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How to Use the Joomla Media Manager and Categories

Two things keep a Joomla site tidy: a well-organized Media Manager for your images and files, and sensible categories for your articles. Here's how to use both. These steps are for Joomla 5 and 6.

Part 1: The Media Manager

Open it

  1. Log in at yoursite.com/administrator.
  2. Go to Content > Media.

You'll see the folders on the left and files on the right. Out of the box, files live in the images folder.

Create a folder

  1. Open the folder you want to put the new one in.
  2. Click Create New Folder.
  3. Type a short, lowercase name with no spaces, like team-photos, and save.

Upload files

  1. Open the folder.
  2. Click Upload, or drag files onto the screen.
  3. Wait for the upload to finish.

Resize big photos before you upload. Phone photos are often far bigger than a web page needs, and they slow your site down.

Rename, move, or delete

Hover over a file and open its actions to Preview, Download, Rename, Get Link, or Delete it. To delete several at once, select them and use Delete in the toolbar. There's no move button, so to move a file you'll download it, upload it to the new folder, and delete the old one (then update any articles that used it).

Before you delete an image, make sure no article or module still uses it, or you'll end up with broken images.

Allowed file types and sizes

Joomla limits which file types and how large a file you can upload. Your web team can change these in System > Global Configuration > Media. If an upload fails, the file type or size limit is the usual cause.

For adding images to articles, see How to Add, Resize, and Caption Images in Joomla (with Alt Text).

Part 2: Categories

Every Joomla article belongs to one category. Categories control how articles are grouped, and they're often tied to menu items like a blog page. (Tags are different: an article can have many tags. See How to Use Tags in Joomla to Organize Content.)

Create a category

  1. Go to Content > Categories.
  2. Click New.
  3. Enter a Title. The Alias fills in from the title if you leave it blank.
  4. Pick a Parent if this category belongs under another one, like "Events" under "News."
  5. Add a description if you want it to show on category pages.
  6. Click Save & Close.

Move articles to a different category

  1. Go to Content > Articles.
  2. Tick the articles.
  3. Click Actions > Batch.
  4. Choose the new category and pick Move.
  5. Click Process.

Tips for categories

  • Keep it simple. A few broad categories beat lots of tiny ones.
  • Don't go too deep. One or two levels is plenty for most sites.
  • Be careful renaming aliases. A category's alias can be part of your URLs. Changing it can break links. Add redirects if you change it. See How to Add a Redirect in Joomla.
  • Trash before you delete. You can't delete a category that still has articles in it, which is a nice safety net.

Related

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