Joomla explanation of section, category and content

The Joomla Structure of Sections, Categories, and Content

Most people that just started out with Joomla have problems with how to handle the different parts that make up the Content Structure of Joomla.

Especially the Section and category part seems problematic to understand.
But it is actually quite easy to work with if you understand the basic principle.

Start simple and think about a book that You want to write!

Remember this, because with this book reference the idea of giving structure to your website is much easier to handle.

So how-to structure your website?
As said, act like you are going to write a book.

Joomla Section:
These are the parts of your book, not the Chapters!
Let's say we are going to build a site about Microsoft Word, then parts of your site could be like:
• Basics
• Layout
• Documents
• Standard documents
• Scripting Macros and Working environment.

These Book parts can then be divided into different Chapters.

Joomla Category:
Now, these are your chapters!
Here you make the chapter structure of your book part, for instance, the book part about standard documents:
• Standard settings
• Templates
• Layout profiles
• Menu creation and editing
• creating Forms macro's

Joomla Content:
Now You are going to write your pages, your articles for your book.

And again reference your book on word an example:
Your write an article about managing templates in MS Word.
This article is placed on the site under the section(Book part) “Standard Documents” and into the category (Chapter) ” Templates”.

Now Your site has the book structure build in and every visitor can find its way through the site much easier because he/she will see the way it's structured.

If you, later on, should decide that an article is misplaced, you can move it into a new category with the “move” function of Joomla.