Joomla! is one of the most popular open source content management systems, and it is actively developed and supported by a worldwide user community. It's a free, fun, and feature-rich tool for anyone who wants to create dynamic, interactive websites. Even beginners can deploy Joomla! to build professional websites, although it can be challenging to get beyond the basics and build a site that completely meets your needs. This book will help you to start building websites with Joomla! quickly, and also help you learn step-by-step to get the most out of its advanced features.
Chapter 1, A New and Easy Way to Build Websites, will help you learn why you want to use Joomla! to create an advanced, cool-looking site that's easy to expand, customize, and maintain.
Chapter 2, Getting Joomla! Up and Running, will show you how to install Joomla! on your own computer or on a web server and how to create a sample site.
Chapter 3, First Steps – Getting to Know Joomla!, will familiarize you with the basic concepts of Joomla!, the administrative interface, and the principles of a website constructed out of building blocks.
Chapter 4, Web Building Basics – Creating a Site in an Hour, will make you face a real-life challenge of using Joomla! to build a basic but expandable website in less time. You'll customize a default sample site of Joomla! to fit your needs, adding content and menu links and changing the site's look and feel.
Chapter 5, Small Sites, Big Sites – Organizing Your Content Effectively, will help you design a clear, expandable, and manageable framework for your content. Using a structure of categories and tags, you will make it easy for the users to add and find information on your site.
Chapter 6, Creating Killer Content – Adding and Editing Articles, will help you to create attractive content pages, and you'll learn about different ways to add images and tweak the page layout.
Chapter 7, Welcoming Your Visitors – Creating Attractive Home Pages and Overview Pages, shows you how to create a home page and overview pages to entice visitors to actually read all your valuable content.
Chapter 8, Helping Your Visitors Find What They Want – Managing Menus, will discuss how you can help visitors to find what they want by designing clear and straightforward navigation through menus.
Chapter 9, Opening Up the Site – Enabling Users to Log in and Contribute, will show you how to enable users to log in and allow them to create content and manage a website.
Chapter 10, Getting the Most out of Your Site – Extending Joomla!, will explain how to extend the capabilities of Joomla! using all sorts of extensions, such as using an image gallery to display pictures attractively, automatically showing article teasers on the home page, or enhancing your workspace by installing a more powerful content editor.
Chapter 11, Creating an Attractive Design – Working with Templates, will show you how templates can give your site a fresh look and feel and how you can customize templates to create an individual look, different from a typical Joomla! site.
Chapter 12, Attracting Search Engine Traffic – SEO Tips and Techniques, will show you how to increase your site's visibility for search engines by applying Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques, such as creating friendly URLs.
Appendix A, Keeping the Site Secure, will explore some simple, logical steps you can take to safeguard your site from hackers or data loss.
Appendix B, Creating a Multilingual Site, will walk you through the series of steps involved in creating a bilingual website using the multilingual capabilities built in Joomla!.
Appendix C, Pop Quiz Answers, contains answers to the multiple choice pop quizzes you will find throughout the book.
To follow the tutorials and exercises in this book, you'll need a computer with an Internet connection. It's recommended to have a web hosting account so that you can install Joomla! online.
Joomla! 3 Beginner's Guide Second Edition is aimed at anyone who wants to build and maintain a great website and get the most out of Joomla!. It helps you build on the skills and knowledge you may already have of creating websites, but if you're new to this subject, you won't have any difficulty understanding the instructions. Of course, we'll touch upon basic terms and concepts (such as HTML and CSS), but if you're not familiar with these, you'll also find references to some web resources.
In this book, you will find several headings appearing frequently.
To give clear instructions of how to complete a procedure or task, we use:
Action 1
Action 2
Action 3
Instructions often need some extra explanation so that they make sense, so they are followed with:
This heading explains the working of tasks or instructions that you have just completed.
You will also find some other learning aids in the book, including:
These are short multiple-choice questions intended to help you test your own understanding.
These practical challenges give you ideas for experimenting with what you have learned.
You will also find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "Click on the icon of the sampledata folder."
A block of code is set as follows:
.site-description {
color: silver;
font-size: 14px;
font-weight: bold;
padding-left: 104px;
} When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:
#logo {
float:left;
background:#e5e5e5;
display:inline-block;
padding:0 20px;
font-size:18px;}New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "Once the Database Configuration screen is complete, click on Next."
Feedback from our readers is always welcome. Let us know what you think about this book—what you liked or may have disliked. Reader feedback is important for us to develop titles that you really get the most out of.
To send us general feedback, simply send an e-mail to <feedback@packtpub.com>, and mention the book title through the subject of your message.
If there is a topic that you have expertise in and you are interested in either writing or contributing to a book, see our author guide on www.packtpub.com/authors.
Now that you are the proud owner of a Packt book, we have a number of things to help you to get the most from your purchase.
Although we have taken every care to ensure the accuracy of our content, mistakes do happen. If you find a mistake in one of our books—maybe a mistake in the text or the code—we would be grateful if you would report this to us. By doing so, you can save other readers from frustration and help us improve subsequent versions of this book. If you find any errata, please report them by visiting http://www.packtpub.com/submit-errata, selecting your book, clicking on the errata submission form link, and entering the details of your errata. Once your errata are verified, your submission will be accepted and the errata will be uploaded to our website, or added to any list of existing errata, under the Errata section of that title.
Piracy of copyright material on the Internet is an ongoing problem across all media. At Packt, we take the protection of our copyright and licenses very seriously. If you come across any illegal copies of our works, in any form, on the Internet, please provide us with the location address or website name immediately so that we can pursue a remedy.
Please contact us at <copyright@packtpub.com> with a link to the suspected pirated material.
We appreciate your help in protecting our authors, and our ability to bring you valuable content.
You can contact us at <questions@packtpub.com> if you are having a problem with any aspect of the book, and we will do our best to address it.
