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(For more resources on Joomla!, see here.)
Question: What are the server requirements for installing Joomla! 1.6 on a web hosting account?
Answer: The following system requirements have remained the same since the 1.5 release:
But the PHP and MySQL requirements have changed.
To enable you to run a Joomla! 1.6 powered website, your web hosting account should support:
Question: What are the changes for templates in Joomla! 1.6?
Answer: Templates created for version 1.5 can’t be used in Joomla! 1.6. The new release uses clean, semantic HTML code, without using tables for layout purposes. This is good news, as template developers are no longer required to add so-called template overrides in order to achieve a semantic design. However, it is one of the reasons that developers will have to upgrade their existing code to move a 1.5 template to version 1.6.
Joomla! 1.6 also introduces some other nice template features, such as the ability to use ‘subtemplates’ (called Template Styles in Joomla!). This new feature allows you to easily create individual styling for parts of your site.
Question: What’s new about categorizing content in Joomla! 1.6?
Answer: The main thing that a content management system should help you in doing is of course to publish content and to manage existing content with minimal effort. Joomla! 1.6 allows you to organize content exactly as you want. Up to Joomla! 1.5, you could only classify your content in three levels: sections would contain categories, and categories would hold articles. Although this didn’t pose problems for most sites, it was nevertheless a strange restriction. That’s why Joomla! 1.6 introduces a more flexible system of classification. Categories can now hold an unlimited number of subcategories. This means that you can have a hierarchy.
A category can hold as many subcategories as you need. This concept is called “unlimited nested categories”. In most cases you won’t need more than two or three subcategories, but if you do, there’s nothing to stop you. You can check the content category hierarchy in the Category Manager. Child categories are displayed indented, with small gray lines indicating the sublevel:
The above screenshot shows the nested categories contained in the sample data that comes with Joomla! 1.6. As you can see, all article content is stored in subcategories of the main category Sample Data-Articles.
Question: What’s the difference between Root user, Super Administrator, Super User, Admin?
Answer: When you install Joomla!, there’s always one root user, allowed to do anything in the administration area. In Joomla! 1.5, this root user was called Super Administrator. In Joomla! 1.6, this name has been changed to Super User.
Another point to note is that the root user is always a Super User—but there can be more Super Users who aren’t root users. The root user is a unique Super User who can assign new users to the Super User group. But there’s always just one root user created when installing Joomla! Only this root user can change another Super User’s details. (You can always identify the root user in the User Manager by his fixed ID number, which in Joomla! 1.6 is always 42).
Question: What’s the use of the new User Permissions tab?
Answer: When browsing the Global Configuration screen, you’ll notice that there’s a new tab called Permissions. It’s where you set all site-wide user permissions. In Joomla! 1.6, you have much more control over user permissions. You can create new user groups and set permissions on different levels- not just site-wide, as was previously the case in Joomla! 1.5.
Question: What are the changes in the article editor?
Answer: Creating or editing an article in Joomla! 1.6 will seem very familiar to 1.5 users. Go to Content | Article Manager | New or Edit to display the article editor screen:
(Move the mouse over the image to enlarge.)
On closer inspection, you’ll notice some items have been renamed or rearranged:
Question: What’s the Options button In the Menu Manager: Menus screen about?
Answer: In the Menu Manager: Menus screen, there’s a new button called Options:
Clicking on it will open a pop up screen allowing you set all default User Permissions for all menus.
Question: What’s new about the Access Control Levels system?
Answer:In Joomla! 1.5, a fixed set of user groups was available, ranging from “Public” users (anyone with access to the frontend of the site) to “Super Administrators”, allowed to log in to the backend and do anything. The ACL system in Joomla! 1.6 is much more flexible:
Question: How can we set access levels for users?
Answer: By default, three Viewing Access Levels are available: Public, Registered, and Special. Go to Users | User Manager and click on the Viewing Access Levels tab to see these levels:
This is what the three default Viewing Access Levels mean:
Question: How can I customize the logo on the site?
Answer: You can customize the logo just by changing the Template Style settings. Let’s find out how this works:
To further customize the logo and header area, enter a short description of your site in the Advanced Options | Site Description box. This will replace the site tag line, just below the logo.
Question: What is the Redirect Manager?
Answer: A new addition in 1.6 is the Redirect Manager, which you can find in the Components menu. This application can be quite useful, especially if you’re migrating a 1.5 site to 1.6. When changing to a new site, many URLs from your old site are bound to change. This can result in lots of broken links from other sites that still point to the old URLs. The Redirect Manager helps you to direct visitors who come to your site through outdated links. In the Redirect Manager, just enter the old links and tell Joomla! what new pages it should show instead:
Question: What are the new module features in Joomla! 1.6?
Answer: In Joomla! 1.6, using modules is more flexible:
In this article we covered some of the most frequently asked questions on Joomla! 1.6.
Further resources on this subject:
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