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- Herausgeber: Packt Publishing
- Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
- Sprache: Englisch
Joomla! is a content management system designed to organize and deliver content within a web site environment. Multimedia provides us with stunning interactive user experiences and wonderful design options, but it requires discipline and knowledge to utilize it effectively so that we do not alienate our audiences. If you want to display more than just text on your Joomla! pages, this book has been designed for you and is a must-read. It takes you beyond the basics of Joomla! and helps to take full advantage this powerful CMS structure to deliver media-rich web content to your site users.This book provides detailed information and all the required know-how for Joomla! administrators to create engaging media-rich Joomla! web sites. Utilizing core Joomla! features and the power of Joomla! Extensions, this step-by-step guide will show you how to include popular media elements into your web site and collaborate with external web resources.You will learn everything you need to know to present text, images, video, and audio in your content both by manually embedding content and using more automated methods. You will learn to create regular podcasts and utilize RSS to help publicize and deliver your site content.Learn about the popular Multimedia Extensions for Joomla! Learn how they benefit your CMS with additional features and how they are installed and configured. Utilize the abundance of external resources now available on the Web. Learn how your Joomla! site can interact and present web content from external resources such as YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, and Google.This book teaches all you need to know to take your standard Joomla! CMS and turn it into a feature packed and media-rich web site. It highlights the benefits of Multimedia features and warns of the accessibility issues that can arise when they are misused. Follow step-by-step tutorials for implementing popular media elements into your site and learn about the accessibility of these resources and how to utilize them effectively with accessibility in mind.
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Table of Contents
Joomla! 1.5 Multimedia
Allan Walker
Joomla! 1.5 Multimedia
Copyright © 2010 Packt Publishing
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.
Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.
Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.
First published: January 2010
Production Reference: 1250110
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd. 32 Lincoln Road Olton Birmingham, B27 6PA, UK.
ISBN 978-1-847197-70-2
www.packtpub.com
Cover Image by Filippo (<[email protected]>)
Credits
Author
Allan Walker
Reviewers
Jose Argudo
Joseph L. LeBlanc
Acquisition Editor
Rashmi Phadnis
Development Editor
Rakesh Shejwal
Technical Editor
Conrad Sardinha
Indexer
Hemangini Bari
Editorial Team Leader
Mithun Sehgal
Project Team Leader
Priya Mukherji
Project Coordinator
Ashwin Shetty
Proofreader
Cathy Cumberlidge
Graphics
Geetanjali Sawant
Production Coordinator
Aparna Bhagat
Cover Work
Aparna Bhagat
About the Author
Allan Walker grew up in New Zealand, and now lives in the United Kingdom, where he runs an online business consultancy and development company called "Amplify" (www.projectamplify.com). In recent years, Allan has been involved with a number of large-scale Joomla! projects, helping to establish Joomla! within the UK government and corporate sectors.
Allan has been a mentor for the 2009 Joomla! Google Summer of Code program, and is a member of the Joomla! Marketing Team.
When first starting to write this title, I assumed a couple of full-on weekends might break the back of the book. Nine months later, I have a better understanding of what efforts go into a project like this.
I would like to thank anyone who has contributed in some way to the development of Joomla!. The product provides a diverse solution for projects, and through the ever-growing extensions directory, most users can now configure a Joomla!-based project, rather than have to build it. It is the design and simplicity of Joomla! which leads to its success, thus allowing non-technical users to build complex projects easily.
For many of us who have based services around Joomla!, it has helped put food on the table. For this I am grateful. It is the generosity of people's time, skills, and the community support that keeps the project rolling, and Joomla!'s features improving with every release. If you are interested in helping the product and community, please see information about contributing at www.joomla.org.
For the lost evenings and weekends, my love and thanks go to my wife Georgina. Thank you for the continued support and patience.
About the Reviewers
Jose Argudo is a web developer from Valencia, Spain. After finishing his studies he started working for a web design company. Then, six years later, he decided to start working as a freelancer.
Now that some years have passed, he thinks it's the best decision he has ever taken, a decision that let him work with the tools he likes, such as Joomla!, CodeIgniter, CakePHP, jQuery, and other known open source technologies.
