1. What do the locks mean? How do I get rid of them?

At any given time you may see a padlock next to a specific item in Joomla!'s administrative backend. These padlocks may be displayed next to any of the following (Content Items, Menu Items, Modules, etc).

The Joomla! system places these padlocks next an item to indicate that a user is currently editing (checked out) the item. The lock is removed by the sytem when the user clicks on the "Save" button for that item.
If the user never clicks save and instead hits the "Back" button or naviagtes to another page, then the item stays locked. If another user needs to work with the item he or she must have the item checked back in before the can work.

There are two ways of checking items back in. One way is to contact the person that has the module checked out to see if they are done with the item.

The other option utilizes the administrative back end;
Click on "System => Global check in"
This option should be used very carefully, especially in multi-user environments. This single action checks in all previously checked out items, whether they were checked out by you or not. Possible undesirable side effects may be that multiple editors end up working on the same document.
In this case who ever clicks the save button last has their version saved as the final copy.

2. What license is Joomla! released under?

Joomla! is released under the GPL (Gnu General Public License 2).

3. What are mambots and plugins?

A Mambot is a small, task-oriented function that intercepts content before it is displayed and manipulates it in some way. Joomla! provides a number of Mambots in the core distribution, e.g. WYSIWYG editors, but there are many other mambots available for specific tasks.
Some 3rd Party developer components have their own mambots which need to be installed in order to make the component work properly. In Joomla! 1.5 mambots will be renamed plugins.
Plugins: The new name for mambots. In addition, some 3rd party components, modules and mambots themselves have plugins.

4. How do I exit the wrapper?

The page that contains the link you click on to load the wrapped content is the parent page.
You can get out of the wrapper by clicking on anyone of the links in the menu of the parent page.
If there are no other menu items visible then the wrapper may have been loaded directly into the parent page, replacing the content that was initially there.
This however defeats the purpose of having a wrapper which is a means of simply enclosing content from another site within the parent site.

5. How do I change the image(s) in my template?

One common template change is to use your own graphic/image. Simple graphics (not banners) are linked in the html file. Simply change the reference to the image of your choice in the html file of your template. In the adminsitrative interface do this by going to Site =>Template manager and then selecting your template. Click the icon for html.

Keep in mind that it if it is a different size than the original image this may change the appearance of the site in unexpected ways.

Additional information:

The images for a given template are generally located in this folder:
/templates/templatename/images (Substitute the name of the template you are using in place of "templatename").

A trick for finding the name of the image is to put your cursor over it and click right. Select view image. This will display the image and give its full url. Sometimes the images are background images. This is viewable in Firefox or you can look for the background tag in your page source.

How to upload an image:

There are many ways to upload images. Which one you use will depend on your host and server.
1. You can use an ftp client.
2. You can use a cpanel file manager.
3. You can use the media manager.
4. You can use various extensions that allow uploading, including joomlaexplorer and galleries.

6. What determines my homepage?

Your "homepage" in a traditional html site--the page that shows when you type mydomain.com for example-- would be the page displaying that is in the index.html file.

Jooma! is a database driven CMS so it does not have html pages, but rather pulls up the pieces of pages from a mysql database.

The "page" that shows when a user navigates to mydomain.com is the page created by clicking on the first link on the Main Menu. The link can be called anything (Home, Bob it does not matter), that is the page that will show.

This menu can be displayed anywhere and can be displayed vertically or horizontally or not at all. The menu does not even need to be published.

When you installl Joomla! by default it has a menu link to the frontpage component as the home page. However, any content or component or other link can be used as the "home" page.

7. Why do the pop ups in my WYSIWYG editor not work or show gibberish?

Depending on the editor, this problem may occur when trying to edit the html, insert tables or perform a similar function that requires javascript.

Most likely the problem with the livesite...

You look in your site configuration (General Configuration, select the Server tab) you will see that the livesite is given. Usually it is either www.mydomain.com or mydomain.com.

When you log into your site, you must log in from the exact livesite. if you don't the javascript in your editor will not work.

One way to deal with this is to put a redirect from, for example, mydomain.com to www.mydomain.com so that you and your users always login from the correct url. You can do this with .htaccess.

8. How do you install an extension?

From the backend of your joomla site (adminsitration) select Installers and then the type of extension (module, component, mambot/plugin, site template, administrative template, language
-Browse for the package file
-Click the install icon
-Follow any instructions

Sometimes you cannot use the automated installer. For example, very large extensions may exceed the maximum upload size allowed by your host.

In this case, unzip all of the files locally. Then transfer the files to a folder in the the install directory(for example administrator/components/com_installer/components) for the type of extension you are installing (using FTP). Then use the installer, but select "install from directory" indicating the correct folder name.

9. What are positions in Joomla?

Site templates divides the "pages" displayed on a site into a series of positions, each with a different name.

You can view the location of positions in your default template from the administrator go to Site =>Preview=>Inline with Positions.

You can annotate your positions through the administrator (backend). Go to Site=>Template Manage=>Module Positions.

You can add or remove positions by modifying your template html.

You assign a module to a position using the module manager.

Modules=>Site Modules
On the left side of the page, on the third line, there is a drop down menu that lets you select the position.

10. How do I change the favicon?

The joomla favicon is stored in the /images folder. The file is called favicon.ico. By definition a favicon must be 16x16 pixels.
If you wish to use your own favicon, rename the default joomla favicon.ico file and put your file with that name in the images directory.

Alternatively, you can change the favicon in the Joomla! global configuration Site tab (on the bottom).

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