Beginning Joomla!: From Novice to Professional

Product Description

Do you want the ability to manage documents, photos, and other content over the Web but dont want to shell out thousands of dollars in proprietary solutions? Want to create an online community for your hobby or user group? Youre not alone. For thousands of like-minded around the globe, the answer is Joomla!, an open source content management system used to manage all sorts of data over the Web.

While Joomla! is relatively easy to install, a fair amount of knowledge is required in order to configure the application to your specific needs. Beginning Joomla! answers many of the questions youre sure to have, guiding you through the process of creating your own design templates, adding and managing content, and adding popular community features such as article commenting, user profile management, and forums. Later chapters discuss e-commerce integration, explore search engine optimization, and show you how to extend Joomla! by creating your own plug-ins.

Product Details

* Amazon Sales Rank: #43006 in Books
* Published on: 2007-07-19
* Original language: English
* Number of items: 1
* Binding: Paperback
* 475 pages

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Dan Rahmel is a Windows programmer with more than 14 years of experience
designing and implementing information systems and deploying mid-sized
client/server solutions using Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, Microsoft
Access, and Visual FoxPro.


As an author, he has written over a dozen books including Nuts-and-Bolts
Filmmaking, Visual Basic Programmer's Reference (first, second, and
third editions), Building Web Database Applications with Visual Studio,
Teach Yourself Database Programming in 24 Hours, Developing
Client-Server Applications with Visual Basic, and many more. His books
have been translated into various languages including Chinese, Japanese,
Spanish, French, and Portuguese. He is a contributor to DBMS, Internet
Advisor, and American Programmer magazines.

Customer Reviews

Title is Misleading; It is Really for the Novice3
I was a little disappointed with this book because in my mind it does not take one from a Novice to a Professional. Novice to professional from my perspective translates to giving one the information required to administer Joomla CPanel as well as the knowledge to create / customise a template. Alas, it only did addressed the management of the CPanel.

If it was entitled "Beginning Joomla" I would have given it a 5 because as I said earlier it is a great book for someone new to Joomla...but professional...NO!!!


Beginning Joomla! is the right title...3
...but it won't take you from novice to professional, nor even close for that matter.

I'm an experienced builder of minisites, but was looking to build something more substantial. Joomla! seemed ideal for the type of site I'm working on, but I had no experience with it whatsoever. This book did a good job of getting me up and running, and gave me a good basic understanding of how the different elements work together. It did greatly shorten my learning curve, which is really all I was after.

However, I did have a number of issues.

- Use care when following the examples. This book seems to have been written from a Beta version of 1.5 and quite a few things seem to have changed. Mostly it's just names of things, but in some cases certain cited functions seem to have been moved or even eliminated.

- The choice of topics and the progression through them seems a little goofy at times. For instance, there were quite a few basic unanswered questions for me, yet he chose to devote 32 pages to photo galleries? And why would designing your own templates be right in the middle, before even extensions are discussed?

On the positive side, a computer book with an index that's actually useful is a nice change of pace. Topics are easily looked up and found, unlike nearly every other book of this type I own.

Annoyance1
If you're an "expert," you won't need it. If you're a novice, you'll find it long on description and short on real-world application and context. If you're in between, you'll find it sorely lacking in the practical nook-and-cranny knowledge that would get you to the next level.

This book is unfortunately typical of open-source documentation. By the time you know enough to understand it, it's largely redundant.