His desire to learn and share his knowledge has led him to be a regular reviewer of books from Packt, such as Joomla! With Flash (http://www.packtpub.com/joomla-with-flash/book), Joomla! 1.5 SEO (http://www.packtpub.com/joomla-1-5-search-engine-optimization-seo/book), Magento 1.3 Theme Design ( http://www.packtpub.com/magento-1-3-theme-design/book), or Symfony 1.3 web application development (http://www.packtpub.com/symfony-1-3-web-application-development/book).
Recently he has even published his own book, CodeIgniter 1.7, which you can also find at Packt's site (http://www.packtpub.com/improve-coding-productivity-with-codeigniter-1-7/book). If you work with PHP... take a look at it!
If you want to know more about him, you can check his site www.joseargudo.com.
To my girlfriend and to my brother, I wish we will always be together.
Joseph L. LeBlanc is a freelance Joomla! developer specializing in Joomla!, PHP, and JavaScript. Joseph can be found teaching Joomla! classes and speaking at conferences. He has authored a book on Joomla! extension programming and a Lynda.com video series on using Joomla!.
Preface
Joomla! is a Content Management System designed to organize and deliver content within a website environment.
Multimedia provides us with stunning interactive user experiences and wonderful design options, but it requires discipline and knowledge to utilize it effectively so that we do not alienate our audiences.
If you want to display more than just text on your Joomla! pages, this book has been designed for you and is a must-read. It takes you beyond the basics of Joomla! and helps to take full advantage of this powerful CMS structure to deliver media-rich web content to your site users. This book provides detailed information and all the required know-how for Joomla! administrators to create engaging, media-rich Joomla! websites. Utilizing core Joomla! features and the power of Joomla! Extensions, this step-by-step guide will show you how to include popular media elements into your website and collaborate with external web resources.
You will learn everything you need to know to present text, images, video, and audio in your content by manually embedding content, using more automated methods, and the power of specialized extensions. You will learn to create regular podcasts and utilize RSS to help publicize and deliver your site content.
Learn about the popular multimedia extensions for Joomla!; learn how they benefit your CMS with additional features, and how they are installed and configured. Utilize the abundance of external resources now available on the Web and learn how your Joomla! site can interact and present content from such sites as YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, and Google.
What this book covers
Chapter 1, Getting Started With Joomla! Multimedia introduces you to multimedia, breaks down the main elements, and is an overview of some of the things to come in following chapters. Your Joomla! Content Management System contains a number of built-in multimedia capabilities, these enriched with third-party extensions can turn your basic Joomla! CMS into a media-rich interactive user experience.
Chapter 2, Managing Your Joomla! Media tells us that one of the most important tasks when using multimedia in our Joomla! websites is the ability to upload and manage the files on your web server. In this chapter, we will look at using the built-in Joomla! Media Manager, as well as alternative methods for managing your website media and files.
Chapter 3, Text, Characters, and Fonts in Your Joomla! Site shows that text (and the styling of it) is one of the most prominent media types that has been, and still is used in website pages. Although it's such a major media element, web developers often pay little attention to this subject. In this chapter, we will highlight the use of fonts, characters, and text within your Joomla! site, and how we can not only change the site design by using another font typeface, but by doing so we can affect your site user's overall experience.
Chapter 4, Adding and Managing Image Content will provide the assistance to help utilize image content effectively within your Joomla! website, whether you need to create multimedia image galleries in your Joomla! website, or simply add images to your articles and modules.
Chapter 5, Using Audio in Your Joomla! Website highlights the use of audio in your Joomla! website. You will learn how to include powerful audio features such as audio players and podcasting capabilities into Joomla!.
Chapter 6, Using Video in Your Joomla! Website highlights the use of video media within your Joomla! website. We look at the process of embedding video content into articles, creating and maintaining video podcasts, and the powerful video solutions that third-party Joomla! Extensions provide.
Chapter 7, Collaborating With External Sources talks about how sharing of information between popular external resources, such as Twitter, Facebook, and Google, is an increasingly popular feature required by Joomla! users. Designed to extend the Joomla! Framework with new functionality, this chapter will look at the most popular collaboration extensions for Joomla! and the features they contain, as well as using good old fashioned HTML methods to embed external content into your site.
Chapter 8, Joomla! Templates and Multimedia describes how Joomla! Templates are the distinguishing factor between one Joomla! website looking just like the next. They contain the structural elements to display your Joomla! content, and deliver style and scripting information to the user's web browser. This chapter is an overview of Joomla! Templates, how they work, and how they can affect the display of multimedia content in your Joomla! site. Learn how templates can enhance multimedia capabilities, as well as how they affect the way in which your Joomla! site is displayed on mobile web devices.
