The Beginners Guide To Joomla

Have you ever wanted to create your own website, but not confident that you have the skills to create one yourself?

MakeUseOf is proud to announce The Complete Beginner’s Guide To Joomla which is now available to download for free.

Thanks to this 40+ page guide, you can easily create your own, professional website within minutes. This guide will teach you how to use Joomla CMS and create your own professional websites.

This guide will walk you through everything from why to choose Joomla and how to install it on your webserver to how to design and customise your site to your liking.

Once you’re finished with the guide you will know enough to be able to get your very own website up and running.

 

1. Introduction

Joomla is a great Content Management System with a lot of flexibility and with an easy-to-use user interface that a lot of people get intimidated about when they realize how many options and configurations are available. This manual is meant to serve as a guide to Joomla’s basic features and help you install and start your first Joomla website.

We have all been beginner users at some point, so I hope this guide helps answer some of the questions you might have.

1.1 What is a CMS (Content Management System)?

A Content Management System is a series of programming pages connected to a database that allows one to retrieve information from that database in the form of content. Sounds complicated? You’ve used one more often that you think.

Have you ever updated your Facebook page or created a blog? Have you ever bought a book from Amazon.com or bid on something on eBay? Have you ever read The New York Times Online or checked something out on Wikipedia? All of these sites work with a type of Content Management System.

The ones we will be focusing on are ones that allow you to manage your own website from a simple interface, to creating your own pages and menus without the need for knowing how to program yourself.

1.2 About Joomla

Joomla is a platform based on PHP and MySQL which was created in 2005 by a team of open source developers. It currently has 200,000 community users and contributors. Joomla is free to anyone who wants to download it and use it to create a website. It is also open to anyone who wants to create extensions and templates.

The most current version of Joomla can be downloaded from here.

1.3 Why Joomla?

There are three main free CMSs available today, and endless other less popular ones. The most popular Content Management Systems available are: Joomla, Drupal andWordPress.

The differences among them are quite significant, although they are basically meant to do the same thing – to help you create and manage your website. There have been many heated arguments between the Joomla and the Drupal users over which one is best. As someone who has used them both, my take is that they each have their good and bad points.

Joomla

Pros:

• Joomla is usually easier to get up and running and tends to have a quicker learning curve.

• Joomla tends to have better looking templates and a friendlier community, even towards beginner users.

Cons:

• Joomla’s code can be messy at times and loading time tends to be longer because of that.

• Its architecture limits how many levels of sub categories can be created.

Drupal

Pros:

• Drupal has a more flexible infrastructure, allowing you to create multiple sub-categories and with more advanced user features.

• Fast loading time and reasonably clean code.

Cons:

• Longer learning curve and usually a longer install to launch time.

• Although the community is supportive, there is less tolerance to new users and people asking very basic questions.

Basically, they are both excellent CMSs and which one you choose should depend on your particular needs and willingness to work through each CMS’s individual problems.

Also pay attention to what modules and themes each CMS has as you may require one that is not on both platforms. It is best to weigh up the pros and cons of each CMS before you go ahead and create your website.

WordPress is different in many ways. WordPress truly is built to serve primarily as a blogging platform. It also has a large community and flexibility to evolve beyond a simple blog, but it works best as a delivery medium for always changing material exactly the way blogs are supposed to be. That being said, you can create nice websites using WordPress that are not blogs.