Book

Honestly, when requesting this book from the Symbol Plus publishing house, I was just wondering what happened to Joomla! since the last time I tried to use it. (It was still in those troubled times, when both Mambo and Joomla! Were the same thing.)

The complexity of the appeal, the non-obviousness of the connections, the need to delve into someone else's PHP code just to make a decent template, for a long time discouraged me from using free web solutions. Now, with the help of the book, I’ll try to figure out the secrets of the new version of Joomla! 1.5 ".

You can listen to the audio version of this article on WEbdiktor.ru.

First, a few words about the publication. Paperback, quality paper, imputed layout. In general, this book is printed to be easy to read.

The content of the publication is divided into 12 chapters on all aspects of working with CMS. From installing the system to facilitating SEO optimization and a few great practical examples of creating a site. In order for you to have a more complete impression of the filling of the book, below I will give its contents with brief comments.

Chapter 1: Content Management Systems and an Introduction to Joomla!

Contains traditional boltology on the topic of sites, CMS and other aspects of the web. The payload is a short list of system capabilities, written in an advertising and propaganda format.

Chapter 2: Download and Install Joomla!

A 19-page story about joining joomla.org and downloading the latest version of the system.

Chapter 3: Joomla! Administration Basics

Explains the main terms used, and introduces the system interface. I finally understood what “mambots” are, and mentally shook hands with people who renamed them “plugins”.

Chapter 4: Content for the head: organizing content

One of the most useful chapters of the book. Describes the principles of forming pages and organizing content in the system. This and the next chapters are key in the book.

Chapter 5: Creating Menus and Navigation Elements

Continuation of the reasoning begun in the previous chapter.

Chapter 6: Joomla Extensions

A story about what system extensions are and how to install them (but not how to create them). A list of the most popular extensions.

Chapter 7: Content Extension: Articles and Editors

Description of work with WISYWIG, editing capabilities. Issues of distribution of rights to edit site content.

Chapter 8: Attracting Visitors

Basic SEO and description of suitable extensions.

Chapter 9: Creating a CSS Template

To create a template, not only CSS, but also PHP is used. To understand everything that is said in the chapter, it would be nice to know both of these disciplines.

Chapters 10 through 12 are devoted to creating specific sites based on Jooomla! In the 10th, the creation of a school site is considered, in the 11th site of the restaurant, and in the 12th blog.

The book is written very "tasty." Starting to read it, you suddenly begin to understand how cool it is to work on such a wonderful system as “Joomla!”, Which has so many third-party developers that any needs of your site are already implemented in the form of appropriate extensions.

About the style we can say that the book was created by programmers for programmers. And although the author is clearly trying to write in a simple language, this is far from always the case. The book often tries to grasp the immensity, using special terms and referring to sources on the Web. (the materials may still be there, but certainly not in Russian.)

Verdict

This book is actually a Russian-language documentation on the CMS Joomla! According to it, anyone (with average knowledge of XHTML, CSS, PHP) will be able to learn how to work with this CMS. So all the fans of Joomla! in particular, open source in general, can safely go to the store - the book is worth it.

To all the rest, I want to suggest thinking about the following question: “Is it worth it to get involved with Joomla !?”. Getting the system for free, what do you save on? On support, quality documentation (is it considered that CMS is free if you paid for a book that explains how to work with it?), And the responsibility of suppliers.

People making free apps don't owe anything to anyone. There is a high probability that the add-on you need after the next system update will no longer be supported by your developer (and such cases have been in my practice). The time it takes you to get out of this situation (introduce another component, fix the component, write a new component) will bring direct losses to your network business. Free solutions are good as a trial ball, but something serious is impossible to base on such a shaky foundation.

More detailed thoughts on the topic of paid and free CMS can be found in the first half of my article “CMS for work” .