Chapter 9, Joomla! Multimedia Project follows a cookbook style approach as we build a multimedia packed Joomla! website from start to finish, throwing in some of the previously mentioned techniques, as well as some new tips and tricks for good measure.
Appendix A, Extension Types and How to Install Them shows how installing extensions for Joomla! is an easy task, thanks to the design of extensions, and the Extension Manager tool that is included in Joomla!. It also shows us how to uninstall an extension.
What you need for this book
Most importantly, you'll need an installation of the latest, stable version of Joomla! 1.5, either locally or on a remote web hosting location.
To try out the techniques mentioned in this book (and follow some of the step-by-step tutorials), you will need a computer with Internet access, an HTML code editor (could even be Notepad or TextEdit), and an FTP client such as FileZilla.
Who this book is for
This book is aimed at Joomla! administrators and site developers who want to add media-rich content elements and interactive features to their site.
To get the most out of this book, you will need a basic understanding of what Joomla! 1.5 is, and how its main functions work. Regardless of your web development skill-set or level, you'll be walked through the clear, step-by-step instructions, but familiarity with a broad range of web development skills and Joomla! knowledge will allow you to gain maximum benefit from this book.
Conventions
In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text are shown as follows: "We can include other contexts through the use of the include directive."
A block of code is set as follows:
When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "Your Joomla! site Media Settings can be found by going to the Site|Global Configuration."
Note
Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.
Tip
Tips and tricks appear like this.
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Chapter 1. Getting Started with Joomla! Multimedia
At present, the use of multiple media content in web pages is evolving at an astonishing rate. Each week there are new multimedia extensions launched in the http://extensions.joomla.org extensions directory. Launching almost as quickly are new social / media web portals, offering the ability to interact and stream media content into your site pages. Some of these popular portals are defining new multimedia features and setting new standards for website user interactions.
Your Joomla! Content Management System has lots of great built-in multimedia capabilities; these enriched with third-party extensions and streaming media sources can help evolve your default Joomla! website into a powerful media-rich interactive experience for your visitors.
This chapter is an introduction to multimedia, and how Joomla! interacts with these media elements.
What is multimedia?
The definition of multimedia is an ambiguous description, loosely used to define multiple types of media that are integrated and used with each other. Multimedia surrounds us in our daily lives and is utilized in many areas including marketing, advertising, art, medicine, engineering, and more!
Examples of multimedia can range from a simple mixture of two media types, such as a book containing text and images, through to an advanced interactive video game including images, video, text, and audio.
As the description suggests, "multimedia" contains different types of media content, and these different media elements can usually be defined into categories.
Categories of multimedia
From an academic approach, multimedia is often defined in two main categories: linear and non-linear. Hypermedia is the third definition, and although often viewed as its own classification, it falls under the non-linear multimedia category.
Linear
Linear multimedia content generally progresses as a presentation, without the requirement for the viewer to interact or navigate. Examples of linear multimedia would be a blockbuster movie at a cinema, or a television show.
Non-linear
Non-linear multimedia content is a media category which allows the user to control and progress through their own experience. Examples of non-linear multimedia could be an interactive video game or a computer based learning application.
Hypermedia
Hypermedia is a member of the non-linear category. It is an extension of the term "Hypertext", meaning linkable text that a user can click on and navigate to another area.
Hypermedia may contain text, images, video, and audio content that is linked. Hypermedia is the fundamental element for web pages due to its navigational properties. The best example of hypermedia is the World Wide Web (WWW) itself, which contains millions of web pages offering inter-linked media content.
Website multimedia
Website multimedia describes multiple forms of media and content that is delivered electronically to the end user via a web server, or website page. Website multimedia generally falls under the non-linear multimedia classification, as more often than not, it allows the end user navigational and control opportunities. The types of media used on websites can include text, images, audio, and video, but can also contain a number of other interactive features which fall under the "multimedia" description.
Throughout this book we will be looking at these multimedia elements, and how to display them effectively in our Joomla! website.
Various types of website multimedia
The Internet started with simple textual content. With the implementation of HTML and other coding languages, and the evolution of web browsers and connection speeds, media-rich applications and websites are now present everywhere on the World Wide Web.
