Video Transcript

Hi. I’m Robert Vining. And this is JoomlArt tutorial video.

Today we’re going to take a look at the core features inside the new Joomla 1.6 release. Joomla 1.6 has several new features including a new ACL System, improved Content Management, User Management, a completely redesigned Extensions Manager, Menu Manager, Template Manager, built-in multilanguage support, SEO features and much more.

Let's start with the Article Manager. This is the core content component that allows you to create your articles, pages and blog posts. Joomla 1.6 uses the latest TinyMCE editor to easily create content including links images and text. With the new Access Control Level system in Joomla 1.6, you can set permissions for each user group on specific content. We'll take a look at that in a minute.

One of the exciting new features in Joomla 1.6 is nested categories. This allows for sub categories up to 10 levels deep and Joomla no longer uses sections. Let's click on a category take a look at the edit screen. Here you can edit the category description but the real improvement is the ability to set specific metadata for each category to help improve SEO. Previously in Joomla 1.5 you could set articles to be shown on the Frontpage which was nice but now you can make them as featured to allow several landing pages across your site.

The Media Manager helps you easily manage media content like images, music and videos to be used for your website. This is the default folder structure, but you can create new folders to keep files organized easily. The file upload system will allow you to upload files right from your desktop. You can configure what types of files to be uploaded and up to 10 megabytes in size.

The User Manager allows you to manage usergroups and access levels. Here we see the "Users" tab. These are the default user groups. In this tab you can manage your user groups and set permissions for each of them. In the third tab you can manage the access levels. You can set specific access levels for specific usergroups. This is an example of creating a new view permission level. We'll go in depth on that in the up-coming video on the ACL system in Joomla 1.6.

The Banner Management system allows you to manage banners and group them into categories. You can set access levels for banners and banner categories also. In the third tab you can manage your clients. In the third tab you can manage your clients and the last tab allows you to monitor the click through for each of your banners.

Same as previous versions, Joomla 1.6 comes with a built in Contacts Manager. It allows you to set contact pages for each division and member of your organization. The sample data in Joomla 1.6 uses the Contact Manager as a directory which shows the versatility of the component. Contact Manager takes advantage of the nested categories feature in Joomla 1.6 as well.

Joomla 1.6 comes with a messaging system same as for Joomla 1.5. It allows back-end users to send messages to contacts from the Contact Manager database and also allows back-end users to send mass mail to all members or to a specific user group.

Joomla 1.6 comes with a News Feed Manager to enable your website to publish external content from RSS feeds. Setting up the news feed a simple. Just give it a title, add a RSS feed choose a category and you are ready to go. Here again the nested categories feature in Joomla 1.6 that allows you to create sub categories up to 10 levels deep. Below the categories listing there's a new tool to set access levels for each category.

A new component in Joomla 1.6 is the Redirect Manager. This advanced tool will help you set up redirects for old content links to the new content links. Very helpful if you are migrating from a previous Joomla version.

Web Links Manager allows you to set up a basic directory links to share in your website. The edit screen allows you to set a title, URL and a description to give your visitors insight about the link. The nested categories feature allows you to easily organize links into specific groups. Additionally you can set access levels to each category or web link. The Extensions Manager allows you to extend core functionality by installing extensions like components, modules, plugins and language packs.

Another new feature in Joomla 1.6 is the Update Manager. Now you can keep your Joomla site and extensions updated easily without leaving your side. In the "Manage" tab you can uninstall, enable or disable extensions that had been previously installed on your website.

In the Discover tab you can install extensions that are uploaded using an FTP client instead of the standard Joomla installer. This is useful for extensions that are too large in size or cannot be installed due to server limitations or hosting environment. The Warnings tab will log all unsuccessful installation attempts.

The Module Manager allows you to create, duplicate, publish, check-in and trash modules installed on your website. Use the built-in search filter, or sort by site or by admin, published or unpublished, module position, module type, user access or language.

The sorting features are nice when you have a lot of modules installed. The trash feature allows you to restore modules that you might want again. The module edit screen allows you to set the position and menu assignment, access level and language.

The Plug-in Manager allows you to configure various types of plugins: content, system, authentication, editors and other types. In this section you can enable, disable and reorder plugins (for specific purposes) and also set access levels.

The Template Manager allows you to manage both front-end and back-end templates. Joomla 1.6 now allows multiple styles for each template. You can set a default style for your site while customizing the look of specific pages. The default templates in Joomla 1.6 are just enough to get you started with the website. Almost all templates provide various parameters and settings such as template width, logo settings or layout control.

The Language Manager allows you to set multiple languages for your website. You can install additional language packs for both back-end and front-end. Based on the language installed in your system, with Joomla 1.6, you can set up new languages for your content articles and modules. This is an example of creating a new language to be used for content items.

The Site Maintenance allows you to do a global check-in for your extension and clean the website's cache. The second tab allows you to clear all cache or specific cash group. The third tab allows you to purge all cache that is expired or is not used anymore. The Joomla Help panel provides much needed information including extension settings and how to use your new Joomla website. There is basic information like how to edit an article and more detailed information like how to create a link using HTML. The search feature will help you easily locate just the right information. It's a great resource to use without ever leaving your website.

In the Global Configuration you can set the site name,default editor and general access level. Set up the global metadata including description and keywords, SEO Settings for the Search Engine Friendly URLs and there's even a place for cookies.

The System tab allows you to set a secret encoding key, path to the log folder, choose the help server, and turn on the debugging feature, General Cache Settings and set the session lifetime for logged in users. The Server tab allows you to set compression settings, location settings and time zone, FTP Connection Settings, database connection and general mail settings. Finally the Permissions tab allows you to set the access to specific sections of your website, for your user groups.

This is an overview of Joomla 1.6 Features video by JoomlArt .