Categories are the backbone of content organisation in Joomla. Every article, contact, news feed, and banner must belong to a category. Categories form a tree — any category can have unlimited sub-categories — and each node in the tree can have its own access level, metadata, and custom image.
Creating Categories
Go to Admin → Content → Categories → New. Key fields:
- Title & Alias — the display name and URL slug
- Parent — place the category in the hierarchy;
- No Parent -creates a root-level category - Description — displayed on the category blog/list page above the articles
- Image — shown on the category page and in category listings
- Access — restrict visibility to specific user groups
- Published / Unpublished / Archived / Trashed — full lifecycle management
Category Hierarchy
The category tree can be as deep as needed. Child categories inherit their parent's access level by default but can have a more restrictive level applied. The Category Manager shows the full tree with indent levels, and provides drag-and-drop reordering.
Rebuilding the Category Tree
If the category ordering or nesting appears broken after a bulk import or database operation, click Rebuild in the toolbar. This recalculates the nested set values (lft, rgt, level) without changing any content.
Category Metadata
Each category has its own Publishing tab with Meta Description, Meta Keywords, and Robots override — useful for giving category index pages distinct SEO values separate from the articles they contain.
Batch Operations
Select multiple categories and use the Batch button to:
- Move to a different parent
- Copy to a different parent
- Change access level across all selected categories at once
- Change language