LDAP Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) is a protocol designed to access directory systems over TCP/IP. Because of this various databases provide an LDAP interface such as Microsoft's Active Directory, Novell's eDirectory, as well as more dedicated LDAP solutions such as OpenLDAP. Joomla! has had a native LDAP library (joomla.client.ldap (changed to JClientLDAP in Joomla 3.x)) and a native LDAP authentication plugin. This allows Joomla! to authenticate against LDAP systems out of the box: to configure, go to the Plugin Manager and enable and edit the Authentication - LDAP plugin. You can also read a tutorial on getting started from scratch with LDAP. Reference: http://docs.joomla.org/Glossary
Category In Joomla! a Category is a collection of Articles. In Joomla! a website might have Categories called "Animals" and "Plants". Within the "Animals" Category, the website might have Sub Categories such as "Birds" and "Mammals". Within the "Birds" Category, the website might have Articles such as "Parrots" and "Sparrows". The example above could be expanded even more with specific articles on different species of Parrots and Sparrows. Start with using an "Animal" Top Category. Placing the Sub Categories "Birds" and "Mammals" are under the Animal category, and then a "Parrots" and "Sparrows" Sub Category under the "Birds" Sub Category as shown. Animals Birds Parrots Sparrows Mammals Now you can create multiple articles in the Parrot and Sparrow Categories. Categories are maintained using the Category Manager which can be reached in the Administrator (Back-end) by clicking on the Content menu, then the Category Manager menu item.
Global Configuration All critical settings of a Joomla site and server. They include the following: Site, System, Server, Permissions, and Text filters. You can access the Global Configuration settings through the Site menu in the Administration control panel.
