Example work(click images for larger size). If you would like to see some more of the work, please contact us:

Well at the time of writing, Joomla 1.5 is still in RC3, but it’s very nice and I have had very few problems with it. So here is a simple guide to using the backend, for the average Joe. Click an image for a bigger screenshot. If what I say doesn’t make sense, then chat to me on the contact page with the chat box, email or phone me. With time, I can explain it. Once you get to know your way around, it becomes quite easy to use. I always maintain that the best way to work your way around it is by practice-make an article and a menu link and then see it in the actual site at what it looks like. Just be careful not to touch certain things (see What not to touch).

Some quick links to different sections:

1. How to Login

2. What to do once logged in

3. Create an Article

4. Create a section and category

5. Create a Menu

6. Other Tips/Tricks

7. What not to touch

8. Appendix-All that uncatagorised stuff

How to login
The login procedure has not changed from 1.0, it is still www.yoursite.com/administrator. On the version below, which I have edited for a variety of reasons, but it still has all the same functions. There is now the option to choose a language, which was never integrated before. This Joomla is even more international!

Once you’ve logged in…

OK, so you’ve typed in your username and password (which you need to get from your webmaster) and logged in. If you’ve never used Joomla before, this is what it should look like (with my superimposed text):

As you can see, if you need to logout you can, or even preview the website, which opens in a new window/tab. The first thing I’m going to show you how to use is the articles. For those who are used to 1.0, articles replace all content, including static content. Now you can choose to make an article uncategorised (like static content in 1.0) or in a category. For new people what this means is that any page you make can either be part of a section that is split up into categories (so the only way to get to it is by going into the section, and then into the category and choose a page) or without a category i.e. just a single unconnected page. If you don’t understand, it should become clear soon. So to get on it click in the quick icons ‘Article Manager’. You should get this (just ignore the file names, they are irrelevant):

Creating an Article:
So as you can see, this is what you get when you go onto the article page. To make a new article, click new, as shown in the screenshot above. What you get is a new page, with a textbox and some other options. Have a look at it in this screenshot:

OK. So the first thing to do is give your new page a title. Whatever you want. The title alias helps Joomla decide what the web address in the bar it is. You don’t really need to give your article an alias, but you can if you want. There is an option to make your article not published, which means that it is saved, but doesn’t appear on the website. You can unpublish an article at any time if you want(default state is published). Frontpage is whether your article should display on the homepage of the website.The default is that it doesn’t appear on the frontpage.

Now…the section and category. Let’s say that you want just an article totally irrelevant to anything else. In that case choose uncategorised in the section drop down, as shown in the screenshot. If you want it in a section and category, then choose the section and category in both the drop downs. I will explain that a bit more when I explain how to add a section and category. Then just type your text in the box below. You can make it bold, add tables and all sorts. Try out all the buttons in the panel. The link button is to add a link(highlight the text you want linked first). Below the box are a few buttons. One says image. If you click this you have the option to add different images that are on the site, to your text. Click one of the images, or go into a folder to find one. Then click insert at the top. For this to work you need javascript (and IE6 doesn’t work with it. Get Firefox if you get any browser/display problems, it usually fixes them) One of them says Read more. If you click somewhere in the box and then click the read more button then you will get a red line (what this means is that if you put an item onto the frontpage, only the things before the red line will appear. There will then be a read more link, which will go to the full article. You don’t have to do this to put an article on the frontpage, but it takes up less space on it). Once you’ve finished your article, click save. (Apply saves it, but stays on the article. Save goes back to article manager).

You will see in the screenshot that I have labelled the ordering things. If you click the arrows, an article will move up or down, thus changing the order that it appears on the website when in a list. You can also type the number order in the boxes with 1 being first and then click the floppy disk icon next to the word ‘order’. You can also publish or unpublish an article by clicking the tick under the published column, and in the row of the article, to make it unpublished and the cross to publish it again. The same applies to the adjacent column for making an item go onto the front page. The rest of the stuff you don’t really need to know except that if all the articles aren’t appearing click the drop down menu next to display near the bottom of the page and click all. This will refresh the page with all the articles appearing. You can also filter the articles by clicking the drop down menus underneath the ‘new’ button and you can filter by section, category, author or state(published, unpublished etc.). To delete an article, right click the box next to it in article manager and then click trash at the top, near to new.

Something quite important, is that if any article appears with a lock next to it, go along the toolbar at the top to tools and click global checkin. That should solve it.

