One of the biggest selling points of open-source content management software like Joomla is the endlessly customizable nature of the software. One way in which this can help you as a content creator is that it is possible to “embed” a range of different online content in your articles or on your Joomla page. There are so many reasons you might want to do this. Someone using Joomla for a business page might find that embedding a PayPal client on their page is a wise move, because it will make it much easier to begin and complete a sale on the one page.
Another thing you might want to do, if you are a business with bricks-and-mortar premises, and would benefit from walk-up customers, is to embed a Google Map on your Joomla page. At a glance, people will be able to see how to reach you – and Google Maps is one of the most-used sources of such information on the Internet. Having a map embedded on your website will not just mean that people who are coming to see you will know how to get there. It will provide a very visual marker of where you are which may put the idea of visiting your premises into the mind of a customer.
Embedding content on a Joomla page is really easy – assuming it has been made available as embedded content. Google Maps is an example of a site that makes its content available for embedding, and another example is YouTube – if you have the capability to make and upload video content then YouTube is the premier hosting site for you. If, for example, your site is all about cooking, you can make a recording of you preparing a meal according to a recipe, and post the video on YouTube. You can then embed the video on your site – saving you the strain of hosting it personally.
To update your site, you will usually type the information into a text editor. Let’s say that you have a video that you want to embed from YouTube. Disable the WYSIWYG editor on the text editing page. You can write introductory text – in the example above, as it relates to a recipe, you might type the recipe itself into the text editor and then say “To see this recipe in action, watch me cook this dish in the explanatory video below”. Then, from the YouTube page for your video, take the text in the box after “Embed” (on the right hand side of the page, beneath the video description, and enter it into the test box in its entirety.
The HTML code will embed the content within the article you are writing, or on the page you are editing, and anyone reading your site will see the content in its intended form. Research has shown that people tend to stop following a chain of links on, at the latest, the third link – so if you provide the content on one page, as this method allows, you stand a much better chance of converting vague interest into specific interest.
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Probably the most popular usage of Joomla is by content creators – particularly writers – who know what they are good at and know that it is not web design. There has for some time now been a wide range of blogging platforms which allow good writers to create content and display it in a way which makes it easier on the eye. However, up until now that has rather been the problem. There is a certain amount of (largely unjustified) snobbery directed at blogging which has had the effect of discouraging some people from reading and others from writing blogs.
Although some people view Joomla as a blogging platform – and it certainly can be if you want it to be – it does have the advantage over a wide range of other sites in that it is really a lot more than just a blogging platform. Although the stigma attached to blogging is an unfair one, if you are capable of writing informative and interesting articles, you may find that they are better displayed in another way. Joomla allows this kind of versatility and is, for that reason, very popular among content creation experts.
When creating an article in Joomla, the first place to go to is – unsurprisingly – the “Add Article” button. This will take you to the “article composition” screen, where you will be presented with a range of options for your article. On a step-by-step basis, you create your article as follows:
- Enter The Title: This will be the heading for your article, and will show in bold at the top of it. Search engines give titles more prominence than the body of the article, so it should be a relevant title. You may also add an “alias”, which will not be seen by your readers but will be used by search engines.
- Select A Category: You have the option here to choose a “section” and a “category” for your article. This is helpful for navigation (for your readers) and for categorization (important for search engines).
- Type Your Introduction: When you look at articles written online, you will note that often, after a paragraph or two, there is a link saying “Read More”. This allows the display of your site to be tidier, while still making it easy to find and read longer articles. Your introduction is everything that is included before that point.
- Write The Rest Of The Article: A major point in Joomla’s possibility is its ease of use. When you want to move from the introduction to the main article, you click the “Read More” button. In the text box this will be illustrated by a red line underneath the intro text, so you know what is in the open and what is under the link.
- Say Who Wrote The Article: On the right-hand side of the screen there will be a section for information about the author. Into this you can type an author alias (which may be your real name, if you wish). If you leave this blank you will be identified as “Administrator”.
- Update Metadata Information: This is not an obligatory step, but allows you to include keywords and a description which will get you a better search engine ranking.
- Save Your Article: It won’t display unless it is saved.
That’s it! You have created your first article in Joomla.
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