Multimedia has directly influenced the growth of the Internet, just as the Internet has influenced multimedia. The expansion of information online is now becoming the most important multimedia vehicle. Web users now have the ability to control the delivery of data as they wish, and user interactivity is now a key process used in popular websites.
As mentioned earlier in this chapter, multimedia is the combination of multiple forms of content. These can include text, images, audio, video as well as scripting and numerous other site features, which help site users with navigation and interactivity.
What is Joomla!?
Joomla! is an award-winning open source Content Management System (CMS), enabling you to build powerful database driven website applications.
Joomla! allows you to construct, organize, and manage your website content easily. Joomla! itself is a rapidly evolving product, as are the team and community supporting its growth:
Joomla! creates pages which are publically viewable and also contains a web driven administration area, accessible via a login screen:
Joomla! is utilized all over the world to power intranet and Internet websites of all shapes and sizes.
Examples of where Joomla! is used are:
Joomla! has become a favored CMS to many people. Some of the reasons for its fast and continued growth include:
Including multimedia in your Joomla! site
Just like a hand-coded website, your Joomla! website can easily contain multimedia site content. In fact, the Joomla! CMS is constructed to easily create, manage, and present multiple content types, allowing you to publish these on your site pages.
The approach of including multimedia material into a software driven web framework (such as the Joomla! CMS) can be different than that of a hand-coded website. The media elements used will need to be included and deployed in a way conforming to the Joomla! CMS framework.
The Joomla! CMS web platform is designed for content management and to be as lightweight as possible in additional clutter. Out of the box it does a great job at managing content, but the application framework offers the ability for thousands of developers around the world to contribute additional features for the base CMS. These are called Joomla! Extensions.
Joomla! Extensions are third-party products which have been written to enhance the core Joomla! capabilities. They come in all shapes and sizes and can add powerful functionality to your default Joomla! There are thousands of Joomla! Extensions available in the Joomla! Extension Directory (JED) located at http://extensions.joomla.org as well as other Joomla! resources available on the Internet.
Multimedia extensions contribute to a large section of the JED, and we will be highlighting some of the most powerful and useful extensions in the following chapters.
Multimedia use in your Joomla! CMS
A powerful feature of the Joomla! CMS is its ability to organize and manage content. This content can be text, images, documents, audio, video, and anything else you can think up to deliver to your site users.
Joomla ships with its own "Media Manager" tool. This allows the ability to upload, organize, and delete different types of media to the images directory, or subdirectories if you wish. The media manager offers a thumbnail view as well as a detailed view of the file's properties, such as name, file size, and so on.
The purpose of the built-in media manager is to allow site administrators to manage media content from the website pages, without the requirement for File Transfer Protocol (FTP) access to the server. As a developer, using FTP is an essential transmission method, but when handing over a Joomla! based website over to the end clients, the need to restrict such access is commonplace.
Once files are in place on the web server, things start to get interesting. We have our media on the server, all ready to go, and now what? Before we get too much further, now is the time to highlight Joomla! Templates.
A Joomla! Template is a number of files within the Joomla! CMS which control the presentation of the content. Templates allow you to obtain a completely different "look and feeling" on your site pages. When combined with images, a Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) and the CMS database content templates contribute to the overall design and layout of your website.
When producing website pages, often the location of main elements will stay the same; these might be menus, banners, and so on. These pages will probably also require the same logo, colors, and styles, which is where our template and cascading style sheets come in handy. Templates also have the important role of allowing us to publish certain Joomla! content into specific areas of the template.
The CMS and template approach offers the ability to not only deliver our multiple media content in different positions around our website template, but we also have the flexibility of showing the content we want, when we want to. We will be devoting a whole chapter towards Joomla! Templates and how they can enhance our site multimedia features.
For now, it has been important to highlight the fact that "out of the box" Joomla! seems to offer basic web content management. With knowledge of the product as well as additional extensions and configurations, it can provide a stunning web solution that is brimming with multimedia features.
Text
Text is made up of letters, numbers, characters, words, and symbols. These put together form words, which convey an idea, belief, or fact. Text is the most widely used form of communication and is considered a fundamental element of visual multimedia.
Text is used everywhere on websites, it is even used in parts of the site that many users do not see. An example of this would be the HTML source code for the website pages:
Text can be used on page headings, main content, captions and help tips, documentation, error reporting, basically everywhere across your website.
