Joomla - sections vs. category vs. content

One thing that is very confusing when starting with Joomla are sections, categories and content or in short - their relation with each other.

And it's really quite simple if you visual it in a right way, so I'll try to help you with that and I promise you won't have problem with sections and categories again.

So, when you install Joomla, first thing you need to do is to figure out what you want to have on your site. What kind of content?

Will that content be categorized?

Lets suppose that you are making a web page about pets. You want to separate dogs from cats, fishes from birds etc. But you also want to separate the content for each pet by food, play, health etc.

In that case, your tree diagram would look something like this:



In this case you will have 4 sections (Cats, Dogs, Birds and Fish) and each section will have 5 categories (Food, Breed Guide, Health, Training, Other).

Now, to make this even more simpler, try to imagine that you are taking 4 big, thick folders and writting on each, the name of each section.

In thick folder named "Cats" you are putting 5 thin folders (categories) with names "Food", "Breed Guide", "Health", "Training" and "Other". You make the same folders (categories) for each section.

Now, when you are writting a content about some new breed of fish you put that content in section "Fish" under categorie "Breed Guide".

As simple as that...

Any questions?