Hello, dear readers of the blog site. In the previous article, we looked in detail at how you can place it in the right place in the template using the appropriate module. If you want to get a little ahead of yourself, I have a publication where all the materials on working with this engine are strictly structured and united by one idea - how to create your own website).

Today we will continue to develop the theme of the menu and consider exactly what items can be created in it using the Joomla admin panel, how you can configure the display of a single article or all materials contained in a category or section on the site, and we will also consider all the nuances and settings, which can be done.

Content structure in Joomla (sections and categories)

In order to understand exactly which menu items can be created, we will need to first address the issue of the structure of content in Joomla (materials, articles). When filling the project with content, you must indicate the section and category in which this material will be placed.

Although you will have one more option - select “Not specified” from the drop-down list in the “Section” field (in the “Category” field, in this case, exactly the same option will be automatically selected). In this case, the material will not belong to any section or category, which will somewhat limit the possibilities of displaying the article on the pages of your site, but more on that later.

The two-level organization of content in Joomla is needed for a trivial thing - to be able to display all articles using one single menu item. Otherwise, it would be impossible to organize the output of content in the form of a blog or a list of article titles contained in certain sections or categories.

Of course, this can be done using the almighty main page, but often the main page is used for other purposes, and a blog needs to be created, for example, by hanging it on the “News” menu item.

Beginner users may experience confusion in their heads after my attempts to explain with my fingers the capabilities of this engine for managing content and displaying it on project pages.

Therefore, we will begin to systematically consider the nuances of creating sections, categories and materials, and then smoothly move on to creating menu items that allow you to display both individual articles and all, for example, from a separate category or section in the form of a blog or in the form of a list of their headings.

It would be good for you to think through the future structure of your site in advance, but if there is no time or desire for this, then it’s okay, then everything can be redrawn and rebuilt without much damage. I would like to bring to your attention a block diagram for organizing content in Joomla, taken from another resource:

This diagram shows all the possibilities very clearly. I repeat once again that not all articles in Joomla should be in their own categories and sections; some materials may be freely floating, but they can no longer be displayed, for example, as part of a blog, with the exception of the option of displaying them on the main page.

Create large quantity nesting levels in Joomla are only possible with the help of additional extensions that implement this feature (for example, a component from the well-known manufacturer YOOtheme called ZOO). But, as a rule, the available nesting levels will be quite sufficient for most of the tasks that users face.

In the admin panel, all content specialists are concentrated in one place under the symbolic name “Materials”:

Creating sections and categories

First we will need to create the required number of partitions ( highest level nesting), and then in each section you need to create the number of categories. To do this you need from top menu In the admin panel, select “Materials” - “Section Manager”. In the window that opens, click on the “Create” button located at the top right of the window.

As a result, a wizard window will open where you will be asked to fill out some fields and make some settings for the section being created. In the “Title” field you need to enter its name, and in the “Nickname” column you can enter the same name in Latin, separating the words with dashes.

Why do you need to fill out the “Nickname”? - you ask. You need to do this only if you are using standard Joomla capabilities for creating human-readable URLs ().

If you do not use CNC or use third-party components for these purposes, then filling out the “Alias” column is not at all necessary.

In general, CNC can be useful in terms of improvement search engine optimization, and from the point of view of ease of user navigation on the site. And it is best, in my opinion, to organize the conversion of page addresses into SEF links, in all possible details (they even talk about the 404 error page and the optimal Title.

In the “Published” field, the checkbox will need to be set to “Yes”. In the “Access” column, you can configure which of your project’s visitors will have access to the contents of this section: either everyone, or only registered users, or only administrators (Special).

I’m not one hundred percent sure where the image specified in the “Image” field will be displayed, whether in the module with the menu, or on the section page. Most likely it's the latter, but I could be wrong.

Personally, I use the “Description” field to add an image to a section or category page. It allows you to use a visual editor and a special button for adding pictures.

After clicking on this button, a window will open in which you can, by clicking on the “Browse” button, find the desired photo on your computer and upload it to the server using the “Upload” button. Then all you have to do is find the image you just downloaded, click on it and click on the “Insert” button located at the top:

We have created the first section, now we need to create the rest by analogy. After that, we start creating categories in Joomla. To do this, in the admin panel select “Materials” - “Category Manager”. To create a new one, click on the “Create” button located at the top of the window.

All other settings are similar to those we looked at earlier. For final creation, click on the “Save” button located at the top of the window. Similarly, you need to create categories for all sections of your site. After this, you can start adding content through the Joomla admin panel.

Adding content (new materials, articles) to Joomla

To do this, select “Materials” - “Material Manager”. As a result, a window will open containing a list of all the articles available on your project. To create a new one, you will need to click on the “Create” button located at the top of the window.

A window with a wizard will open in front of you. There are a lot of settings in it, but in most cases the default options will suit you, although, of course, it won’t hurt to know all the capabilities of Joomla for managing content and we will definitely talk about them all, but in a separate publication.