A font is a particular style of text and plays a major role in the look and feel of modern websites. Fonts are used all over the Web now to style and define text. Without fonts, all of the text we see would have the same look to it, making things very uninteresting.
In modern websites, the text and the type of style you would like applied to it is usually defined using a stylesheet. Within a stylesheet document, it is possible to set font and text properties. These properties can apply to small or large areas of text used on your site pages:
Images
Next to written text, images are probably one of the most utilized types of media in websites.
Images not only communicate information effectively (the old saying "a picture tells a thousand words"), but they are an important element of design, marketing, and branding which may distinguish your website from others.
The definition of an "Image" can often be used to describe the following elements:
Images can be placed on web pages as a singular item to complement text, or they can be placed together to form galleries, which play a major multimedia role on some websites:
Images can be created, edited, and saved into numerous formats. Some of these formats are more applicable for use on the Web than others.
For more detailed image information, please view Chapter 4, Adding and Managing Image Content.
Audio
Audio (or sound as we know it) can be used to inspire human emotion and deliver information. Audio is a major element of human entertainment, as well as a contributing element to videos, gaming, and other multimedia presentations.
The use of audio can add interest, be informative, and entertain. An often overlooked fact is that audio can also provide an interface for visually impaired users to attain the information they require:
Internet is now an audio-rich delivery mechanism, with audio being easily downloaded from websites and application portals. Most modern computer setups now include speakers, which depending on the way you look at it, has helped the evolution of audio usage within web pages. Possibly the equation goes the other way and greater audio usage on web pages has specified the requirements for computer users to need speakers.
All of that said, gone are the dancing Santas that used to load into web pages, and play a nasty Christmas MIDI file with no volume control! Now we are talking about websites containing "podcasts on demand", and "dial up your own personal radio station playlists", and impressive audio players including time counts and player controls.
Like images, sound files can be created and saved in many formats, including AAC, MP3, MIDI, WAV, as well as many others. Choosing the correct audio format to use on your website is imperative for the efficient delivery of the audio content to your site users.
Video
Video can be defined as a sequence of still images put together and displayed on a screen to form the illusion of motion:
Video is one of the most powerful multimedia types, as it incorporates both images and audio. It can also contain text in the form of titles and descriptions.
Video has been known as one of the most demanding media types to work with due to the overheads of processing and working with large file sizes. Transmission and storage of video has often made it an unsuitable medium to use in certain conditions. However, things are changing rapidly, and video is now often linked to or "streamed" into an application, rather than the files hosted themselves.
Video can be saved in a variety of formats and compression types. Some of these will be very applicable, and others you should stay clear of for website use. More information about working with video can be found in Chapter 5, Using Video within Your Joomla! Website.
Multimedia and web accessibility
Website accessibility means that people who have disabilities can understand, interact, and navigate through web pages.
One of the main principles of web accessibility is to design websites and web software, which is flexible to meet different users' situations, preferences, and environments.
With the Web becoming an increasingly important resource for the sharing of information, many users are now going online for reference: health, commerce, government, recreation, media, and many other resources. It is essential that people wanting to utilize the Web have equal access and equal opportunities to these resources:
Another important consideration when building a website is that web accessibility has legal obligations in certain countries. Besides the important consideration to all of your site users, there could also be legal reasons why accessibility should be considered when building and maintaining your website.
Can a multimedia website be accessible?
It is possible for a multimedia rich website to also be an accessible website. However, the level of accessibility options you choose to implement into your website are decisions you need to make for your project. The decision basis will often include factors such as target audiences, country legalities, and project time and budgets.
There are a number of accessibility standards used around the Web, which provide accessibility guidelines and checklists to benchmark against. Examples of these are:
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) have become a world standard for web accessibility, and falls into three 'compliance' categories:
A website must comply with all checkpoints in Level 1 otherwise one or more user groups will find it impossible to access information or functionality.
AA (also known as Level 2)A website should comply with all checkpoints in Level 2 otherwise one or more groups will experience significant barriers to access information or functionality.
AAA (also known as Level 3)A website may comply with all checkpoints in Level 3 otherwise one or more groups will find it somewhat difficult to access information in the document.
Section 508
Section 508 is a standard created by the US Federal Government. It contains 16 checkpoints for testing your website against. The first 11 checkpoints are exactly equivalent to the WCAG A (Level 1) guidelines. The last five checkpoints are partly based on the WCAG guidelines, but are more extensive. For further information about this standard, please search for Section 508 on the Net.
