Ryan Dohrn shows two ways to add captions under images in Joomla 1.5: using the editor's Caption style, or a preferred method with a one-column, two-row table that lets you control spacing and alignment.
Hey, this is Ryan Dohrn over at BrainSwell Media, and today we're going to talk about how to add a caption underneath your image within the Joomla 1.5 interface. Now keep in mind, this is specific to Joomla 1.5, and there's some other ways— what I'm going to share with you will work in 1.6 and 1.7 and higher, I'm sure, going forward, but maybe there will be some other changes. There might also be some plugins that you may want to check out as well. Okay, so we've gone to Content, Article Manager, and started a new article. Now, what I'm going to do is I'm actually going to scroll here to the bottom of the page, and what I'm going to do is I'm going to click on the image icon at the bottom of my little editing box. I'm just going to choose an image. Let's just choose this clock image, for example. Now, a lot of you that are in the newspaper or media business, you'd like to add captions here underneath of your pictures, and that's possible from 2 ways. I'm going to share with you 2 ways. Highlight the image and then go up here into Styles and choose Caption. Okay, then you're gonna click on the little tree icon here, the image editing icon, and then in the title here you're gonna put in Ryan Test Caption. Okay, and then you're gonna click Update. Now you'll notice that it's actually not going to show here in the WYSIWYG, but if you click Preview, then it actually is going to show it underneath of the image. Hopefully you can see that clearly in this tutorial. Okay? Now, there's another way that I like better, to be honest with you. So, let's go and delete this image and let's go down to the bottom of our editor here and choose the image insert icon at the bottom. And again, let's choose the clock and click Insert. Okay? Now, a lot of times what I like to do is actually I like to create a table. What I did is I just took the cursor on top of it, went back with my left arrow and clicked down. And then right here is how you create a table. Okay, so I'm going to insert a new table and I'm going to just do a table that's only 1 column and I'm going to do 2 rows. Okay? And then I'm going to click— and then you can also adjust the alignment of the table. I'm going to click Insert. Okay? And then what I'm going to do and where I want my caption to be is right here. So we're going to do, this is a text caption from Ryan. Okay? And I'm just going to take my picture and drag it up right into here. Okay? And then what I'm going to do is I have some text saved here. So let me copy some of this fake text, okay? And I'm going to go below it and I'm going to click like this, okay? Now you might say, well, Ryan, I want the caption, I want this text wrapped around it. Well, the way to do that is to actually click on the table itself and then you can also change the table properties, okay, as well. Now there's really no way to make the caption go on the right unless you create another column within that table. So, I'm going to choose this, I'm going to go to the Table Properties, which is right here, okay? I'm going to click on that. Whoops, I'm sorry, that's— yeah, that's right. And I'm going to click that there. And then, what I'm going to do is change the alignment to left align and click Update. And then, that pulls my text up close. Now, you might say, whoa, whoa, whoa, the text is way too close to my picture and my caption. That's fine. Go up here to the Table Properties. See, I like the Table Properties because it allows me to really control things. I can put in 5 pixels of cell padding or 5 pixels of cell spacing, okay? All right, and then I can click Update and that's going to give me, you know, and I can actually sit there. Now you see how there's some nice white there? So then I can go here and click Preview to see what I'm doing and you'll notice that here's my caption, you know, underneath and I've given myself some space. Those of you that remember Joomla 1.0, captioning was built in. I'm not exactly sure why it's not but I actually like using the table option better because I can actually control the text in a much more robust way. Like, I can make it bold. I can actually do and control it, do multi-lines of text. I could do, you know, like, Pic by, you know, Ryan Picasso, or, you know, whatever. I can center the text, you know, by highlighting it and then click Center. I mean, I just think this is a lot better option, to be honest with you, using Table. Now, remember, you can use that Styles Caption, but I just, I don't personally, you know, care for that. So, Anyway, that's the best way I found to put a caption and titles, and it's a little— there's a little work goes to it, but the nice thing is there's lots of controls that you have over top of colors and text. Like you can highlight this text and you could go and make it pink or whatever. I don't recommend that, by the way, although it is slightly funny. All right, well, I hope that's helpful. My name is Ryan Dohrn. I'm the founder of an internet consulting firm called Brain Swole Media, and we are Joomla experts and we love to help you out with your Joomla projects. So I can be reached at ryan@brainswolemedia.com. You can also find us online at brainswellmedia.com. So, take care, and I hope you will learn to love Joomla the way that we have as well. Good luck, and take care. Bye. Bye.
