Working with Download files on your Joomla based Website Your website runs using a web application called Joomla. Joomla is able to support addons software in the form of extensions from a variety of software developers, each of whom write specific code to make your website do very particular tasks. These extensions add value to a website by increasing its usability, making look better or adding specific services to extend how the website works. The different types of extensions are: Components

These are essentially what you see in the "main" portion of a web page and only one component can sit on a page. Components frequently have sophisticated back-end management tools to allow managers to modify how they behave on a page. Modules

In contrast to components, any number of modules can appear on a single page. Modules typically make up the elements of a sidebar or content menus. Modules complement the content contained in a component and are not intended to be the main substance of a page. Plug-Ins

When a piece of programming code is needed throughout the website, it is usually implemented as a plug-in. Plug-ins are commonly used to format the output of a component or module when a page is built. Websites in schools commonly have one or more of these extensions in use and one such component in use on your website is the one used to allow visitors to download documents stored on the website. This could be done very simply using unattractive text links but, as is often the case, more “graphical” ideas always seem easier to use. As such, the Joomla Website for your school uses the PhocaDownload extension. This component is very powerful and allows you to perform, amongst many things, the following tasks:    

Create “Sections” to associate with files Create “Categories” to further subdivide how files are stored Upload “Files” and choose whether to ‘publish’ them immediately or at a future time, and also to set the file to ‘unpublish’ itself at a further date. Allow visitors to ‘Preview’ the file if it is provided as an Acrobat PDF format file

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Describe the file so visitors can see if the file they might download is exactly what they are looking for.

This guide will help you appreciate the relevance of Sections, Categories, Files and how these can be used to show individual or groups of files on a web page. So we’ll start with a scenario and then we’ll run through the steps to reach the end goal. We’ll include some screen shots for you to follow as well. You will find it useful at this point to log into the back-end of your website to follow the guide more easily. Log into the back end by browsing to http://www.bridgewater.northants.sch.uk/administrator Once logged in, choose the “Components” item from the menu across the top of the Control Panel:

From the Components menu, click on the “Phoca Download” link:

Note that you can also see a number of sub-options in the menu. If you know exactly where you are going, you can click directly onto that option. For now, we’ll assume you clicked on the main “Phoca Download” link, you’ll see the following screen:

For this first part of the guide, we only need concern ourselves with ‘Files’ ‘Sections’ and ‘Categories’… but not in that order! We ought to start with Sections…

Sections A section is like a filing cabinet. You can have as many sections in your download system as you want and these might help in partitioning off your files later. So, just as you might have more than one filing cabinet in the office, one each for different areas of content management, on the website, you can, if you wish, have a number of different sections. On the Bridgewater site, we have (at the first release), two Sections. Click on the “Sections” icon and refer to the screen shot below:

You can see that there are two Sections, once called “Public Web Documents” and the other called “Year Group Files”. Note the “Published” column where there are ticks. The tick indicates that each Section is published or ‘live’. If you click on the tick, you will see it change to a red X icon, indicating the chosen Section is no longer being published. Any documents associated with a section that is unpublished will not be visible on the website. This is akin to locking the filing cabinet so no one can see what is inside it. The default is for the Sections both to be published.

Order Column This is a simple feature that allows you to arrange the list of Sections when you choose them later on. By default, Sections will be shown in the order you create them. If you want to reorganise them in another way (alphabetically), you can do so. Normally you might leave this column untouched.

Access Column This column indicates who can see the files associated with the chosen Section. Unless needed, you will normally set a Section to accessible to the “Public” audience. You might however think about creating a Section and associate it with “Registered” visitors – only those how are logged in such as staff will see documents in this Section.

Creating or Editing a Section If you click on an existing Section (it’s a weblink), it will open it in Edit mode. The screen below is a reflection of such an action (the appearance is pretty much identical if you need to create a New Section.

To set up a basic Section, you only need to complete the following fields:

Title – Give the Section a user friendly title to reflect what is contained within Alias – Leave this blank, the system will fill it in for you. Pubished – Set this to YES Access Level – Ensure this is set to “Public” (unless you really want the Section to have some special rights). Here are other fields but in the main they are note used often at the Section level on a school site. You could however give the Description field (at the bottom of the screen but cut off in the image above) to tell people a little about the Section. It’s a little like putting a sheet of paper on the side of your filing cabinet saying “This cabinet contains all curriculum related forms, documents and supporting files”. Simple as that! Now, let’s look at Categories. Move back to the Phoca Download Control Panel and click “Categories”

Categories Using our filing cabinet analogy, a “Category” is like a “Manilla Folder”. You can have as many Categories as you wish but you cannot (currently) but a folder within a folder [a Category cannot live inside another Category]. Like Sections, Categories can be unpublished to allow you to ‘hide’ files associated with such a Category and you can also sort the order of the Categories as well as choose which Access levels they have. Note that the Category list also shows you which Section the Category is linked to (in other words, what filing cabinet is the folder stored in). Have a look at the screenshot below to see these columns.

When you click on a Category link, you will see the following screen which is rather similar to the Sections Edit screen:

To set up a basic Category, you only need to complete the following fields:

Title – Give the Category a user friendly title to reflect what is contained within Alias – Leave this blank, the system will fill it in for you. Section – A pull-down list that shows you a choice of all possible Sections. The example shows that the Category “Current Newsletter” is associated with the “Public Web Documents” Section.

Pubished – Set this to YES Access Level – Ensure this is set to “Public” (unless you really want the Category to have some special rights). You can leave the other fields as their default settings but it may be useful to give the Category a “Description”. The example in the image below shows we have created a Category Description that reflects what is in this Category. We will see this in use later when we create a page that uses the Category for its contents.

