Content Management

Dashboards are panel-based landing pages in the Administrator backend, giving you an at-a-glance overview and quick shortcuts before you dive into a component's own list screens. The default Home Dashboard appears when you log in, and most of the other main Administrator menus – Content, Menus, Components, Users, and System – open their own matching dashboard when you select the small dashboard icon beside the menu item. A separate Help Dashboard collects links to Joomla support resources.

• Home Dashboard – The default landing page after logging in to the Administrator backend, made up of customisable panels of modules that surface site information and shortcuts to common tasks.
• Content Dashboard – Opened from the dashboard icon beside the Content menu item, showing panels for the Content menu's own subsections alongside extra panels such as Popular Articles and Recently Added Articles.
• Menu Dashboard – Opened from the dashboard icon beside the Menus menu item, with one panel for Menus & Menu Items and another listing the items in each of your site's individual menus.
• Components Dashboard – Opened from the dashboard icon beside the Components menu item, with a panel of sub-menu links for every installed component.
• Users Dashboard – Opened from the dashboard icon beside the Users menu item, with a panel for each Users menu group and a view of who's currently logged in; Privacy, User Actions Log, and Messaging each have their own separate dashboard.
• System Dashboard – Opened from the dashboard icon beside the System menu item, organising core Administrator tasks into panels for Setup, Install, Templates, Maintenance, Manage, Information, Update, and User Permissions.
• Help Dashboard – Panels of links to Joomla help and support resources, including a Joomla Help section and further links that mostly open external Joomla websites.

This section introduces the essentials of Joomla and guides new users through the first steps of setting up and managing a site. It covers the basics of what Joomla is, its core features, how to get it running, and the fundamental tasks you’ll perform when creating and organizing content.

This section is designed to give you a smooth start, from installation to adding your first articles, menus, and modules, so you can quickly become familiar with Joomla’s structure and workflow.

Introduction to Joomla

Understand what Joomla is and what it has to offer.

• Introduction to Joomla – A broad overview of Joomla as a content management system (CMS). This page explains its purpose, the types of websites you can create with it, and why Joomla is a flexible solution for beginners and advanced users alike.

• Core Features – Explore Joomla’s built-in functionality, including user management, menu and content handling, multilingual support, extensions, and template customization. This helps you understand the main tools at your disposal before you start building.

Setup and Installation

Prepare your hosting and install Joomla.

• Hosting Setup – Learn the technical requirements for running Joomla, such as PHP versions, database compatibility, and web server settings. This ensures your hosting environment is ready for a smooth installation.
  Installing Joomla – Step-by-step guidance on installing Joomla on your server. It walks you through the installation wizard and the key configuration details needed to get your site running.

• Logging in to Joomla – Learn how to access the Joomla administrator dashboard after installation, where all site management tasks are performed.

Creating Content

Start building and organizing your site content.

• Articles and Categories – Understand Joomla’s content structure, where articles are used for content, and categories group them together for better organization.

• Adding a Category – Learn how to create categories to organize related articles, helping you manage content more effectively.

• Adding an Article – Step-by-step instructions on writing, formatting, and publishing your first piece of content in Joomla.

• Adding a Menu Item – See how to link articles or categories to menus so visitors can easily navigate your site.

• Adding a Module – Learn how to place dynamic blocks of content (like login forms, latest articles, or banners) around your site to enhance functionality and layout.

Productivity Tools

Work more efficiently inside Joomla.

• Keyboard Shortcuts – Save time by using built-in keyboard shortcuts for common actions in the Joomla administrator area, improving your workflow.

Joomla's core includes the framework for running a multilingual site: install a language pack for each language you want to support, and Joomla will translate its own built-in labels, prompts, and messages automatically. That only covers text that comes from Joomla itself, though – the menus, articles, and other content you write still need to be translated by hand for each language, and any third-party extensions on the site will need their own language files before they're fully translated too.

This section covers the full lifecycle of that work: installing and configuring additional languages, linking translated content together, replacing individual pieces of text without editing core language files, and tracking down translation problems when something isn't showing up correctly.

• Setup a Multilingual Site – Installing and publishing additional languages, choosing sample data, and building out the language-specific menus, categories, and articles a multilingual site needs.
• Multilingual Associations – Linking an article, category, contact, menu item, or news feed to its translated counterparts so visitors can switch between language versions of the same content.
• Language Overrides – Replacing individual text strings from Joomla's core or an extension with a custom translation, without editing the original language files.
• Debugging a Translation – Using the Debug Language option and the System – Debug plugin to spot missing or incorrect translations and trace them back to their source.
• Language Fallbacks – New in Joomla 6.2. Falling back to a specific language, not only the standard en-GB (useful for regional language variants).

Setting up a local environment lets you run Joomla on your own computer for testing and development, without touching a live site. At a minimum you need a webserver, a database, and PHP — commonly bundled together as an "AMP stack" (Apache, MySQL/MariaDB, and PHP) — though Docker-based and other container setups are an alternative to installing everything directly.

This section covers hosting locally on Windows and Linux, using Laragon as one all-in-one option, running Joomla in Docker, setting up a build-from-source environment for running Joomla's automated tests, and installing on a Raspberry Pi.

• Local Hosting on Windows – Comparing WAMP and XAMPP as bundled Apache/MySQL/PHP packages for Windows, with WampServer as the recommended option.
• Laragon Setup (Windows) – Installing and configuring Laragon, an all-in-one local server tool for Windows, as a lightweight alternative to WAMP or XAMPP.
• Local Hosting on Linux – Installing a LAMP stack on Linux, configuring virtual hosts for multiple test sites, and opening it up to other computers on your network.
• Docker Setup – Running Joomla and MariaDB in isolated Docker containers instead of installing an AMP stack directly.
• Local Test Setup – Building Joomla from source with PHP CLI, Composer, Node.js, and Git so you can run its automated test suite locally.
• Raspberry Pi Installation – Installing Joomla on a Raspberry Pi, including the Raspbian OS, networking, and the Nginx/MariaDB/PHP stack it needs.