Now I want to dwell only on those points that directly relate to the content structure in Joomla. In the “Title” field, you need to indicate the future title of the article, and the “Nickname” column should be filled in only if you use the standard Joomla SEF address translation (CNC), similar to how I explained it above.

You can enter the text of the article as .

You may not use a visual editor at all when writing articles, but in this case you will have to paste everything HTML tags manually. I usually write articles in the visual editor, but periodically I go to the HTML viewer to make some adjustments to the code.

The visual editor in Joomla does not always understand exactly what you wanted to do, and therefore, to avoid problems and save nerves when writing articles, I advise you to at least familiarize yourself with. Because knowing it, all the problems that arise can be easily solved by going to view the HTML code of the article you wrote.

When using JCE, you can view HTML code in two ways. First, you can click on the "" text located right above the toolbar. But in this case, you will see just the code without highlighting and the ability to undo the changes made.

The second method is much more convenient and it would be preferable to use it. In this case, to view the code you need to click on the “Edit Code” button, which is a piece of paper with two red tag brackets:

As a result, a separate window will open with a full HTML editor, in which the lines of code will be numbered, tags and their attributes will be highlighted in a different color than the text, which will significantly increase clarity. In addition, this JCE editor has text formatting tools.

You just need to select the desired area and click on the format button, as a result of which the text will be enclosed in the tags you need. In the same way, you can create headings of different levels, quotes and other things by selecting them from the drop-down list. In addition, you can take a step back or forward, which greatly facilitates the process of restoring unsuccessful actions:

After writing an article, before saving it, you will have to choose in which section and in which category of this section your new material will be located. The drop-down lists of the “Section” and “Category” fields are intended for this purpose. If you don't select anything, your article will appear on its own:

In order to display a new article on the site, you need to check the “Publish” field in the “Yes” position. If you need to bring it to the main page (we will have a separate conversation about the main page manager), then check the “Yes” box in the “On the main page” field.

Search engine optimization links (buttons) “More details”

Yes, if you plan to display articles in the future as a blog (for this you need to create the menu items “Category Blog Template” or “Section Blog Template”), then when preparing them you will need to place the mouse cursor after the first few paragraphs, which will become the announcement and press the button "More details".

As a result, a dividing horizontal line will appear in the text of the article, and when displayed as a category or section blog, only the announcement will be displayed (the part that is located above the dividing line).

The reader of a blog created in this way, after the text of the announcement, will see a button (link) “More details”, clicking on which he will be able to continue reading on the page with full version. Moreover, the section of text that follows immediately after the text of the announcement will be opened, so that the user of your Joomla blog does not have to scroll through the announcement that he has already read.

If you don’t like the text of the inscription on the “More details” button, you can set a different text for this link (their significance for promotion is described).

So, if the text of the “More details” link for all articles on your blog on Joomla is unique and contains keywords related to this article, then this may to some extent affect its position in the search results (it will get closer to the Top) and, therefore, Attendance will increase slightly. This should not be neglected, because the promotion of a project consists of such, at first glance, little things.

To change the “More details” text, when creating or editing an article, you need to open the “Options - Advanced” area in the right column of settings, at the very bottom of which you will see the item “Alternative text Read more...”. Enter your unique anchor with the desired keywords here.

When you finish working on the article, click on the “Save” button located at the top of the window. Let me remind you once again that we will consider in detail the remaining settings that can be made in one of the subsequent articles. In the same way, you fill your site with content by placing it in the categories of various sections of Joomla.

Creating menu items in Joomla to display articles

Now let's move on to the issue of displaying content on the site. As I have already mentioned several times, a page in Joomla is rigidly linked to a menu item, upon clicking on which it will be created ().

Thanks to the flexibility of this engine in terms of content output, we can display the same article on the site in several ways. The first way is, of course, to create a simple menu item (Standard Material Template), which, when clicked, will open a page containing only this one article.

The second method will allow you to display the same material using another menu item so that as a result a page will open containing all the materials of any category, where our hero is located.

Moreover, it will be possible to customize the display method all materials in the category on the page that opens - either it will be a list of their announcements (blog), or it will be a list of their titles alone (list). How exactly the withdrawal will be made depends on what menu item you create in Joomla.

And finally, you can display the material as part of all the articles in the section in which it is included. For this purpose, Joomla has a special type of menu item. Oh yes, I almost forgot, the same material can also be displayed on the main page by simply checking the “On the main page” checkbox in its settings. Such are the rich possibilities for displaying content.

Without using nesting levels, it would be possible to only display one article either on separate page, or on the main page along with others of the same kind. But now let's look at all this in more detail.

To create a new item in Joomla, you need to go to the menu where we will create it. You can read about creating a new menu and inserting it into a module to display it in the right place on the site template in the publication, the link to which I provided in the very first paragraph. So, in the admin panel select “Menu” - “Name of new”.

