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Page Title and Homepage Title in Joomla! 1.6/7 & 2.5

Background

In the Joomla! 1.6/7/2.5 series the page title that is used by browsers to label windows and tabs is controlled by the a series of default behaviours. The page title is controlled by a global setting, the menu item that points to the page and finally the default behaviour is used.

Global Configuration

The first starts in Joomla!'s Global Configuration, navigate to Global Configuration ► Site ► SEO Settings

Joomla!'s Global Configuration icon in the Control Panel.Global Configuration's Site Tab has an "SEO Settings" panel.

Global Configuration's Site Tab has an "SEO Settings" panel. If you want every page to have the Site Name prefixed to the Page Title you will need to set the "Include Site Name in Page Titles" to "Yes".

Menu Item

In each menu item the Page Title is calculated from the menu items name by default unless the menu item points to an Article in which case the Page Title will be the name of the Article. So, if the menu is called "Products" and points to a Category Blog page for content in a category then the Page Title will be "Products".

If the menu item is called "About" and points to an Article called "About Us..." then the page title will be "About Us...".

Overriding the Page Title

There is one final option that can affect the page title - each Menu item can set the Page Title. As shown in the image below, in the menu items Page Display Options you can specifiy a "Browser Page Title".

Menu - Page Display Options

As you'll notice the Tooltip advises you on what will happen if you leave it blank (by default this option is almost always blank).

Home Page - "Welcome to the Frontpage"

The "Frontpage" menu item is the one situation in which the "Browser Page Title" may not be blank.

A typical Joomla! installation recommends that you install the sample data so that you can get a feel for how content is structured in Joomla!. Of course when you've finished with the sample content you normally delete it, however as people are unsure of menus they tend to re-use the "Home" menu item, which in the sample data has it's Browser Page Title set to "Welcome to the Frontpage".

Given the number of Joomla! websites that all have "Welcome to the Frontpage" as the page title of their homepage it appears to be a widespread phenomena.

You can identify the menu item that is responsible for the frontpage of your Joomla! website by the orange star displayed next to it in the Menu Manager. You can see an example in the image shown below.

Menu Manager - Home Menu Item 

How do insert a Youtube picture with JCE?

What do you need?

Obviously you will need Joomla Content Editor ( JCE ) version 1.5 or later and the Media Manager plug-in.

You will also need a user account that is setup with access to the Media Manager button in your editor group — if you have permission you will see a film-strip icon like this one hi-lighted below.

Media-Manager-Hi-light

Finally you will need a Youtube URL similar to this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrhDaAmn5Uw

Using the Media Manager for Youtube

The Media Manager supports a range on media types to make your life as Joomla content editor easier (see what I did there?).

 

To insert a Youtube video place the cursor in the position in the article that you want it to appear and click on the film-strip icon like that shown above.

Next in the URL field paste or type your Youtube URL, then press the TAB key — JCE should then update with the dimensions of your Youtube clip. The Media Manager panel should look like the one below when you've done this step.

JCE Media Manager

JCE Media Manager - Type menuThe step that confuses most people with inserting Youtube links is that of all the different media types that are available in the Media Manager interface Youtube isn't one of them. [ In the new JCE 2.0ßeta for Joomla 1.6 there is now an entry, probably to overcome this issue. ]

The fact is that JCE's Media Manager is smart enough to recognise the Youtube URL for you and do the right thing without any extra work by you — pretty neat isn't it.

The last step is simply — click the "Insert" button.

The result should look like this:

General Joomla! Installation Issues

JInstaller::install: Failed to copy file

Joomla Help Menu [Select System Info]This is a common message that usually results from file or directory permissions on the hosting environment. The easiest way to check if the problem is being caused by permission issues is to use Joomla's built-in "System Info" option in the Help menu.

When you select the "System Info" option, then you are presented with a range of information tabs about your website and the Joomla installation.

As shown in this screenshot one of the tabs you can choose is called “Directory Permissions’ - for you to be able to successfully install components, plug-ins and templates then all of these directories listed should show as “Writable”. If they don't (the directory permission show as “Unwritable”) you will need to change the permissions for your Joomla installation.

