The Joomla Category Manager

What is a Category?

A Category is a collection of Articles.
It is in the middle in the content hierarchy Sections -> Categories -> Articles.
For example, a website might have Sections called Animals and Plants. Within the Animals Section, the website might have Categories such as Birds and Mammals.
Within the Birds Category, the website might have Articles such as Parrots and Sparrows.
Categories are maintained using the Category Manager which can be reached in via the Joomla Administration panel (Back-end) by clicking on Content -> Category Manager.

Creating a Category

Log in to the administrative backend of any Joomla1.5 website, and you will see a screen as shown in Diagram 1.

Diagram 1
Click on the Category Manager icon in the Control Panel or click on Content -> Category Manager as shown in Diagram 2.

Diagram 2
The Category Manager screen opens. This is where you can edit existing Categories and/or create new ones.
Click on the New button at the top-right hand corner to create a new category as shown in Diagram 3.

Diagram 3
Enter the following details for the section as shown in Diagram 4:
Title: The Title for the category. This may or may not display on the page, depending on the parameter values you choose.
Alias: The internal name of the category. Normally, you can leave this blank and Joomla! will fill in a default value. The default value is the Title or Name in lower case and with dashes instead of spaces. You may enter the Alias manually. The Alias should consist of lowercase letters with no blank spaces. You can use a hyphen (-) to indicate blank spaces. The Alias will be used in the URL when SEF is activated.
Published: Whether or not this category is published. Select Yes or No from the radio button group to set the Published state for this item.
Section: It is the section for this Category. Select the Section from the drop-down list box. This is a required field.
Category Order: The order this Category will display in the Category Manager. Use the drop-down list box to change the Order. You can select 'First' or 'Last' to make this the first or last Category. You can also select a Category from the list. In this case, the current Category will be listed just after the Category you select. The Order can also be changed in the Category Manager screen.
Access Level: This determines who can access to this category. The options are:
Public: Everyone has access
Registered: Only registered users have access
Special: Only users with author status or higher have access
Enter the desired level using the drop-down list box.
Image: You can use Image for this Page. Image must be located in the folder "images/stories".
Image Position: You can give position of the Image on the page. Select Left or Right from the drop-down list box.
Description: The description for the category. Section and Category descriptions for Articles may be shown on web pages, depending on the parameter settings. These descriptions are entered using the same editor that is used for Articles. Note that Section and Category descriptions may not be edited from the front end.
In order to save the changes click on the Save icon at the top-right hand corner as shown in Diagram 4.

Diagram 4
Finally, the category is created under section as shown in Diagram 5.

Diagram 5

Manage Categories:

Unpublish a category

To unpublish a category, select the category you want to Unpublish as shown in Diagram 6.

Diagram 6
After selecting the category, you can either click the Unpublish icon at the top right hand corner or click on the icon next to the selected category under the Published column as shown in Diagram 6.
After being unpublished the category will look as shown in Diagram 7.

Diagram 7

Publish a category

To publish a category select the category you want to publish as shown in Diagram 8.

Diagram 8
After selecting the category you can either click the Publish icon at the top right hand corner or click on the icon next to the selected category as shown in Diagram 8.
After being published a category will look as shown in Diagram 9.

Diagram 9

Copy a Category

To copy a Category to another Section select the Category that has to be copied as shown in the Diagram 10.

Diagram 10
After clicking on the Copy icon at the top right hand corner you will be prompted to select a section. Select the section to be bounded to the category and then click on Save as shown in Diagram 11 and Diagram 12.

Diagram 11

Diagram 12
A new category will be added to the Category Manager by the name Copy of <category name> as shown in Diagram 13.

Diagram 13

Edit a Category

To Edit a category, select on the category that has to be edited and click on the Edit icon at the top right hand corner. The Category: [Edit] window will open as shown in the Diagram 14. Edit the details and then click on Save.

Diagram 14

Delete a Category

To delete a Category select the Category that has to be deleted and then click on the Delete icon at the top right hand corner as shown in Diagram 15. The selected Category will be deleted.

Diagram 15