As a result, you will see a window called “Menu Items”, where a list of existing ones will be displayed. To create a new one, you will need to click on the “Create” button located at the top right. A window will open containing a tree-like list of all the possible variations that you can implement.

In addition to those provided by default, there will be more menu items that have been added. Typically, components tend to add their items to this list so that you can get to their pages filled with their content (for example, components, forums, and the like).

But we are now interested in those items that allow you to display articles in one form or another. These menu items are hidden behind the “Materials” item:

Let's now briefly look at the most used options, and we'll talk more about this in the next article:

Standard material template - using this menu item, you can display one single article on a website page. You specify which one will be displayed in the settings, namely in the “Select material” field using the “Select” button. As a result, a separate pop-up window will open with a list of all materials you have (you can use filters by category and section)

Category blog template - you should choose it if you want to create a blog on Joomla other than on the main page (to create a blog on the main page, the procedure will be slightly different). This item will open a list of all articles from any category. The text of the materials will need to be divided into announcements and everything else using the “More details” link.

As a result, announcements of articles available in this category will be listed in order of obsolescence (new ones are displayed above old ones). Everything is very simple.

Category list template - it allows you to display on a website page a list of titles of all materials available in the selected category.
Section blog template - it allows you to display all articles of the selected section in blog format (announcements of articles with a “More details” link). Essentially similar to the “Category Blog Template”, only it can include content from several categories included in the selected section
Standard section template - it allows you to display a list of headings of all categories of the selected section
Archived Content List is a rarely used item that allows you to display a list of all archived content on your site. Archives will probably be relevant on news sites, where information quickly loses its relevance and it makes sense to archive these materials so that they do not participate in the search along with current articles.
Template for a blog of materials on the main page - allows you to display on the main page all materials that were marked when created with a checkmark “On the main page” in the form of a blog (announcements of articles with a link “More details”). After installing Joomla, such a menu item will already be created and you are unlikely to have to use it again, except perhaps after accidental deletion or during some other tricky manipulations

Good luck to you! See you soon on the pages of the blog site

Creation of material (articles)

We have learned how to create categories, now let's move on to publishing the material, namely the article. First of all, to make it convenient for us to work with our visual editor, we need to switch it to the advanced version. This is done as follows - Extensions -> Plugin Manager -> Editor - TinyMCE, open it and in the right column at the very top switch the editor mode to advanced. After that, click “Save and Close”. Now go to Materials -> Material Manager -> Create Material. A form similar to ours for adding material opens, but here it is more advanced.

Here we fill out the fields that are familiar to us, everything is the same as when adding a category, there is nothing complicated. The only thing we pay attention to is the “Favorites” switch. Using this switch we can mark any material as favorites. What is it for? We can, for example, mark important articles with this switch and display them on home page. We can also use modules to display only selected materials on internal pages. In a word, “Favorites” is just a mark for the material and that’s it.

We will assume that you have entered the title, selected the category, now you need to insert text and pictures. I would like to draw your attention to the fact that it is not advisable to copy and paste the text here as usual. Those. You copy the text to the clipboard as usual - ctrl+c, but you need to paste it through the button on the toolbar. With this action we insert only text, discarding all unnecessary tags. The fact is that when copying text from Microsoft Word or from some website, along with the text, we copy into the buffer a lot of unnecessary characters that we absolutely do not need. Be sure to remember this moment. In general, I recorded a video tutorial on this topic - how to properly add articles to the site. I advise you to watch it.

Pay attention to the buttons that go under the visual editor. The first one is Material. What is it for? Using this button we can insert a link to any article we have created. Place the cursor in Right place in the article and click on the button. Select the title of the required article from the list.

Now let's insert an image into the article using the "Image" button. In order for the picture to be present in the announcement of the article, we will place the cursor at the very beginning of the text, i.e. before the first letter and press the button "Image". In the opened modal window The images directory of our site will open. All images of our site, or rather our materials, will be stored here. It is advisable to distribute all images into folders. By default, two folders have already been created here - banners and sampledata. Folders are created through the media manager, from there you can download and generally manage media materials. Well, let's not complicate things now. You can upload the image to the root of the images folder for now, or to one of two folders. There are already demo images in the sampledata folder, I advise you to use them for now.

When you select an image, the path to the image is automatically entered into the “Image Address” field. All we have to do is fill in the fields - Image Description and Image Title. These fields are optional, but I still recommend filling them out. Align the image to the left or right and then click on the “Insert” button.

Starting with version joomla 2.5, it became possible to set a general picture of the material, both for the announcement and for the full description. Of course, we can set a picture for the article using the above method, but still this method will be more correct. To set a picture, look for the “Images and Links” tab in the right column. Here you can set a picture for the announcement of the material and a full description.

To upload or select an uploaded image, click on the “Select” button, and then a familiar window will open in the modal window. Make sure that the image sizes are not too large. For the teaser ( short description) add a smaller image, but for a full description you can add a larger one. You can also choose to wrap the text - left or right, or centered (but this depends on the template, i.e. these styles must be included in the template).

