own
  
• save - save - preview
  

Finally, back to the site and there was my logo, restored for all the world to see! Big sigh of relief (only quietly, because Mrs Bull was already asleep next to me while I was doing this...)

'Til next time

Dave

My site is here.
Joomla! is based here.

How to make your Joomla! content visible to visitors

The real turning-point for me from scratching my head in confusion to being able to create and quickly learn more about Joomla! 1.5 was understanding the relationship between articles and menus. I'm now also starting to understand more of the picture, including how other modules, such as Latest News, User Login, or Most Popular, fit into the big picture and more importantly, how to activate/deactivate, change or manipulate them.



I've summarised the main points of my how the system works in this diagramme. (That's diagram for those of you in The Colonies).

The important stuff (i.e. what you want to tell your website visitors) is almost all within Articles. You set those up with Article Manager.

How you show your articles to your visitors depends upon the three things at the top: The Front Page, the Menus and other Modules.



1: Front Page

By default (I've changed mine since) the Front Page is set up to have "Front Page Blog" format. This means it will show all the articles that you have ticked as being "front page" articles. When you write an article (in Article Manager), there is a Yes/No control in which you can choose whether it is aFront Page article. If you choose Yes, that article will appear on the front page. If you put the "read more" splitter in the article, it will just show the top part, and add a link to a page showing the full text of the article.

The articles have to be in the database in the first place, but it's the Front Page manager that chooses that the front page consists of a "blog layout" list of all the articles you have ticked as being front page articles.

I have changed my front page to be a single article - Guru Simon recommended it for my kind of site. if I were running a blog-style site, or a news-based campaigning site like Friend Jo then of course I'd leave it exactly as it is. In my case, I've writted a single article that contains all the content (and all the links) I want in a single article.

The beauty of the Front Page Blog is that it automatically includes any articles that you write and tick that "front page" option for, and automatically creates the page with the full article for any visitor that clicks on it.

2: The Menus

Here is the main skeleton of your website. Creating a menu entry creates a page that will appear when a visitor clicks on the menu entry.

The menu entry can link:

• directly to a single article (look at my About Us page)
• to a blog-style page of all the articles in a section or a category (look at my teambuilding page)
• and all other kinds of pages, inlcuding a list of, or one individual's contact details (see my Contact page)

For the stuff in the middle of your pages, this is the main way (along with the Front Page) that you'll get stuff up there. Either

• tick your article to be on the front page
• create a menu item that points directly to your article
• include your article in a category or section and create a menu item that is the Blog Layout of that category or section
  

3: Modules

Not all content goes in the middle. it's the obvious place for articles, but you'll see my website has quotations from customer testimonials on each page in the right margin. I used the Banners module to put them there. This, the News articles (I've used this to put the blurb in the header of each page), the login, the Latest Articles, are all controlled from within the "Extensions" menu. Those that include data, such as the Banners and the Contacts) have entries in the Components menu to create the data, but you determine where they appear on the page, and which pages they appear on (all, none, or choose from a list) through the Extensions menus.

Summary

• Your articles are not directly accessible to the visitor.
• Visitors only see what they can access through front page, menus or certain other modules.
• Create articles, bung them in sections and categories
• Set up menus that point to the sections or categories
• You have a website!
  
• Then you can play with other features like polls and contacts.
  

I'm quite a visual thinker so diagrammes and charts are a natural part of my thinking. I haven't yet seen many conceptual diagrammes of this kind in the Joomla! documentation that's available; most "how to learn Joomla!" documents seem to focus on frog-marching you through setting up your sections and categories and leaving you dizzy but not necessarily understanding this big picture. If this article has helped at all, please let me know - you can comment here or email me through the website.

'Til next time

Dave

My site is here.
Joomla! is based here.