Adding Sections and Categories
Well, this is not hard, but if you don’t know about it then it can be confusing. The easiest way, I find, to do this is to click site on the toolbar, and then control panel. This will go back to the page before. Click section manager. You get this:

OK. So click new. To explain this, I need to give you some background. Here is my explanation:
If you aren’t making an uncategorised page (as I showed you earlier), then you have to make one with a section and category. Section is like a collective group, and beneath that are categories, which split up the section into further groups. Inside the categories are separate articles, that are relevant to the category, which is relevant to the section. A site can have as many sections or categories as you like. So, you’ve clicked new and a new page has come up which looks something like this:

Fill in the title, alias (if you want), decide whether you want it published and if you want add a picture and a description(but you don’t have to). Then click save. It will take you back to the section manager, where can order, publish or delete any sections you have made. Make as many sections as you like. Now you need to make some categories to go in the section you have made. Click site in the toolbar, and then control panel. Then Click Category manager. (An alternative way of doing it is to click content on the toolbar and then category manager. Its easiest from the control panel if you have just logged on. You will find the easiest way for you.) Click new, and then fill in the details like you did in the section manager. Except this time, below ‘Published’ you have to choose which section you want your category to go in. Click the arrow (its a drop down menu) and choose one. Once you’ve done all that, click save. Once that is done, it will redirect you back to the category manager. Make as many categories as you like. You can always come back later and do that. Now, let’s say you’ve changed your mind and want that article from before that you had made uncategorised, to be in one of your sections, in a category. Go to article manager (either content>article manger or go back to the control panel and click article manager). Click the article you want to change and it will open. In the drop down menus for section and categories, choose your section, then category. Then click save. The article will then be in the section and category you chose.

Menu items-how to make those articles and sections appear in the menus on the pages.
The assumption I am making is that all menus are set up for you by the webmaster. If they aren’t and you are doing it all yourself, drop me an email and I’ll give you a hand. If you aren’t sure what a menu item is, its the big set of links together on every page, and they link to the important pages on the website i.e. home, the sections and things like contacts and search (search will be set up by the webmaster. I’ll show you how to use contacts soon-in components)

If it has been done by the webmaster, here’s what you need to do. Along the toolbar, click menus, and then it should say ‘Menu Manager’, then ‘Menu Trash’. Then there is a divide and a list of menus. Click the one you want (sometimes topmenu, sometimes mainmenu. It depends on how the webmaster has set it up-ask him/her or me). Here is a screenshot of how it should look, but with different menu names(I just chose those ones because the names make sense to me):

So I’m now assuming that you have chosen one and if you weren’t sure which one to choose you have asked your webmaster. It will then go onto a page with all the menu items for that menu. Click ‘new’ and it will open a new page for making an item, which looks like this:

It is quite complicated what to do next. But here we go…

If you want to make a link to an article or section, click articles. It will then expand. To make an article on its own, click article layout. To link to a section, click section layout. The blog options display in a blog format. To make a link to a website not part of Joomla i.e. google.com then you need to click external link. A wrapper just puts another webpage inside your page. Once you have chosen which type of link you want to make, click that and a new page will appear.

For articles: On the new page, you need to fill in the title and alias as usual. On the right under Paramters-Basic, next to Select Article, click select. A javascript window will popup. Click the article that you want (its basically just article manager, but a bit different). If this isn’t clear, try it out. Once done just click save and you’re done. It will take you back to the menu page. To order the links, do it in the same way as the articles

For sections or categories: Fill in title and alias, then on the right under Paremeters-Basic next to section/category choose the specified category in the drop down menu. Then just click save. You will be redirected to the menu.

Have a go at trying the other types-there’s no harm. Its always good to try it BEFORE the website goes live so that your paying customers don’t see it-it doesn’t look too good.

Other tips/Tricks

• In Parameters, you make different things appear or change a variety of settings. The webmaster will have set up defaults for everything. Parameters are there on the right when creating a menu item or a new article. [To change the defaults for articles, next to the option to create a new article there is a button saying Paramters. A Javascript window will come up, where you can change the settings. Your webmaster will usually have set these up for you as he/she sees fit for your website]
• To edit the Frontpage and various articles, go to content in the toolbar and click Frontpage manager
• Creating polls. Along the top, click components>Polls. Then click new, and make a new one (type in a title, then fill in the different options on the right. Then click save). Then go to Extensions>Module Manager. Click new, then select Poll in the right column and then click next.Type your title in and on the right next to Poll, select your poll from the drop down. At the bottom of the page, you have the option of choosing which pages you want the poll to appear on. Then click save.
• As regards to different components that you may have installed on your Joomla installation, because there are so many different ones available, you will have to go access the support on that website. If there is a large amount of people that want me to write a tutorial on a certain component, then I will. Otherwise, check out the support of the component.

