Training: Introduction to Joomla!

Facilitated by Louis Landry, Joomla.org

Louis will take learners through all of the core Joomla! concepts, from installation and configuration to extensions and templates. This will be a question-driven training, and participants are encouraged to bring their questions and curiosities.

Joomla 1.0 – 1.5 major upgrade – completely rewrote all the code Templates, components, modules, plug-ins.

In Joomla – user interface came first – in Drupal, developers interface came first. In forums, heavily populated with users, not developers. Joomla is more of a product.

Content component comes with install, everything after that is a downloaded add-on.

Article manager- 2 level structure for storing content. Sections, and below sections are categories. Looking ultimately move into node structure ultimately, but different structure is threatening and difficult for user community. Huge shift in concepts for management structure.

User friendly URLs created by Alias Parameters for article sets all the user access levels Parameters advance – hiding and showing of “stuff” on page. Can set defaults for these items. Meta data information –

Title tags are defaulted to a particular structure, but you can set up a special configuration to allow you to control what the title tag says.

Viewed home page (admin) Anything displayed other than the main content area is considered a module. Article manager  new  answer all questions  type text, answer parameters Next step , make a menu item that connects to that page. Then choose menu connection.

Components and modules – Components = mini applications News feed Directory Poll Search Web links

Extensions (extensions.joomla.org) – most trafficked site in the joomla world. Downloading true open source with GPL

1. 1 download you want to add to your site is JCE

Extensions can be managed on the front end Global configuration is handled as a core function.

Modules and Plug-Ins looks like content manager

Themes parameters – some have configurable parameters

Module – ability to define where module appears (which page location, etc.) Modules can have individual CSS styles, etc.

PlugIns – plugins for authentication, -- changes the way the system work,