Let's look at a button under the editor called “Page Break”. What is it for? Using this button you can split a large article into several parts. At the top of the article there will be links to all parts, as well as a link to the full article. Sometimes this will be very useful, for example when writing large reviews. Here again, place the cursor in the right place and click on the “Page Break” button. In the modal window that opens, enter the title of the article part and the title of the page in the contents.

Website builder A5 - Russian product , which came out of beta in 2011. The system received a fair amount of criticism for using Flash in its templates. But, fortunately, the developers subsequently completely abandoned this technology in favor of HTML5.

Based on A5 you can create business card sites , landing pages And the shops . During our last testing, the system failed to impress us. But it was a long time ago. Let's take a closer look at what A5 can offer its customers in 2017.

Templates

Standard designs in A5 categorized . In addition to the usual areas such as business, auto, etc., I would like to note the output of templates for landing pages, online stores and government agencies in separate sections. The presence of the last category clearly emphasizes the focus on creating non-commercial sites. There are templates for kindergarten , school , college , hospital , charitable foundation, administration, law enforcement agencies, etc. In general, the designer is designed for use by government organizations.

Choosing template type , you determine the type of future site. However, it cannot be changed later. Total templates in the system about 300 . Their quality is generally average: there are both prominent and primitive specimens.

Each template contains a thematic demo content . If you don’t have the time or desire to bother too much with customization, you can simply insert your data/pictures and get a ready-made website. Standard settings such as changing the background, fonts and page background, of course, available.

Among the more advanced things, we can note the ability to change the width of the site and absolute freedom in the layout of widgets. You can add the latter in any quantity, change their size, location on the page and relative to each other, customize appearance(effects, customize content output, etc.). You can also add containers, which is useful if you want, for example, to create a sidebar. Due to the above, you will be able to change the original template almost beyond recognition.

I liked the fact that there is an opportunity when creating new page automatically transfer specified parts of the layout from the master page (“Home”) to it. By default, the header and footer are copied. This is very convenient because it allows you to avoid repeating actions. You can quickly switch between created pages. This is implemented in the same way as in browsers - through a system of tabs. The latter also contain a button to access settings, where the width and color scheme can be assigned separately for each page. You can also repurpose the home page.

A5 demonstrates good level execution of some built-in templates and a set of tools for customizing their design. Not without its nuances, but overall we liked it.

Functionality

You don't need any skills to use A5 programming. Yes, there is the ability to insert HTML code, but the functionality of the site builder is based on a fairly convenient visual editor and system widgets . Adding the latter to pages by dragging and dropping will determine the structure and capabilities of the site.

Working with widgets is very simple. A single left-click selects an element and allows you to resize and drag it. Right button activates a menu of available properties for an element. For example, when designing a button, you can set the rounding of corners (at 100% you will get a circle, if necessary), transparency, gradient along the radius, color/background, select a font, and also determine its appearance after hovering the cursor. You can duplicate, copy the widget, set a layer for it, etc. It all works very simply, and the result is excellent. The set of allowed operations varies for different widgets.

If you double-click on the widget with the left button, you can change its contents (text, picture, field names, etc.). In general, in A5 the mouse is the main development tool. Almost all operations, except text entry, can be performed using it.

Such freedom and simplicity will delight creative/experienced people, freeing their hands to creating truly beautiful websites . But, if a person does not have experience or a sense of taste, experiments with design are guaranteed to lead to disastrous results. There are many possibilities, but in this case you shouldn’t play around. The easiest way is to slightly correct the standard layout of the template, change colors, pictures, information and get a website, using the already provided structure of a pleasant appearance.

The control panel in A5 is very simple visually and structurally . If you still need help, a question mark hangs above almost every element, hiding explanations. There are also video lessons. After reading/watching enough, you will become an ace in A5 in an hour.

The control panel consists of a status bar (tabs open pages, forward/back buttons, preview, save changes, publish and help section) and 4 menu sections:

Pages - here you can add/delete pages and build a hierarchy of menu items;
Settings - select the page name, its color and background color, also fill out the SEO settings. You can enable/disable hiding from search engines;
Widgets - the main menu, where functional elements for filling pages are located. There are quite a lot of them: text, code, gallery, video, countdown timer, analytics, “back to top” button, feedback form, social buttons And so on. The widgets for store deployment stand out: product catalog, shopping cart, product menu and search.
Files - storage of stock (pictures, cliparts) and downloaded files of all types.

As you can see, it couldn't be simpler. In addition to the usual capabilities, I would like to separately note the power store settings . Available for export/import from CSV, settings for sorting goods, delivery, sales statistics, accepting online payments, discounts and much more. Unfortunately, making a store on an engine with a visual editor is not the best idea. There are specialized systems for this that are much better suited to solve this problem.

B A5 business cards and landing pages done very quickly and simply. For the latter, the developers have included a countdown timer in the list of widgets. In many engines that allow you to create one-page pages, for some reason it is missing, which is strange.

