Niceit - The Nice Guys in IT

This is usually a better option for serious editing. There are more options and settings available, and you have access to more places where content might be.

Log in to the back-end of your Joomla 1.5 website - www.yoursite.com.au/administrator with your Username and Password.

Navigate to: Content > Article Manager

This is an important screen. It reveals a lot of information about your articles - whether it is published, displayed on the front page, the listing order, access level (who can see it), section / category, how many hits, article ID.

From here you can easily publish / unpublish articles (turn them on / off), or make them appear on the home page.

Ordering articles is also a common task - use the little green arrows. But if it doesnt work, be sure you understand if there are any over-rides in place - usually found in the menu items.

If there are many articles, use the drop down filters to display only articles of a certain section or category. This makes it easier to spot the article you are looking for.

Click on the name of an article to edit it.

Adding new content pages

You can only add new content pages easily from the back-end.

You can sometimes add new content from the front-end - if the installation is configured to allow that - however there are some critical settings that may not be accessible, so its best just add content via the back-end.

To add new content via the Back-end, navigate to the Article Manager, and click the green "New" button (top right).

Dont forget to make sure the "Published"checkbox parameter is checked if you want the page to be seen by the public.

If it is a work in progress, maybe set the access level to "Special" - that way you can preview the page from the front end (if logged in with a profile with admin rights), without anyone else able to see it.

Editing Content

Wait for the editor to fully load before beginning to edit. Look at the status bar in your browser to see the download progress of the web page.  Once it has loaded fully once, it should be much faster in subsequent edits.

In recent years Microsoft browsers have not had the status bar turned on by default, so if you cant see it go to View > Status Bar (in IE7) to turn it on/off.

Before actually editing, its sometimes good to have a backup handy - in case things go wrong.

Backup

It's nice to know that if you make a mistake, the article can be restored. The easiest way to do this is to copy the source code (html) to a text file, before you begin making changes. Make this a habit.

Click the "Code" button - it should look something like this: <>

A pop-up window will appear with html code in it.

Select all (CTRL + A)

Copy (CTRL + C)

The html code of that article is now in your clipboard.

Paste (CTRL + V) this code somewhere temporary - a notepad document is best. To open a notepad document - right click on an empty spot anywhere on your desktop. From the menu that appears, select: New > Text Document. Open the untitled document and paste the html code into it. Maybe save it somewhere if you think you might like to keep it for more than a few minutes.

How to restore a backup

Copy all the html code (CTRL + A, then CTRL + C) that was in the text file you created. Paste the code into the Code editor window (after clearing out anything that was already in there). Click "Update" in the code window, and "Apply".

Main Editing Window

Here are the main buttons that you use when entering content.

To find out what each one does, hover your mouse curser over a button, and note the pop-up tool tip.

You must refresh (or save) the page within 15 minutes, or you will time-out and will be logged out (thus you will be unable to save your work & may lose it). This can be inconvenient. If you lose track of time on an edit, and you suspect it may be 15 minutes or more since your last save, then do a quick CTRL + A then CTRL + C to copy the entire contents of your editing window (don't use the Code window).

This way, if you are logged out, then at least you have your work saved in your clipboard. Just log back in, open the article, and paste into the editing window - CTRL + A, then CTRL + V.

To Save or Apply?

When you "Apply" your edits are saved, but the screen does not exit the editing window - so you can continue editing.

"Save" will save your edits, but the editing screen will close & will be redirected back to the Article Manager. Use this when you really have completed editing an article.

Never use your Browser's Back and Forward buttons while editing.

Always use the Save, Apply and Close buttons - top right.

If you close your browser - or navigate away from the editing page - while editing an article, then the system will still think that you are editing it, and to all other users the article will appear locked. In the article manager you will see a little padlock icon next to the article. The article is "Checked Out". To check in all articles, go to: Tools > Global Check-in

Important Tips When Editing

There are many things that are different about editing web pages, as compared to other types of editing. Often this is not communicated by commercial developers because they have an interest in making things seem as easy as possible, and they don't want to spend hours educating clients. Almost always, the client also does not want to hear that there is a whole new set of dos and don'ts.

But if you want to create a quality web presence, then there is much to learn.

Pasting from MSWord or other Applications

- including Outlook, Express etc, Be very careful when pasting text from other applications. Don't do it without first understanding the following.

The problem is that you get a lot more code than you think, and it can make life extremely difficult if you are not expert in html.

So don't paste from MSWord, but if you must, then use the "Paste from Word" button, and then the "Clean" button. This will probably strip out all the unwanted formatting code.

Another way is to first paste the content into notepad. This will also strip out all the formatting. Then just copy the text from notepad, and paste into the editing window.

You will need to re-apply any formatting that was in the content - bolds, headings etc, but that is a good thing - as web formatting is very different from word processing formatting.

Formatting Text & Style Control

Some people have a strong urge to over-format text. Making text different colours and sizes is to be avoided.

Say you decide you want to make a heading a particular colour...

The worst sin is to try to make all body text, or all headings, a certain colour or size - and then systematically going through all articles to change them manually.

It is far better to change the definitions for all headings or text in a single central location - a style sheet (CSS). This is not something we will cover - it is complicated - just ask our web developer to make whatever changes are needed.

Modern web pages have a system of style control whereby many page elements will have a certain look that is consistent across all pages. This is achieved by using just one file called a "cascading style sheet" (CSS). A basic understanding of the style sheet is extremely important, but to master them is difficult.

The main advantage to this way of controlling styles is that almost the entire look of a website is controlled from a single file. This can lead to massive savings in development costs, and it ensures your formatting maintains a professional appearance throughout the whole site.

The 'problem' is that when you make a change in the editor - eg you give something a font size - then that will over-ride the style-sheet settings.

If you decide that you want to change it, then you have to re-edit the article. If you have implemented the same formatting across many pages, then it can be quite a task.

The code that is used to generate some types of formatting is quite bloated (slows down page loading) and sometimes it can look different in different browsers. Code used in style-sheets is much more economical.

Global style definitions usually exist for the following elements:

• Paragraph text  - <p>
• Headings - <H1>, H2, H3 etc
• Lists - <UL>, <OL>

Removing Unwanted Styles

Often people get stuck on this point.

1. Select the text that is needing the styles removed
2. Click the "Eraser" button (Remove formatting)

The styles should now be erased, and the text should have minimal 'mark-up' (code that is used to format it).

The problem is- this doesn't always work - especially if the text has been pasted from MSWord.

Place your curser in the middle of some text that you want to 'clean'. Look at the bottom of the editing window:

Here I have pasted some text from MS Outlook.

I have placed my cursor in the orange bit.

Notice down the bottom is:

Path: p.MsoNormal >> span ... etc

This "path" shows all the "tags" that are influencing the text. These need to be removed in order for the text to be cleaned.

Here is some of the HTML code that is used in the above example:

<span style="font-size: 12pt"><i><span style="background: red; color: navy; font-family: Arial">The </span></i><i><span style="background: red; color: olive; font-family: Arial">problem</span></i><i><span style="color: olive; font-family: Arial"> is that you get a lot more code than you think, and it can make life</span></i><i><span style="font-family: Arial">

If you know a little about HTML, you can probably see how to clean up this text - but to do this to any significant amount of text is painful (and expensive if you don't have html skills)

So best not to introduce complex, formatted text in the first place.

Good news is that the "Clean" button seems to work much better in recent versions of JCE.