Introduction

In Joomla, the Articles are content items consisting of text, images, media, links, etc. Joomla Articles represent website pages - you can think of them as individual pages on your website. As we have already covered the process of creating an Article Category, now it is time to create the actual article, assign it to the category, and publish it on your website.

Accessing the Articles page

In order to begin, please log in to your Joomla Admin Dashboard and click on the “Articles” shortcut button located on the left-hand side of the Home page.

Once this is done, you will be redirected to the “Articles” page, where you will see a list of all your articles. In order to add an article, you will need to click on the green “New” button at the top left corner of the page.

Alternatively, you can navigate through the top menu bar to Content > Articles > Add New Article.

Creating a New Article

Now that you have accessed the “New Article” page - let’s take a closer look at it and review what information you will need to specify. As you have probably noticed, there are a lot of options that will allow you to configure different articles. In our guide, we will introduce the basic concept of creating a standard page.

For a start, you will need to specify the Article “Title”. You can leave the “Alias” field empty as Joomla will fill it for you. It will be used for the Search Engine Friendly URL of the category page. If you want to specify your custom alias, please make sure to replace all spaces with dashes (-) and all capital letters with lower case letters.

Below you will see a WYSIWYG editor. You will need to enter the actual content of your article. You can use the available tools, which will allow you to easily format the text, include images, media, links, etc.

At the right end of the page, you will see a few additional options.

• Status - This option allows you to control whether the article is visible on your website frontend. You can select between “Published”, “Unpublished”, “Archived”, and “Trashed” from this dropdown menu.
• Category - From this dropdown menu, you will need to select the category this article will be assigned to.
• Featured - This option determines if the article is “Featured”. Feature Articles generate an intro text in the desired layout.
• Access - This option allows you to control the level of access to this article based on the user.
• Language - This option allows you to control if the article will be visible in all languages or only in a specific one.
• Tags - In here, you can assign the applicable tags to the article.
• Note - In this field, you can include a note for the article, which will be displayed in the article list.
• Version Note - In this field, you can enter a note for the specific article version.

Now, let’s move to the following “Images and Links” tab. Under it, you will be able to configure your article images (intro and full), control the positioning of the images, set an alternative text and image caption. You will also be able to configure URLs that will be positioned before or after the article content. For example, if you want to direct your visitors to another area of your website or a third-party website.

Next is the “Options” tab, where you will be able to control how the article will show in the Featured or Category blog layout. You can choose the desired selection for the given option from the corresponding dropdown menu. If you are not sure what exactly each option controls, you can find an explanation in Joomla’s Official documentation.

From the “Publishing” tab, you will be able to schedule the publishing of the article, edit the user who created the article, and enter the metadata information for this article.

From the following “Configure Edit Screen” tab, you will be able to control which edit option will be available while editing this article in the future.

From the last “Permissions” tab, you will be able to modify the permission specifically for this article. Note that this will override the Global Permissions we have previously reviewed in our How to configure Permission Settings in Joomla guide.

When you are ready, please do not forget to click on the “Save” button to finalize the creation of your new article.

Now, an important thing to know about Joomla. Even though you have successfully created your article, it will not be automatically displayed on your website frontend. Instead, it is stored in the database. Therefore, you will need to take one final step in order to display your newly created article.

Displaying Article in the Website Frontend

Although there are several ways to display an article on your Joomla frontend, we will review only the standard way this is usually done - by linking it to the website menu.

To do that, please click on the “Menus” option at the top menu bar. From the dropdown, hover over the menu you would like to assign the article to, and click on “Add New Menu Item”.

Now, on the “New Item” page, you will need to specify the “Menu Title”. This will be the title representing your article on the menu you are assigning the article to. Afterward, please click on the “Select” button next to “Menu Item Type”.

Once this is done, you will be presented with various item types that can be assigned to the menu. In our case (and in most cases), you will need to click on “Articles” to expand it and list the options. In order to create a menu item that links to one article, please click on the “Single Article” option.

Afterward, you will be presented with two options to create or select an article. Since we are assigning an existing one, please click on the “Select” button.

Then you will need to find and select your article. In our case, we have a few articles, however, if you have lots of articles, you might find the “Search” bar and tools quite useful.

These are all the essential settings that need to be configured. Hence, you are ready to finish by clicking on the “Save” button.

All done! Now it is time to go ahead and see how everything appears on your website frontend.

And there you go! The new article is nicely appearing on your Joomla website.

Well done! Now, you are aware of the concept of creating new articles (pages) in Joomla. We hope you have found the information in this tutorial useful and well explained. In case you have any additional questions on the topic, you are welcome to address them to our Support Team.