Kudos! You finally have your own Joomla portal! You are blown away with its intuitive interface and user-friendly navigation. And the best part is it's letting you be your own boss! But is that enough? Will a simple portal with handful of features suffice you? Don't you wish to have something out of the box? Of course, you do! So, what are you waiting for? It's time for you to customize your site in a manner that it gets equipped with some of the most advanced features. And how will you do so? Simple, just incorporate the 5 elements listed below, into your Joomla site and make it ready to woo your visitors. Have a look.
1. Menu Manager
Handling menus can be gruesome if you don't have a manager in place. Remember, menus are merely a collection of links which inform your Joomla site about the articles they are pointing towards. A Menu manager helps you in assigning modules to particular pages, instead of showing them all on a single page or not showing them at all.
2. Article Manager
Articles are the main elements which comprise the content for the web pages of any Joomla site, and are often referred to as 'pages'. So, as soon as you create a new page on your Joomla website, the first thing you must do is to create an 'article'. Since Joomla administrator will decide the way information shows up on your site, installing an article manager is one of the first things you ought to do.
3. Module Manager
In a Joomla portal modules can be anything, ranging from pictures and texts to forms and links. Any kind of information which needs to be moved around to different sections of the site will be eligible to be a module. Modules allow you to share more information about a particular web page without making any changes to the content displayed in the main content section. Usually these are displayed at different module positions such as right, left, top, bottom etc. Moreover, even menus are considered to be modules and you have the option of displaying modules in the 'main' content.
4. User Manager
As and when you make any minor changes to your portal, it's not necessary that all users are able to witness it. In order to restrict the access of users in your site, you need a User Manager. It lets you temporarily restrict the access level of users. This means if you wish to make certain content available to only a handful of users, you have the option of restricting the access of that content to certain registered users. And when the content is ready to be shared with everyone else, you can make the access level public again. Setting access level is simplified with a user manager in place.
5. Plug-in Manager
Plug-ins play a pivotal role in extending the functionality of a simple Joomla portal. The community offers innumerable plug-ins which can aid you in making your site more user-friendly and highly functional. A Plug-in manager helps you in keeping track of these plug-ins and activating and deactivating them as and when you require.
So the picture is pretty clear now. If you want to awe your visitors with the features and capabilities of your site, you need to have the aforementioned elements in place. Are you finding this not to be your cup of tea? No worries! You can always hire an offshore Joomla development company to aid you with the entire process of incorporating these in your web portal.
About Author: John Pitt is a senior web consultant, who sees interest in helping his clients in offshore Joomla development. Additionally, he also suggests his clients to hire Joomla developers on long-term basis.