What Not To Touch

• Under Site, DO NOT touch global configuration unless you really know what you are doing. It could make your site go down. This is not a good idea.

Appendix

• I can not stress enough the importance of practising. The best way to learn what a section is is by trying it out and seeing what happens. If you aren’t sure what a wrapper is, make one and then you will know! Joomla is built for the user: it makes it really easy for you to try things. Trying=learning.
• If you feel that I could have explained anything better, or a screenshot would be useful in a certain place, drop me an email and I will try to get that done ASAP. If I have missed something off that would be useful i.e. using the archive, again drop me an email. I will be more than happy to help you out.
• Some of the more observant of you may have noticed that this website uses wordpress [the other tab in some of the screenshots :p]. This is very true. Although Joomla is very good at many things, and it is very powerful, I find that wordpress suited my needs for this website. You can have a blog with Joomla, but wordpress was ideal-it is SO easy to manage and it is so simple. I didn’t want an over-complicated website for Splendidesign, I just wanted a simple sight, and that’s what I’ve got. It’s all about your needs, and sometimes Joomla just doesn’t fit them
• But most importantly, good luck!!

This information may be reproduced with an acknowledgement to Splendidesign and a link. Any attempt to take this information as your own will have legal consequences.

Splendidesign was approached to redesign the MGS History website (a school department website) with a user-intergrated interface to make it easy for students and others to use. Previously the site had been just plain text with a few images, and it was not updated often enough-resulting in broken links and a declining amount of content. You can see what it used to be like below:

Splendidesign spent considerable time with the client working out the best way to improve the site, and it was decided that a Content Management System would be the best way to proceed, meaning that the client could easily manage the site in their own time, and prevent having all the broken links and the infrequent updates. The new site is better laid out and more accessible, meaning that the students can have wider resources to do their history work.

We ran a beta version of the site for a while on our own servers, for management and testing purposes. Indeed, the client was thoroughly pleased with the beta website and together changes were made. We did some market research to test how successful the site would be, and what the users preferred or disliked about the site, and what they would like to see in it. This was very useful in ascertaining just what the public wanted from the website. The beta went live on the 4th January 2008, and is live on www.mgshistory.org. You can view a screenshot below:

We are a caring, patient company that wants to provide to the needs of the client. That’s why we run a consultancy service, where we can sit down with a client and help them out; tell them what computer they should get to fit their needs, whether its worth their while having an ecommerce site, and so on. We have massive experience in all areas, and that’s why our consultancy is used so much by all sorts of people: from businesses to OAP’s. Just drop us an email and we will be happy to help you out.

We now have a brand new service, which enables us to gain access to your computer from a remote location in order that we can help you with any problems. If you would like more information, drop us an email and we can set it up. The file needed to run it can be downloaded below.

Download: Customer Support

As part of our services, we provide marketing. This is essential to promote your website, and thus your business. Without it, your site would be pointless as noone would go on it. Here are some steps we act upon in order to get you high in search engines and the like:

1. Search Engine Optimisation.
   This is essential to attract people to your site. Search engines are the biggest traffic generator for a site. When a person wants to find a service or website, they will immediately go to a search engine, such as Google, MSN, Yahoo!, Ask.com, Hotbot and so on. It is crucial that your website is number one in as many search engines as possible: 80% of traffic from search engines will be in the top ten. This picture shows the eye’s view in infared:
   
   To promote your site on the search engines we use a number of ways:
   -> Keyword optimisation on your site
   -> Site map submission to Google and other search engines
   -> Creating a number of links on other sites i.e. directories
   -> Having excellent, search engine friendly content, that will enable the search engines to raise you up.
   -> Plus a few sneaky tricks of the trade
2. Content Management
   This is very important to ensure that the site is good to the eye and aesthetically pleasing. A site has to be easy to access, quick loading and with excellent close-at-hand navigation. Flash animation often detracts the eye away from the content of the site, and will prevent a person from buying a product. A lot of people do not have flash, and therefore it is best not to incorporate it in your site. On average, if a page has not loaded in seven seconds, the viewer will leave the site. We prevent these problems, and make sure that the content is clear and nicely laid out for a person to see.
3. Advertisement
   We can advertise your site on other websites and in local catalogues etc. This will also bring more traffic to your site. However, we charge for this service.
4. Promotion internally
   It is very important that your website is promoted throughout your business. This includes:
   >>Business cards
   >>Letter heads
   >>Brochures
   >>Company vehicles
   >>Shop or warehouse signs
   >>Flyers
   >>Advertisements

So, as you can see marketing a site is just as important as creating it. We aim to make a site as ideal for search engine optimisiation as possible. However, if any other services are required, i.e. advertising your site, we charge for this.

