Menu Item Manager

The second part of Joomla's powerful menu system is the Menu Item Manager.
Which links to articles components and external links. 

The Joomla menu system in this case does something most others don't.
It lets you control the page layout type for articles and configure the article page parameters.
Like links, article rating and override page formatting via a CSS Page Suffix.

It's tough to explain the menu system with out first going over how the content is organized in the article system and other components.
It's kind of the chicken before the egg thing. I'm not going to go into full detail about the content organization in this part but just give you a quick overview of the concepts.

The core article system for Joomla the com_content is made up of a few parts that can be found in Joomla's Back-end administrator in the content menu.

Section Manager
Category Manager
Front Page Manager
Article Manager
Articles Trash Manager

Now Joomla articles need a structure for the most part.
Which is made up of Sections and Categories so both the Section Manager and the Category Manager take care of that Job.
Below is a simple chart that gives you a visual of what I'm talking about.

Sections
    | Categories
             | Articles

So if we where making a website about Automobiles we would have a section about Automobiles and then categories Sports cars and Trucks.
This is a simple example you can have as many sections and categories as you like.
Sections are top level and categories are dependent on a section.

The content are your articles and they are mostly categorized by Section and Category.



Most other of Joomla's core components only use categories not sections.

Now after this small insight into Joomla's article system structure you can start to understand one of the powers of the Joomla
menu system.

In Joomla's Menu Item Manager when one starts to make a link for a menu item.
The following Menu Item interface would come up.


The above image shows the default core components in Joomla if there where any other third party components they would also show up in the Menu Item interface.

In the Menu Item image below I have click on the "Articles" link to expand the article link type choices to add a article to my menu.


Joomla has many choices of links for articles but its does a bit more.
If you take a closer look there are choices for categories, sections, Article layout etc.
These choices are for the most part how Joomla will display your articles page layout.

Now in the first paragraph on Sections & Categories with the top down chart and how articles are assigned to a section then to a category etc.
Well some of the choices here let you link to a single article or to a section or category with many articles.
That's were article assignment to section and categories comes in.

There are two basic but powerful article layouts which are Blog and List.

Blog Layout
Blog layout will show a listing of all Articles based on which link type you choose.
These are Frontpage,Section and Category.
All of these use very close layouts which are controlled via menu link parameters.

I have not mention the FrontPage manager but its the simplest of the three blog layout styles to describe because it only shows articles that were assigned to the Frontpage.
Every website has a home page in Joomla its called the Frontpage.
Joomla's Homepage or Frontpage is very flexible it can have one or many articles assigned to it.
Now most homepages have more then just one article assign to it.

The Blog Layout page display format for Joomla is set and controlled via a menu item link an its parameters.
I know this is hard to think of at first.
But think about it.
How do you get to a web page or section of a website? Thru a link right!

So how cool would it be to able to change the layout of a section without having to
design a full layout for that section every time. Well that's what Joomla does with
Blog Layout style and its parameters.

Now in the image below your looking at a Joomla article that its in edit mode.
In this cutout interface there are a few settings.
The ones I'm going to talk about right now are the Section, Category and Front Page.


Almost every article is assigned a Section and Category this does not mean you have to. But for 99.99% of the cases articles are.
With the yellow arrows you can see that this article is assigned to the Section "About Joomla!" and the Category "The CMS".
Now if you look above Category you will see the Front Page radio button choices for yes or no.

Now Joomla articles all go to the same place the Article Manager but we need a way organize our articles now
sections and categories work well for most information and makes it easier to find our articles etc.
But we are running a web site here and all websites need a Home page and we like to put our latest articles on it to keep the site fresh.
So Joomla makes it easier for us by having another way to ID articles that we have set to be shown in the Homepage.

Basically we have three ways to ID and organize many articles.
Which are by Section, Category and or if there on the FrontPage.
Now we need a way of showing one or more articles.
Here is where the Blog Layout type comes in.

In the image below you will see that only 3 links in the Menu item assignment can have Blog Layouts.


All three have the very similar Parameter settings.
Now I'm only going to show the FrontPage for now to keep this as short as possible.

There are four Parameters settings to a Joomla menu link item for most article component types.

Parameters - Basic


The Basic Parameter for a Blog Layout is a table layout yes its a table.

Leading:
The leading article spans cross all columns you can have as many as you like and they stack like rows.

Intro:
How many articles you would like to start the section off with the above image is set to four.

Columns:
This setting is great you can set 1 or more columns the above picture is set to 2.
The columns setting also divides the number of intro articles into the number of columns.

Links:
If you have a lot of articles but only want to show a few.
This setting is a plus gives a user unordered list of more available articles.
At the end of the current intro articles.

