How To Create a Glossary using Joomla Core

There are many reasons why you might want to have a list of definitions or terms on your site.The same technique can be used for a list of products, services or any listing.

Using nothing more than Joomla!'s native Sections, Categories and Articles you can make a searchable glossary/dictionary. Here's how I built the glossary on our training site http://joomla.webeddy.com.

Step 1. Go to Content>Section and Create a section called "Glossary" I put the description and additional links in the Section Description. You can put any html you want as an introduction to your glossary.

Step 2. Go to Content>Category and  create 26 categories with letter names A, B, C, etc and make sure they are all under the Glossary section.

Step 3. Create an article for each term and place it in the proper section and category.

Step 4. Go to Menus>Main Menu and add a new menu item called Glossary.

• • Choose: Article> Section List Layout
  • Configure the parameters to show or hide what you want.

Add A Search Box to all the Glossary Pages

Step 1. Go to Extensions>Module Manager

Step2. Click "New"

Step 3. Choose a "Search" module

Step 4. Adjust the parameters - be sure to select a position appropriate for your template

• • Position: on this site I used " user1"

Step 5. When you are creating the module go to the bottom where it says Menu Assignment

• • Check the third radio button.   Select Menu Item(s) from the List
  • Then, using the CTRL key and your mouse button, UNSELECT the Home from the page list. Leave it on all the glossary pages.

Create a Menu or add other Modules to the glossary section.

Step 1. Go to Menus>Menu Manager and create a menu by clickin on "New" fill out the form. Here's what I put in

Unique Name: glossary
Title: Glossary
Description: Glossary
Module Title: Glossary

Step 2. Go to Menus>Glossary

At this point you can decide whether you want to create 26 menu items for each letter or some other menu links. In this case I made 26 links. When you create the links, Choose Articles>Category blog layout and choose the appropriate categories under the parameters.

I also put a link to the Weblink Section, so visitors would find other resources available on other websites. I'll manage those links using the core links management.

Step 3. Go to Extensions>Module Manager and add a new menu module, following the same procedures you used when you put the search module on all the pages, except this time choose search.

You're done!

You can always experiment with different choices in the parameters to get the best display of the items, but the basics are here.

This is kind of a tedious project if you have a lot of definitions. However you can shortcut it if you add an extension called Mass Content to your Joomla! site.