How to make it easier for a client to update Joomla website?

Question

I'm new to Joomla! and I'm designing a website for a client, my very first in Joomla!. He doesn't know how to code, so I'm trying to make it easier for him to update content after I finish with the website, maybe just a couple of clicks here and there, but I don't think I'm doing it right.

The way I'm doing it is having him create articles for every section that needs text, and then I do my part of creating a page structure (HTML/PHP) with modules and load his article there. But, it becomes more complicated when I have images combined with text.

And, for images, I was thinking to just get all images from a specific folder with PHP or jQuery (I didn't figure out how, yet), and have him just upload / replace images in that folder.

My questions are:

• Am I doing it wrong?
• Is there a better way to do it?
• How would you design a website template for someone who doesn't code and updates the website frequently?

Answer 1

Welcome to Joomla!!

There are two main ways of creating complex layouts in Joomla!:

1. Create templates with multiple/varying module positions and assign content blocks to those positions as needed.
2. Create a simple template with full-width articles and define the complex layout within the article contents.

If you are new to Joomla!, then option 2 is going to be your best bet. However, this means that managing the article, from the client's perspective, will be much more complicated.

Thus, for creating complex article layouts without knowledge of code, a "page builder" is what you need. There is a good review of the "top 5" page builders for Joomla! in this article: https://www.themexpert.com/blog/reviews/5-best-joomla-page-builder

Those include:

• Quix Page Builder
• SP Page Builder
• JSN Page Builder
• Azura Responsive Joomla Page Builder
• Page Builder CK

This will allow your client to "drag-n-drop" content layouts as needed giving full control of the position of images and text.

Answer 2

Perhaps you could leverage the Articles Anywhere extension to have the user build the article, including any images, and then you can use the simpler syntax:

{article My Article}[layout]{/article}

of the article inclusion in a custom module.

Articles Anywhere: http://extensions.joomla.org/extension/articles-anywhere

How to add an image to an article https://docs.joomla.org/Adding_an_image_to_an_article

Also, there are additional editors out there that make editing articles easier. You might look into that if you have not already done so. http://extensions.joomla.org/tags/editors