We provide a branding service for your business.

We provide:

• Logos
• Banners
• Note Paper
• Compliment Slips
• Business Card

And, of course, a website if needed

A web hosting and domain service is provided by Splendidesign. At £25 p.a. for hosting and a .co.uk domain, it is cheaper than any other package with these credentials:

• 150mb
• 600mb bandwith p.c.m.
• Unlimited Email addresses with optional e-mail responders
• 1 .co.uk domain
• Password protected directories
• 5 Subdomains
• 5 FTP accounts
• Splendidesign Support

Any further T.L.D.(Top Level Domains) are £15 p.a. To check a domain, email Splendidesign

To order hosting, send us an email

We provide a state of the art web design service that is cheap, reliable and of excellent quality. We do as the customer wants, when they want.

Step 1-Planning:
Planning is essential to ensuring a productive and excellent site. A site created with planning will ensure that no future problems occur. We ask the following questions:

1. What is the aim of your site?
2. Where do you want your sites main audience to be?
3. How big/small/medium is the project?
4. How many pages do you want?
5. Do you want extras like graphic design, emails, notepaper etc.
6. Will you provide photos and content for the site?
7. What impression do you want your potential clients to get when they go on the site?
8. Are there any deadlines for the site?

The answers to these questions will help us on our way to completing the site quickly and effectively. Then, we compile a document and you sign your signature along with us. Then we go to Step 2

Step 2-Web Design:
This stage enables us to create the site and recieve comments from you about it. You can give ideas of how you would like the site to look, give examples or just say you aren’t sure and let us get on with it.

Step 3- Site Design Approval and Content:
Once approval has been given for the design, we then put content on the site, that will be hosted on our server at this point.Once this has been done we move the site to your own hosting and domain:

Step 4-Pricing:
This is payed when the site has been approved and it is ready to be upload onto your own server. The payment can be payed into a Paypal account, cheque or cash.

Step 5- Completion:
We then get you hosting and a domain(s). The site is uploaded to your server. You then approve the site, and we put it live.

Step 6-Search Engine Optimisation and Marketing:
Now, when the site is completed, we can optimise the site for search engines in order to enable a large crowd to go on the site and so your revenues will increase. Check out Marketing for more details

Step 7-The “Aftermath”:
After the site is finished, we will send you monthly statistics of your site to show you how your site is doing, who is going on it and where they live etc. We will maintain your site for a small hourly cost whenever you want, and we can help out and add emails at your command. Our excellent service continues not only throughout the creation process, but as long as you are connected to Splendidesign.

For more details, email us

Splendidesign offers a variety of services to ensure that your site fulfils its potential as much as possible. Please feel free to check them out.

You can find out more about our services by clicking one of the links below

• Web Design

• Web Hosting and Domains

• Branding

• Marketing

• Consultancy

Splendidesign is based in South Manchester, UK. It was founded by Michael Blank following his successes in the field. We have a wide range of skills in interpreting the client’s requirements and turning them into a reality, specifically with web design (Web Design is run under the umbrella Websites Unlimited, which can be found here) and marketing. We have an extremely broad range, collectively, of skills with graphic design and creating logos etc. We continue to manage a large number of sites for clients.

We have a unique understanding of the business environment which provides us with highly competitive skills required to build a productive and working site. Splendidesign continues to expand and develop their skills and are now at a very high stage in web design. We really do turn ideas into reality.

Forms of contact:

• Using Form below
• Skype: username- michael.blank5
• Phone: Call 07792605584
• In the box below the contact form, click Begin a conversation, then choose anonymous or sign in with a windows live ID. Then type something, and it will go straight to me, instantly so we can chat online! Cool or what?!

Are you in need of a website for your business, charity or any other purpose? Are you seeking a wider market and a global representation for your goods and services? We provide all of this, and more.

Splendidesign is able to interpret the client’s needs and deliver a cost-effective solution within the time scale agreed. Our services include a one-stop solution to web design, web hosting and web marketing.

We can meet all your stationery requirements to complement your website i.e. logos. With our services, we are able to maximise your business exposure and future revenues.

Splendidesign prides itself in having excellent customer relations and meeting all the clients needs to their agreed specification. Working closely with the customer, we work with you to bring your requirements to fruition.

We have a proven track record that will confirm our ability to deliver a bespoke solution for you.

Check out the Joomla 1.5 Tutorial here