Parameters - Advanced


Category Order:
This setting sorts out the category other.

Primary Order:
This setting sorts out the article order.

Pagination:
This sets the next and previous arrows page thru the next set of articles.

Pagination Results:
1 of 2 pages number of page sets.

Show a Feed Link:
whether to show RSS feeds for the links articles.

Parameters - Component
A word about the next two Parameters Component & System these settings are found in all article link types.
The Parameters - Component settings are for the article system on a Blog layout they give you some clear
options as to what your setting.

Now there is one more thing that we are looking at that you maybe asking your self right now.
What is the "Use Global " and where do I set them?

The Joomla Article Manager as almost everything in Joomla has Parameter settings as well..
These are called Global parameters because they are applied to every article by default if not overridden by a
Menu Item link parameter.

The first cut out of article managers article global config you see that there almost
identical settings so I'll only discuss the menu parameter.

 Article Global Configuration


Menu Item link Component Article Override



Show Unauthorized Links:
Shows Articles links to articles that are for registered users.
If clicked and the user is not logged-in the user will be asked to.

Show Article Title:
Show or hides article title.

Title Linkable:
Make article title linkable to see full article.

Show Intro Text:
Show or hide intro text to article.

Section Name:
Show or hide article assigned section name.

Section Title Linkable:
Make article title section title linkable to see full section.

Category Title:
Show or hide article assigned category title.

Category Title Linkable:
Make article title category title linkable to see full category.

Author Name:
Prints outs article authors name under the article title.

Created Date and Time:
Prints outs article Date & Time name under the article authors name.

Modified Date and Time:
Shows last time Modified Date and Time under the article intro text.

Show Navigation:
Shows a navigation function between articles.

Read more... Link:
Show or hide link to full article if the article is longer then the intro text.

Article Rating/Voting:
This setting enables a article voting system.

Icons:
Show or hide icon.

PDF Icon:
Show or hide PDF icon.

Print Icon:
Show or hide Print icon.

E-mail Icon:
Show or hide E-mail  icon.

Hits:
Show or hide hits on article.


Parameters - System
The system parameters are also the same for all article types
see description for more detail on settings.


Page Title:
This setting lets you override the menu text link.
For the layout page document.

Show Page Title:
Show or hide page layout title.

Page Class Suffix:
Great feature lets you add different CSS to a menus layout page.

Menu Image:
Can add icon image to the right or left of a menu item link.
Icon most be in your joomla_rootimagesstories folder.
This setting also has to be enabled in the menus module parameters >Legacy Parameters>Show Menu Icons

SSL Enabled:
Add SSL or HTTPS support.

List Layout
Table layout will give you a tabular list of all the titles in that particular Section or Category Or Archive.
This is the other type of Joomla default article layout both have some what similar settings but are different in some ways.

In the image below you will see that only 3 links in the Menu item assignment can have List Layouts.



Section Layout:
Technically this is not a Table List layout but its surrounded by a table.

What a "Section Layout" looks like.


Section Layout Parameters Basic

Section:
Select which section to display from your sections.

Description:
Via the Section Manager you can add a description to each section.
This setting will display that description.

Description Image:
This selection image is also available via the Section Manager.
This setting will display that image.

Category List - Section:
Shows a list of all the categories assigned to this section.

Empty Categories in Section:
Show or hides empty in other words categories that don't have articles assigned to them.

# Category Items:
Shows the number of articles per category.

Category Description:
Via the Category Manager you can add a description to each section.
This setting will display that description.

Section List Layout Parameters Advanced


Orders:
Overrides the default category order.

Article Order:
Overrides the default article order.

Show a Feed Link:
Show RSS feed

Category List Layout
What a "Category List Layout " looks like.



Category List Layout Parameters Basic


Category:
Choose which category from all your categories.

Table Headings:
Show or hide the table header titles.

Date Column:
Show or hide the article creation date.

Date Format:
You can change the default date format. Uses PHP date format.

Filter:
Show or hide the filter.

Filter Field:
Choose which column to filter by.

Category List Layout Parameters Advanced

Primary Order:
Overrides the default article order.

Pagination:
This sets the next and previous arrows page thru the next set of articles.

Display Select:
Shows a number of articles selected by the drop down menu.

Show a Feed Link:
Show RSS feed


And lastly is the Archive List View
It adds a filter to the top of of the page. Where you search by article title and filter
out by date as well including the number of results per page set.

Archive List table Output


I'm not going to show the parameter setting here because
you have seen them few a times before to keep this a short as possible.

I hope you now see the power of the Joomla menu system.
The funny part is there's more!
Next I'll discuss the Menu Module Parameters for the control how menus display on your site.