Next, you need to link your new user, sanjay, to a contact. However, before creating a contact, you need to specify the category (or categories) for the contact. Let’s begin by creating a Contacts category, which simply categorizes different contacts. For example, you can create a category by the name of Suppliers so that all the contacts (units within the organization or user) that deal with suppliers are placed in that category. Similarly, a category might be named Technical to group the contacts dealing with technical problems.
First, open the Contacts Category Manager. Open the Administrator interface and select the Components ➤ Contacts ➤ Categories option. You’ll see a screen like the one shown in Figure 5-11. Notice that the Contacts Category Manager list already contains a category with the name Uncategorized, which Joomla provides by default.
1. Contacts Category Manager Toolbar
Before creating your own Contacts category, you should first understand the purpose of the icons in the toolbar, which are described in Table 5-2.
Let’s learn to create a new Contacts category. The advantage of using categories is that different items and articles can be grouped together, making it easy to manage them. Also, the Category Manager will also allow you to administer the way the categories are displayed, and create or delete categories. To create a new Contacts category, click the New icon from the toolbar. You’ll see a screen that lets you specify the information for the new Contacts category. There are four tabs on the screen: Category, Publishing, Permissions, and Options. The Category tab is opened by default. In this exercise, you’ll be creating a Contacts category with the name Suppliers, so enter the information shown in Figure 5-12.
In the Title field, enter the name of the category as it should appear in the database. You’re creating a category named Suppliers, so enter the same name here. In the Alias field, you can enter the same text as for the title. In the Description field, you can enter a brief description of the Contacts category in this box.
Because this Contacts category is an independent category, not the child of any existing category, keep the Parent field at its default value: No Parent. You can select some tags to represent this Contacts category. When a user selects any tag that matches any of the Contacts categories, it will show up on the front side of the site.
Leave the Status field to its default value, Published, to publish the Contacts category. Set the value of Access Level to Public because you want every visitor to your web site to be able to access this Contacts
category. From the Language combo box, select the language of the Contacts category. If you are creating a multilingual site and want to show certain contacts in any specific language, choose it from this combo box. Meanwhile, leave the default value at All for this field. The Note (optional) field is for the administrator to write a reminder note for this Contacts category. Leave it blank for now. The Version Note (optional) field is used to identify the version of this Contacts category. Again, leave this field blank.
1.1. Defining Publishing Info of a Contacts Category
The Publishing tab shows information such as the date on which this Contacts category was created, the username of the creator, when was it last modified, the username of the modifier, the count of the hits (views) on this category, the unique identification number, the ID for this Contacts category that is automatically generated by Joomla, and so on, as shown in Figure 5-13.
The screen also allows you to enter some meta information related to the Contacts category. In the Meta Description (optional) field, enter a short description of this Contacts category that usually appears in the results of search engines. In the Meta Keywords (optional) box, enter some keywords separated by commas that will help display this Contacts category when related content article, contacts, and so on are being viewed by the user. You can enter the name of the author for this Contacts category in the Author field. Choose the desired Robots from the combo box. Recall that robots help make your site visible to search engines.
1.2. Setting Permissions for a Contacts Category
The Permissions tab shows the combo boxes that enable you to modify permissions related to the current Contacts category. Usually, permissions are inherited from the Global Configuration settings, but you can override them through the Permissions tab (see Figure 5-14). Using the available combo boxes, you can determine the following:
- Whether to allow or deny Create permissions for users in the Public group
- Whether to allow or deny Delete permissions for users in the Public group
- Whether to allow or deny Edit permissions for users in the Public group
- Whether to allow or deny Edit State—Published state permissions for users in the Public group
- Whether to allow or deny Edit Own (the content created by the user) permissions for users in the Public group
1.3. Defining an Image for the Contacts Category
The Options tab helps to assign an image to the Contacts category. On clicking this tab, you get the screen shown in Figure 5-15. The Alternative Layout combo box can be used to override the current layout.
After the Select button is clicked, Media Manager will open, as shown in Figure 5-16. The Media Manager will show the images that are already uploaded in it. You can upload new images if required. I’m usinghandshake.jpg in this example to represent this Contacts category. Select handshake images followed by clicking the Insert button to represent the current Contacts category.
After entering the information for the Suppliers Contacts category, click the Save & Close icon from the toolbar to save it. The Suppliers Contacts category will appear in the Contacts Category Manager list, as shown in Figure 5-17.
1.4. Introduction to Contacts Category Manager Columns
Before proceeding to create contacts, take a look at Table 5-3, which describes the functions of the columns in the Contacts Category Manager.
Source: Harwani B M (2015), Foundations of Joomla!, Apress; 2nd ed edition