Generally, impression of possibilities A5 the situation was positive. The control panel, although simple in appearance, hides a fairly decent set of tools in its depths. Of course, here you can connect a favicon, select the set of fonts to use for the entire site, and even edit robots.txt. This is done through the menu in the upper right corner.

Somewhat frustrating are small bugs in the admin panel. There are few of them, but they exist. And the design of the control panel is too simple and gray. Perhaps for some this will be a plus: there is definitely nothing to distract your eyes from work here.

As elsewhere, after registration you will be given a free subdomain of the form 3645987.mya5.ru (then its digital part can be renamed as you like). Own domain You will be able to connect no earlier than you have paid any of the tariffs.

This can be done in personal account through the "My Sites" menu. It can be accessed from the editor by clicking on the A5 icon in the left top corner.

Separately, we note the ability to connect several domains to the site. This may be necessary for those who do not want other domain zones to have sites with your domain name. This will also make it easier for visitors who enter the wrong domain name to find your site. For example, you can buy a couple of domains - atf.rf and atf.ru, thus covering both options for entering your site into address bar browser. Well, competitors will no longer be able to use the domain name for their dirty deeds in designated domain zones. This will also help attract new visitors by retaining the part of them that enters the name incorrectly. You will promote the site using the main domain, but the rest should be assigned a 301 redirect. That's how it works. The thing is useful, but not for everyone.

In general, in A5 the picture is greatly spoiled by the possibility of getting entangled in layers of containers with widgets and the lack of adjustment of their position relative to neighboring blocks. That is, everything needs to be done by hand. But after working for an hour or two, you can get the hang of the precision of the actions. In general, the functionality in A5 is not bad, but the admin panel feels a bit damp; it could have been done better.

Price policy

The system has a free plan for all types of sites except the store. You will receive 150 MB disk space, advertising block from the developer and limitations in functionality. But the most important thing is that you won’t be able to connect your own domain. This tariff is suitable for trying out the pen and getting to know the system.

If you decide to create a store, you will receive 15 days trial with all the possibilities. Next you will have to pay. Paid services are divided into regular and store services. As always, when indicating prices, we focus on the annual cost of renting a site builder (although in A5 monthly payment is also possible). Tariffs for creation business cards and landing pages the following:

Minimum (2550 rub/year) - provides 250 MB of disk space, disables advertising and allows you to connect your own domain;
Premium (RUB 3,290/year) - 1.5 GB of disk space, gift domain in zone.ru;
Business (3990 rub/year) - 10 GB, free domain, insert HTML code, connect your email, third-party services and a personal manager at your disposal.

Store the rates are as follows:

Start (9900 rub/year) - ability to place 100 products, gift domain, connection payment systems, import/export of goods via CSV file, price types, discount system and viewing order status;
Pro (15,000 rub/year) - 2500 products, uploaded to Yandex.Market, 20% advertising bonus, premium technical support.

In our opinion, the cost of A5’s services is average. Business rates are quite affordable, but store prices are above average. Also in A5 there are several paid services besides tariff plans. You can use it as you wish:

Site Assistant (3997 rubles) - a personal manager who will update content, add pages and provide advice as needed;
Internal optimization(6997 rubles) - selection keywords and including them in the texts of the site, installing counters and adding the site to search engine directories;
Turnkey website creation (13,900 rubles) - you don’t have to do anything by ordering this service. Just give it technical task and check the result when ready.

A5 has a fairly wide selection of offers to suit every taste and budget. The most cost-effective prices seem to be for business card landing rates, for optimization and, by the way, for a turnkey website. Their cost is quite reasonable, which cannot be said about store-bought ones - they are frankly expensive for this class of system.

SEO optimization and promotion

Search engine optimization capabilities in A5 are standard and don't stand out in any way : You can write the title, description and keyword meta tag values for each page. To do this, you need to select a page in the appropriate menu, and then go to “Settings” and fill in SEO. We also recommend using H1 and lower order headings to highlight sections of the page. This is done in text editor.

You can and should additionally use internal linking, if possible, based on anchor links. Of course, do not forget about inserting keywords into the bodies of articles and the uniqueness of the latter. You can select keywords on Yandex.Wordstat. But don't go overboard with the quantity. Filling out the title and alt tags for the images you use will also help. You can find these settings in the “Other” tab in the properties of graphic elements. You can also use the editor to increase the level of uniqueness of the pictures. This will be useful if you start taking them from the Internet “as is”.

Integration of buttons will play an important role social networks. The more external links your site receives from groups on social networks, the better. It wouldn’t hurt to use your own videos from Youtube, where you’ll have to start a channel. Shoot several videos, write a link to the site in the description, and then place them in the context of the site pages.

Connecting to the Yandex.Metrica or Google Analytics website will help you track traffic. You can also change the content of robots.txt in the site settings. If you don’t know what it is, it’s better to leave the default option: everything is written there correctly.

