Intro Text and Main Text

Content items (pages) within Mambo are created using two text fields - Intro Text and Main Text. Content entered into the Intro Text field is stored separately to content entered into the Main Text field, and each have different purposes. Many users enter all their content into the Intro Text field and leave the Main Text field empty. In this tutorial, we will look at what Intro Text and Main Text are, how they are used, and how incorrect use of Intro Text results in duplicate content on a Mambo web site. The tutorial applies to Joomla! as well, as Joomla! is a fork of Mambo and continues to use the same content item structure.

Let's look at the content entry fields:

Whether you are using a WYSIWYG editor or not, you will see two entry boxes for entering your content.

What is Intro Text?

To answer this we need to look at how Mambo was originally designed. Mambo was first developed 8 years ago and its focus was on web publishing. In the publishing world, it is common to have abstracts, summaries and exerpts of articles that lead readers to want to read the main text of an article. So, Mambo was developed with the ability to provide summaries or exerpts for each article and to have these show up on the front page of the site. Because Mambo was designed for the masses, and not just for publishers, the name "Intro Text" was used - it could just as easily have been called, "summary" or "excerpt".

How is it used?

Intro Text is used to provide the content you want to display on the front page, with a "Read More" leading readers to the full text of the article. Now, many users only use the Intro Text box, and where there is content there but nothing in the Main Text field, Mambo will publish the entire article on the front page. If the article/content item is not published to the front page at all you will not even notice that Intro Text has been used instead of Main Text. Conversely, some users enter everything into the Main Text and leave Intro Text blank. That's not a problem either unless you want to publish that content item to the front page, in which case, you will not have any content appear for that item on the front page, except for the title and a "Read More" link.

Ideally, Intro Text is used to provide a summary, or introduction to the content of the article.

Duplicate Content and Intro Text

By default, Mambo (and Joomla!) include the Intro Text at the beginning of every content item. When you create a new content item for your site you will see a parameters tab that provides many different options for how you want this content to be displayed. The option for showing or hiding Intro Text is often overlooked.

If you leave the default, which is set to "show" then your Intro Text will be displayed at the top of the Main Text of your content item. If you select, "hide" the Intro Text will be displayed on the front page, but will not be displayed in the content item. In other words, if you leave Intro Text set to "show" then the content of your Intro Text field is duplicated - it appears on the front page and appears again on the actual article/content item itself.

The first paragraphs of any page are the most important to search engines when they are analysing your content for originality, keywords, and relevance. If search engines determine that your front page content is more important than the actual page, your page may not be returned at all in search engine results.

For SEO, you should always write unique and original Intro Text that will encourage your visitors to read more, and you should set this to "hide" in the parameters of the content item.

How to Hide All New Intro Text

If you are like me, and routinely hide Intro Text on the content item, it quickly becomes a nuisance to have to change that parameter over and over again. However, until the Mambo team make this a global configuration option, there is a relatively easy way to ensure your Intro Text is always hidden.

Open the file administrator/components/com_content/content.xml and locate the following code (line 28 for Mambo 4.6.4):

<param name="introtext" type="radio" default="1" label="Intro Text" description="Show/Hide the intro text">

to this:

<param name="introtext" type="radio" default="0" label="Intro Text" description="Show/Hide the intro text"> 

Introtext can be styled however you like so separating it out from the main text of your content not only reduces duplicate content within your Mambo site, but also provides you with more opportunities for creative styling.