How do I change the permissions for my Joomla installation?

Joomla Directory PermissionsFirst up - changing permissions can be dangerous. If you don't really understand permissions and ownership get the technical support staff at your hosting service to fix the permissions for you. Specifically the webserver will need read and write access to the Joomla installation, it will also need ownership or membership of a group that owns the websites directories.

Changing permissions will depend on your website hosting setup.

  • If your host provides cPanel access you can use the “File Manager” to change the directory permissions.
  • If your host provides Shell access you can use chmod and chown to set the permissions to 755 and the group owner to the webserver's group
  • If your host has a custom control panel specific to them you may be best off opening a support ticket to get the problem resolved.

It's not my Permissions!

If your permissions are all showing as writable then the next most likely cause is that your Joomla installation is version 1.5.10 - a typical error in this case will look like this:

JInstaller::install: File
'/website/tmp/install_38bd786260b81/SomeComponent.install.php' does not exist.
Component Install: Could not copy PHP install file.

Joomla 1.5.10 had a slight change which causes this error to be thrown, it has been resolved in all subsequent versions. The simplest solution is to upgrade to a latter (and more secure) version of Joomla 1.5.

It's not my Permissions and it's not Joomla 1.5.10

Joomla_Global_Settings_FTP_OffIf you've gotten this far and it hasn't worked the final thing to check is your “Global Configuration” for “FTP Settings”. If you have FTP enable/disbaled, flip the FTP option (set it to the opposite setting) and try again.

 

In our experience with our software/templates and with Third Party products these steps have resolved 99% of installation issues via the Joomla Installer.

JCE - File Manger Introduction

JCE provides a range of extended options (via plug-ins) in the form of an extended “Image Manager” and an extended “File Manager”. The “File Manager” is the most basic and has many of the features of the “Image Manager” so it's an appropriate place to start.

The File Manager icon on the JCE toolbar looks like this: JCE File Manager Icon

JCE_FileManagerDialogEven though you are presented with an, at first, bewildering dialog box you should remember it's primary purpose is to allow you to place a link in your article to standard files that may be on your website ( like  ZIP, PDF's or other downloadable files ).

The dialog is based on the standard design and layout you would see if you were using Microsoft Word or Excel on a modern desktop computer to open/save a file, and as such, should be reasonably familiar.

 

Click on the screenshot to above and have a look at the dialog box and the annotations which show:

  1. Folders on your webserver (just Explorer or the Finder like on your computer)
  2. The files in the current folder (the one in bold is the currently selected one)
  3. Information about the selected file or folder is displayed in the 3rd column.
  4. The text that the link to the file is wrapped around.
  5. A range of tools for upload files to and working with folders and files on your webserver.

Using the File Manager

Linking a File

If you have some text selected when you click on the File Manager icon , the dialog box will use that text to fill out the “Text” field as shown in the screenshot above. When you click on a file name with text already in the “Text” field you will be presented with this dialog:

JCE File Manager - Replace Text?

As it states, if you click on the “Yes” it will replace the original with the file name which in most cases will not be what you want. Ideally the selected text that is displayed in the “Text” field should be appropriately descriptive as it will be used by Screen Readers and other assistive devices.

If you don't have some text selected the “Text” field will remain blank until you click on a file name - at that point the files name will be placed in the field. Ideally you should change this some descriptive text that will make sense to users of Screen Readers and other assistive devices.

Advanced File Links

Once a file link has been created you can use the “Advanced Link” button ( JCE Advanced Link toolbar button ) on the JCE toolbar to adjust a range of attributes including specifying a target, alternate title text Id, Style, Classes and a range of expert settings.

Unlinking a File

To unlink a file you will need to use the “Unlink” icon on the toolbar, it looks like this: JCE Unlink Toolbar Icon

Click on the link in the editor and the “Unlink” button will become active, click once on the button to remove the link completely.

Other features

Creating and publishing articles in JCE is covered in our course Introduction to Joomla Content Management System. Uploading files and images with JCE is covered in our course Joomla Content Editing.

Clients can access the PDF of course notes through their support login or the training website login. 

For Training Questions please contact us.

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