In general, promotion in A5 follows the same scenario as in almost all other systems. There are all the built-in capabilities for this. Use them, and your site will have a real chance of being favored by search engines.

Pros and cons, alternatives

The A5 is definitely not a top-end engine, but it doesn’t herd the rear ones either. Although the system is not amazing, it has something to offer users, advantages :

Good level of variety and acceptable quality of templates;
Extremely simple structure and a large number of training materials various types(articles, videos, tips);
A good set of clipart is a nice bonus;
A wide range of additional services from developers;
A very flexible system for customizing website design;
Large selection of tariff plans for creating business cards at an affordable cost;
Clear store functionality.

Of course, A5 also has flaws :

Templates in the system are not adaptive and cannot be changed subsequently;
The wealth of design customization tools also has a downside: an inexperienced person can easily turn a gorgeous template into an eye-catching spectacle;
The free tariff, due to its limitations, is only suitable for training in working with the system, while store tariffs are downright expensive.
The control panel lags in places, the interface itself is too simply designed and looks damp.

A5 is not bad, but the quality does not reach the market leaders. You can clearly feel the ambition of the developers, who really want to compare their product with Wix, but they clearly fall short. Yes, and this is wrong. The projects are in clearly different weight categories. The advantage is definitely not on the side of the hero of the review.

The most obvious alternatives to A5 are uKit and Wix for business cards, in the case of stores - uCoz. A5 is inferior to all of them to one degree or another.

conclusions

Constructor A5 - good designer with a visual editor. The quality of the result obtained in it directly depends on the skill of the developer. The system itself does not particularly limit in actions and possibilities. You can do it terribly, but you can do it great. The probability of the second case is higher, since for almost any action in the system you can read a well-written FAQ or even watch a video. Beginners will definitely not get confused, but the design should be edited carefully: A5 does not smooth out user errors in any way. And this is the main difficulty of using the system.

Normal templates, a good set of widgets, ample opportunities for customizing the design and a good, although not particularly needed here, store toolkit - this is what the A5 looks like. There are questions about the ergonomics of the visual editor, some confusion of paid services due to their quantity, and the prices of store tariffs. In general, the designer is average in most respects. It seems to be done well, but something is missing. Or, on the contrary, it is superfluous.

A5 works well for investments only at business card rates . They are priced competitively. Not sure about the store. He's expensive here. And it would be strange to use an engine like A5 to develop a serious trading platform.

By the way, when we tried to switch to Wix.ru, a surprise awaited us in the form of a redirect to the A5 main page. Strange, isn't it? The developers of the review hero clearly went too far, trying to draw attention to their brainchild in this way. Ridiculous behavior, a dirty trick, especially considering that you can run into a backlash from Wix’s legal department.

Of course, the system has alternatives at the same cost or even cheaper. You can try A5, but don’t rush into choosing, look at something else. Surely there is a more acceptable option.

Designers similar to A5

Alternatives to A5 The list could take a long time. Each of these systems is different, but any of them will be a much better choice compared to the A5.

Nowadays it is very easy to create a website. If earlier you would have had to learn programming languages, now you can use a website builder. It allows you to create a full-fledged website in a very short time, without requiring any knowledge from you. This is done thanks to numerous templates, as well as a large number tools.

A5 is the name of the service, which allows you to create your own website based on any of 300 templates. Website creation can be done using either an HTML-5 editor or using flash. Before moving on to a review of the service itself, let's look at its advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages:

1. The first advantage is a convenient site editor. You don't need to look for anything, everything is already at your fingertips. Using it, you can add new elements, change the style of your page, and also perform a number of other actions.

2. You have the right to create your own template! Not all website builders provide this feature. Many people don’t want to give it, but not A5. By making your own template, you get a completely unique website!

3. The A5 website has very responsive support. If you have any problem, just contact her and you will get an answer!

4. Understanding the functions of the site is not difficult, but even if you have any difficulties, you can always watch high-quality video tutorials. They clearly show all the functionality of the site, and also tell you how to use it rationally.

5. Good value prices and quality. Affordable rates as well as many features will convince you of this!

Flaws:

Not a memorable third-level domain. Everything is standard, in the free version you will have a domain that you really can’t remember. Something like 1772479.mya5.ru, it's not very convenient, let's put it this way. You can get rid of such a domain by paying money.
Advertising in the right corner is annoying, but again it can be removed for some money.

Let's look inside the A5 constructor

First of all, let's go to the website http://www.a5.ru/. In the upper right corner, click the button "Registration". In the window that opens you will need to enter your real mailing address. And you will also need to come up with a password. You can also enter your phone number, but this is not required.

After registration, you will immediately see a button "Create a website". Feel free to click on it and proceed to selecting templates. There are many, many of them here. You can choose any topic, from cars to templates for construction. Before choosing a template, you can review it in detail; all tabs are available. If you are satisfied, click "Select template". A few seconds will pass and you will be taken to the editor.