Now, we’ll look at the process of working with Files. Move back to the Phoca Download Control Panel and click “Files”

Files So far we have the created the filing cabinets (Sections) and the folders (Categories) so now we only have to put the files in place. An important part of the Download experience is to give the user a consistent file format. To be sure this happens, no matter what the source of the file is Word, PowerPoint, Excel etc. - you are strongly recommended to convert all source files to Adobe Acrobat (PDF). I will assume this is understood.

Now we get to the task of uploading files, associating them with Categories and Sections and setting them up to look good on the website. The following tasks are, I should stress, the bare minimum settings for any downloadable content. First, familiarise yourself with the screen shot below which is the Files list, showing a large number of PDF documents. Let’s analyse what is there and then we’ll look at setting up a new file.

The screen shot shows the Phoca Download Files list, it has an number of columns each of which is very useful to know about and use. Let’s explore this first.

Filter Box – When you have many dozens of files, you can type in all or part of a file name and by pressing the “Go” button, you can slim the list down to only the file(s) you are interested in. See the screen shot below for an example of the filer in use.

In this example, we used the text “news” as the filter. Note how the system has returned only those files with the text “news” in its title. Only the title is searched so don’t bother trying to filter a proper filename! To get all files back in the list, click on the “Reset” button.

Tick Box Column – Use this to select one or more files (see image below). When you select one or more boxes (click in a box for it to be a tick mark), then you can perform actions using the top set of icons in the Phoca Download page.

In this example above, two files have been selected. Now, look at the top of the Phoca Download page at these icons:

If you have one or more file(s) ticked and you click on one of the icon buttons above, then the following actions will ensue:

Publish : This button will cause the selected files to be published (if they were already unpublished) and so will show them on a webpage.

Unpublish : This button will unpublish the selected published files (to hide them on a webpage) Authorize : If a file was uploaded through the front end of the Joomla Website (something that can be done but we don’t do it in schools very often), then those files are not authorised automatically. An administrator must log into the back end control panel and click on the “Authorize” button to make the file visible.

Unauthorize: An alternative way to hide a file from the website. Unauthorising a file is akin to unpublishing it. Note: Files must be published AND authorised to be seen on the website.

Clone: The standard arrangement is that a file can only be associated with one category. Sometimes you may need to put one file in two categories (just as you might want a copy of a document in two folders). The Clone button allows you to duplicate the selected file and then edit it to associate it with a different Category! This is quite useful as it means you don’t need to upload the same file twice… simply clone the one you already have.

Delete: This button will delete the selected file. Now, what really happens is that the association between the file, the Category and the Section is deleted. The actual physical file is still on the server and if you need to use it later, it will still be there for you.

Edit: Choosing this icon will open the selected file entry in Edit mode (see more on Editing in a moment).

New : If you have a file selected and click “New”, the selected file entry will enter Edit mode. If no files are selected, clicking the New icon will open up the Edit form for you to create a new download file entry.

Text: This option opens up the Edit screen where you can create a simple text entry rather than a file download. This feature is rarely used and is not actually used at Bridgewater.

Parameters : This is where we set up how download files appear on the webpage. It isn’t an area that we cover in this guide!

Help: This icon will present you with a box where you can visit the Phoca Website for more help.

Creating a new Download File Let’s assume you need to add a new file to the system so that visitors can download it. Before we start, think about the following issues:

Where will the document live on the website? To answer this question, we need to know the webpages that hold downloadable documents. The table below shows this information. Webpage

Category

Section

About Us > Key Policies

Key Policies

About Us > Prospectus

Useful Documents

My School News > Current Newsletters My Year Groups > ALL SUBPAGES My Parent Space > Useful Forms

Current Newsletter

My Parent Space > Learning Resources

Learning Resources

Public Web Documents Public Web Documents Public Web Documents Year Group Files Public Web Documents Public Web Documents

Current Year “X” Files Useful Documents

Think about where your new file will need to be seen and using that information, you can select the correct Sections and Category when you add the new file.

Is this file a PDF file yet? As noted above, it is good practice to have all downloadable files as Acrobat PDF files. Convert any non-PDF files to PDF before you start!

Do you have a brief description of the file content? Adding a brief textual note to the download will not only make the file more ‘accessible’ to visitors, it will also improve the website’s Google rankings! With these quick ideas all sorted, we can now add a new file, so here we go. 1. In the Component Menu, choose Phoca Download and then choose “Files”

2. Now, choose New, from the Top menu:

3. The screen now opens up ready to add a new file.

4. Start by typing in an appropriate title for the download in the Name box  Avoid using text that only you understand, instead, use a descriptive name that clearly indicates the nature of the file’s content. Keep it brief though! 5. Ignore the Alias box 6. Be sure Published and Authorised are both set to “Yes” 7. Choose the right “Section” from the pull-down option 8. Choose the right “Category” from the pull-down option 9. On the Filename line, click on the “File” button which looks like this:

10. When you click the “Files” button, a pop-up like the one below appears:

11. Look for the most appropriate yellow folder to store the file you will upload. 12. If one doesn’t seem to exist, you can create a new folder for the new upload file. Simply drag down the pop up box to see the “Folder” box:

13. If you need to create a new folder, click inside the Folder box and type in a suitable name BUT DON’T INCLUDE ANY SPACES in the folder name, e.g.:  “My New Folder” = BAD  “MyNewFolder” = GOOD 14. When you have typed in the folder name, click “Create Folder”. After a few seconds your new folder will be shown in the list above. 15. Click into the folder you wish to store your new file inside. You might see existing files already added to the folder if it already exists

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