In short
Who is it for?
Newcomers / beginners up to intermediate level
Covered topics
- Installation
- Joomla overview: frontend, backend, create an article, add a module
- Creating a Site in an Hour: remove sample data, change logo, add menus, publish articles, change layout settings, add categories, change homepage, add contact
- Site organization: organize your content, create a sitemap, organize categories
- Adding and editing articles: formating text, change article layouts, add images
- Home Pages and Overview Pages: featured articles, category overview pages
- Managing menus
- Enabling Users to Log in and Contribute: login module&page, user groups and their permissions, view permissions
- Extending Joomla: components, modules and plugins
- Templates: parameters, tweaking html and css,
- Search engine optimization
- Security: updating, passwords, directory protection, backups
General writting style
Do first, explain later. Or "Learn by example".
Things I liked
Orientation towards doing things. Not much words are being lost and this books is packed with practical knowledge that is most needed by those new to the Joomla world.
Things I did not like
Things are not always ordered in the most logical way, e.g. installation chapter is followed by the chapter that starts with on building sites using CMS, some parts look like they were inserted later as they are not directly related to the previuos text.
Also the book is missing some short introductory - orientation type of graphics and descriptions, kind of index pages. I can imagine first time user could easily get confused by not exactly stndard terminology often used in Joomla.
Published by
Packt Publishing.
Longer review
This book will teach you all necessary Joomla fundamentals needed for one to build a site. And not alike certain "official Joomla book" this one is full of valuable step by step instructions on how to do things without having to read whole essays on GPL. With its DO-FIRST-EXPLAIN-LATER style of writing it is a natural fit for all those "learn by doing" type of people like me. It covers all the necessary areas, from basic site structure planning to execution and details like where to click to perform a certain action.
In addition to specific Joomla knowledge you will also learn about more general website building topics like how to structure your site, search engine optimization, web security and similar necessary things so after reading this book you will have gained enough knowledge to start building your first site.
I do have one remark although, but as this is more my personal preference than a failure I'm still giving it 5 stars. While reading it, at least in first few chapters, I was missing a few diagrams or more structured explanation of the basic Joomla elements, a kind of short "map" explaining basic elements like components, modules, menus etc. and how they relate to each other. Don't get me wrong - this is all explained fine and consistently on the later pages, but having a short visual guide that you could always look at when in doubt would make this book perfect vs. really recommended as it is now.
As i wrote in the title - i wish this book existed when I started with Joomla (back in the days before the fork when it was still called Mambo).
Where to buy?