You can do whatever you want in a ready-made template. First, try changing the text. Click on the desired word and delete it. Now enter your text. Here you can change the font and size of words, you can change the position of the text (aligned to the left, centered, etc.). Another important feature is that you can insert a link or file into a word.

We've sorted out the texts. Go ahead. What else can you do? Of course, add, delete or change pages. You can go to the second, third, fourth pages. You can also add your own text, change images, and so on. In the settings you can make any page the main one. You can also change the color, background and size of the selected page. All this is very easy to do.

In widgets you can add a button, a video from YouTube, a window with feedback and much more. To add, you just need to drag the widget onto the desired page. You can add your own images and documents to the files, which can then be added to the site. In the upper right corner there is an option to save and publish the finished site. Very comfortably.

About prices

Free version Designer A5 is extremely inconvenient. Therefore, we can choose any paid plan of our choice. The best choice- this is the tariff "Business", the cost of which is only 133 rubles per month. You get 10,000 megabytes of disk space, your own ru or com domain, and the number of pages is unlimited. You also get the opportunity to use third-party sites and a personal manager for quick assistance.

If you are thinking about giving users the opportunity to publish articles and materials on the Joomla website, then you have probably already seen that this problem is not so easily solved. Initially, you have at least two options. The first is to use standard functionality, because the Joomla content management system has many built-in useful functions, including adding articles from the site. And the second is to use third-party modules and components, including various CCKs. After a quick glance at the features and descriptions found in reviews on other resources, most likely you will want to use third-party components, since they clearly provide a wider range of settings and capabilities. However, a detailed study with installation of components on test systems showed that not everything is as good as described.
Before continuing, it is worth indicating the criteria that were taken as a basis:

The solution should either not make changes to the standard mechanisms at all, or make them so minimal that later other modules and components can be easily added to the site.
Moderation of added materials is required.
It is necessary that the user cannot accidentally somehow spoil the current structure of the site or add materials to those categories that are used only for organizing the internal tasks of the site.
If there is a need to make changes to the code (finishing), then they should be minimal. It’s one thing when you already have a stream of articles and you know the specifics of what you can expect from users. Accordingly, you understand that your work will be useful. It’s another matter when you are just adding functionality and it is not known whether there will be a flow and, if so, what kind. After all, you should always remember that if someone really wants to add material, then sending it will not present any difficulties for them Word document , or OpenOffice, or even html to email.
It is desirable that there be all sorts of convenient functions, such as the ability for the user to view the status of his articles, organizing the process of moderating articles, adding tags, adding pictures, and others.

The criteria were quite basic, but even they were enough to ultimately settle on adding materials in a standard way. But first things first. The first to consider were various CCK, such as ContentBuilder And K2. The main problem was the change in standard mechanisms and the need to make a fairly large amount of changes, so they had to be abandoned. For example, having downloaded from the official website and installed K2, which supposedly should already have convenient functionality for adding materials, it turned out that all content should be used only through K2 (hence, almost all modules for Joomla without K2 support become useless) and that The form for adding materials still needs to be adjusted to suit your needs (for example, the availability of all categories to the user). Of course, it is quite possible that after some time of studying K2, this problem could be solved much easier, but transferring everything that is there just for the sake of one function, and looking for analogues to existing modules, is not rational.

Note: Remember that this is only about the task of users adding content. Of course, you can build complex and powerful websites using CCK, but this is not required for the current task.

Next we looked at modules and components that are also CCK, but do not change the standard structure. This Zoo(as CCK) SobiPro(like a directory) and ChronoConnectivity(separate words about him). Free version of Zoo provides a ready-made module for publication. However, after viewing the ready-made forms and searching for solutions to problems with security settings, it became clear that, in addition, all added articles will go separately (in other words, many questions remain about how to correlate custom articles and categories with articles and categories site), you will need to make quite a lot of changes to the display templates in order to organize the moderation process (accepted, rejected, in moderation, and so on) with the ability for users to view the statuses of their articles. SobiPro- this is a pretty good catalog, but it turned out to have the same problems as Zoo. You will need to make edits and think about the relationship between SobiPro content and standard content. ChronoConnectivity is a very powerful component for building all kinds of forms and synchronization within the database. If you need to completely tailor the entire process of adding materials or something else to your needs, then this can be easily done with it. However, there are no preset options, so absolutely everything will have to be configured from scratch. And this is a very long time.

After research in the area CCK, it became clear that it was worth looking at more down-to-earth solutions. And the most obvious thing is blogs. However, as it turns out, there aren’t that many free blogging components. And those that were encountered turned out to be, by and large, similar to the standard mechanism. So there is not much point in using them. However, I caught my eye and two quite good free blog components: Hekima Blogs And UAM. However, with them it became clear that a number of changes would have to be made in order to fully organize the moderation process and correct some errors.