Site accessibility features are best considered at the start of a website project, and then having these addressed during development. It is much easier to take this approach rather than address this issue retrospectively. Fixing invalid site code and creating title or alt tags can consume hours of working time and often outweigh any budgets that have been put aside to make your content accessible.
There are a number of simple processes you can put in place to make your website more accessible. Trying to attain a higher level of accessibility will of course require a greater investment of time.
You may come across situations where the type of content you wish to offer on your site pages will never be accessible to certain audiences. This is where decisions must be made whether you make that content available in alternative formats. An example of this may be to include captions when playing a video, or to offer an audio version of text documents.
Throughout the development of your website, numerous software and online evaluation tools can be used to help determine the accessibility of your website pages.
An exhaustive list of these can be found on the Web, or at sites such as http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/tools/complete.
More information on web accessibility
For further information and tools which can help you make your site accessible, please visit the following resources:
Web browser support for multimedia
The Web was originally a text only medium, with browsers only being able to display text in a single font, size, and color.
With the explosion of the Internet, website browsers can now view images, play audio and video. A further development of the World Wide Web has been the evolution of "streaming media" which allows the media playback to begin without the files being fully downloaded first.
There are many web browsers available. Some of these are suitable for specific purposes and others pride themselves on being the most lightweight, or the fastest browser available.
Most browsers have built-in media capabilities, which is an acknowledgement of the growth of website multimedia. Other browsers require plugins to play multimedia content. Plugins are programs, which extend your browser capabilities by making making them compatible with additional media types. When your browser encounters a multimedia file, it hands over the data to the plugin in order to play or display that file.
You may have heard of the plugin "Adobe Flash Player", which enables you to play Adobe movies through your web browser, or the "Windows Media Player" browser plugin, which plays streaming audio, video, and presentations saved in Microsoft formats. Without these plugins installed into the web browser, this media content on website pages cannot be effectively viewed:
This highlights the importance of offering multimedia material in numerous formats, or if that is not an option, to provide the site users with clear instructions about the media trying to load, and when possible, where to go and find a plugin in order to play it.
Summary
In this chapter, we have looked at the terminology "multimedia" and how this description contains numerous types of media content.
We have highlighted the Joomla! CMS platform and recognized its built-in multimedia capabilities, as well as mentioned how these can be enhanced using Joomla! Extensions. As extensions enhance the default Joomla! installation, they will receive a healthy coverage throughout the chapters.
It is important to note website accessibility in this chapter, as it is much easier to consider and integrate web accessibility into the start of website development, rather than trying to address accessibility issues retrospectively. More information about accessibility and how it relates to specific media, is covered within each chapter.
Chapter 2. Managing Your Joomla! Media
One of the most important tasks when using multimedia in our Joomla! websites is the ability to upload and manage the files on your web server. Once uploaded, this content may not require further attention, or you might need the ability for constant management and file revisions.
In this chapter, we will look at using the built-in Joomla! Media Manager, as well as alternative methods for managing our website media and files. This chapter includes:
Overview of the Joomla! Media Manager
The Media Manager is a useful file management tool, which is included in the Joomla! CMS.
The Media Manager tool is located within your administration area and can be accessed by using the "Quick Link" icon on your Control Panel, or by going to the Menu: Site|Media Manager:
One of the main purposes of the Media Manager is to easily allow site administrators, and frontend users with permissions, the ability to upload and manage files for their Joomla! site. In circumstances where you do not have FTP (File Transfer Protocol) access to your web server, the media manager might be the only available tool with which you can add new images, videos, documents, and other files to your website.
Uploading media using the Media Manager
During initial site development, there are usually regular requirements to upload new files to your Joomla! site. Depending on the content for your website, this process can decrease as you move into the maintenance stages, or stay as a requirement for sites which are updated often.
Media Manager settings
As with all software applications, the Media Manager tool contains a set of predefined settings. Before using the Media Manager for the first time, it is recommended that you take a look at these as they offer the ability to customize media handling for your website. Depending on your file requirements, adjusting the media configuration settings now may save you time and effort down the line.
Your Joomla! site Media Settings can be found by going to Site|Global Configuration. Once the page has loaded, you will then need to click on the link named System.
The Media Settings area not only allows you to adjust settings related to the Media Manager, but also contains general settings for the media used throughout your Joomla! website. Information regarding each setting is as follows:
