Joomla page and menu layout help needed

[Zholl]

Alright, so I've been trying to learn Joomla, and in the process have been trying to recreate the general layout of my team's existing site. I've got the Joomla setup on a localhost, so I don't have to take down the existing site until I figure it out. The main problem I've encountered is how to recreate the general structure of our existing site. It consists of a number of entirely static pages, which only change when a change is made to whatever it describes. For instance, pages about the game, robot, etc. I can only seem to create a sort of blog with Joomla, though, which I only want to do with things like the news updates and meeting summaries. Everything else is entirely static. I'd also like to recreate the menu layout we have, since Joomla's main menu module seems to clutter up really quickly.

The existing site can be found at http://www.team2996.com if that helps show what I'm trying to explain. I'm trying to find a good way of making the dropdown menus along the top bar, and then make certain pages without that blog feel, and other sections as mini-blogs of sorts. If anyone needs clarification on what I'm asking, feel free to ask, since I don't feel I've adequately explained this. All help is very much appreciated

[synth3tk]

When you create the menu item, make sure to select "Articles >> Article", which will only display one article on a page, instead of multiple articles.

When editing the static pages in the back-end, you can play with the "Advanced Parameters" on the right-side of the screen.

[cablebox]

The site is a bit slow to load. It might just be my bandwidth, but after the site loads its great. To make a site less like a blog, you could probably be more focused on the pages. Make more pages and in the navigation feature, check off pages and uncheck the blog archives. I think that would work.

Great site!

[keehun]

Yeah I was gonna say, there are some minor iffy's but wow! I never usually say this, but great site!

[RoboMaster]

Wow, I think we have some relationships!

My team is also using Joomla
Our school's mascot is also the Cougars (although our team nickname is the Centurions)
And I think you were the team that previously used my Knol articles on FIRST and FRC on your website? Is this true? I saw on the "Similar Content on the Web" area on the side that it was copied on your (or somebody's) site, which was an honor. It seems an original description has been made by the team now. Through this thread I visited your site again and it looked familiar.

Your website looks great! Might I suggest a easy-access main page for your robot, which has a general picture and description of it? Currently you have multiple pages that describe the different aspects of the robot in high detail. One needs to weed through these to just get a picture of the robot.

[Zholl]

Hey, that's almost uncanny!

And thanks for the suggestion. I'll keep that in mind as I work out the redesign.

Also, I'm not sure if we used those articles, to be honest. Our head web guy last year did more with content initially than I did, and even after that it was our more talented writers in our group who were writing a lot of our articles and such. I'm the code monkey who handles more of the functional aspects of the site, thus the reason why I'm heading up the current redesign. I do have to admit, though, those articles of yours do look very familiar...