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You have just written a fantastic article for your Joomla website but you don’t have a menu that will link to the article. This tutorial will explain how you can create a menu and help you understand how the Joomla Menu System works.

To create a menu in Joomla you first need to understand how the Joomla menu system is set up for Menus, Sections, Categories and Articles
Here is a diagram will help you understand the Joomla Menu system.



First we have the Menu Group Title. This is the title or subject of its related menus which are connected to your Section and a Category is connected to your Section.  Your articles are then connected to your Category.  It takes a while to get your head around the Section and Category system, but in time you will find it is really useful.
You will notice that the Section in the diagram has a second Category called Category 2 and it has an article linked to that Category 2. A Section can be broken up into several Categories. That’s what is useful about using Categories. As an example my website has a Menu Group Title called Filmmaking. The Menus that link to the articles in that Menu group are broken up into Categories called Daryl’s Films, How to Make Films and Animation. This means that the Section Filmmaking is broken up into 3 Categories. My articles are linked to the relevant Categories in the Filmmaking Section. I hope I haven’t confused you with all of this. You many need to read this a few times to understand the concept.

I have recently written an article about Animation and I want to put it in the Filmmaking Section but there is no Category or Menu for Animation so I will explain the procedure used to create a Menu = Animation for my new Category = Animation for the Section = Filmmaking and Menu Group Title = Filmmaking. In this example the Menu and Category will be called Animation.

I will now explain each step in more detail and hope that this tutorial has simplified what appears to be a complex procedure.
Before we can create a Menu we need to follow a procedure or method to reach our goal. The steps are as follows:

1. Create a Section
2. Create a Category that is linked to the Section
3. Write an Article and link it to a Section and Category
4. Create a Menu Group Title
5. Create a Menu linked to a Section and Category
6. Activate the Menu and finally you have a menu that is linked to your articles.

To learn the next step to Creating a Section follow this link to the tutorial explaining how to do this.

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