Gradually considering solutions from the most complex and eventually reaching blog components, it became increasingly clear that initially on almost any site (if it was not originally conceived for a stream of articles) it is quite enough to use the standard Joomla mechanism. However, there were no normal instructions on the Internet for setting it up and solving such a banal issue as separating user images from the general catalog of site images. Only fragmentary solutions to individual subtasks. However, having put the solutions together, we got quite simple and convenient instructions for setting up how users can add materials.

The final instructions for setting up how users can add articles and materials to the Joomla website, although large in number of points, are actually quite simple to organize. The first thing you will need is to download and install free editor JCE with localization (there is a Russian language; as a last resort, you can always download it from other resources). Unlike the standard editor TinyMCE, it has a customizable and quite convenient image manager. Now, you can start setting up.

Open " Website - General settings " and set the default editor " Editor JCE". This must be done to ensure that all users enter articles from this particular editor.
Open " Material Manager". Then click " Settings". Go to the " tab Rights"and for the group Registered set permission to create material (item " Create"). Leave the remaining items disabled. This setting will allow users to add materials and articles from the site, but not publish them. In other words, after adding, articles will not be published by default. In general, simple moderation.
Open " Category Manager" and create a category " For consideration". In the future, all added articles will fall into this category (for convenience).
Create a hidden menu if you don't have one. A hidden menu is the same as a regular menu, but placed in a position that is not in the template.
In the hidden menu, create an item with Alias " add-material"and title" Add an article". Select item type " Create material"Set access level" Registered" (on the left side) and the default category "For consideration" (in the main settings area). This is done so that an unauthorized user, when selecting an item, gets to the login page and so that all materials fall into one category (for subsequent sorting).
We create an item in the menu, which is shown to all users. Set the item type " Nickname". We indicate the previous item from the hidden menu as the target item. An open item is needed so that all users can see that it is possible to create material on the site. When unauthorized users click on such an item, they will be redirected to the authorization page.

Now, let's start setting up the JCE editor

Open the editor J.C.E. on the menu " Components". Go to the profiles tab. Enable the profile " Front End". This is exactly the profile that will be applied to users when adding an article from the site.
Open your profile" Front End" and set the following settings
1. In the first tab in the area " Users"check the box next to the group" Registered" to make the settings apply to registered users.
2. Go to the " tab Features and Layout". Set the item " Editor switch" V No to eliminate the possibility of sending bare html.
3. Create on the site in the directory " images"directory" reviews". Pictures of user articles will be stored in this directory for the duration of moderation.
4. Return to the admin panel and go to the " tab Editor Options". Then on the left side, select the " tab File system" and indicate in the paragraph " File directory path" path " images/reviews"
5. In the same tab, disable the " Folder tree"
6. In the same tab, specify the maximum image size, for example, 100.
7. In the same tab, specify actions in case of conflict " Create a unique name...". This is done so that the pictures of other users cannot be overwritten. After all, after the article has been moderated by you, you can always transfer the pictures to a shared folder.
8. Save the settings.
9. Go to the tab " Plugin options" and on the left side of the screen select the tab " Image Manager". Then we set the file size limit, for example, 100 (as before).
10. Disable the items " Delete folder", "Delete a file", "Rename file", "Cut, copy" (for directory and file), " Rename folder".
11. Specify the path to the directory of image files " images/reviews"
12. Save the settings.
13. In the "tab" Plugin options"open a tab" Link" on the left side. And specify the desired settings for default links. For example, the target is "in a new window".
14. In the same tab, disable all items with access to the link structure (search, etc.), as well as pop-up windows. This is done in order to gain access to the internal structure of ordinary users did not have.
15. Save and close the editor.
We are trying to open the item " Create material"under an unauthorized user and we see that a login form has opened. We try to open the same item as a logged-in user and we see that a material editing form has opened, but with a bunch of extra areas that users don’t really need.
First of all, we open " Extensions - Plugin Manager"and we present the group" Special" for all buttons (Image, Page Break, Material, etc.) except the " button More details". This will hide the buttons for regular users, but leave them open for those users who have access to the admin area.
Unfortunately, hiding blocks from the form that are not needed, as well as adding introductory text, cannot be done using the settings. Therefore, you will have to copy the display template file from the component to the site template and then edit it.
1. Open the way" %siteroot%/components/com_content/views/form/tmpl" and copy the file " edit.php"to your template along the way" %your template%/html/content/form/".
2. Open the file " edit.php" in any text editor and add the introductory text you need, as shown below (the text comes after the 44th line or search for "

Add an article

First of all, remember that an article is a useful, polite, meaningful and correctly formatted text
(read the rules section for more details).

Adding material means that you agree to the rules of this resource.

item->id); ?>" method="post" name="adminForm" id="adminForm" class="form-validate">

1. Now, to hide blocks, you need to add display hiding through a style for all fieldset tags except the first one, for example like this:

A 5 adding a new article. You can add a new employee to your organization’s personal account, as well as add a new electronic signature (ES) to an already registered employee