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Why Joomla!

Software Articles - Joomla Articles

By Fred Anders, TPA Information Technology Director

Joomla! is not an ocean liner . . .

It's a fairly easy way to add stories and photos to your Web site, and it's one of many CMS (Content Management Systems) on the Web. The software price is "free" but the real cost is the time and work you add to get your site running.  Of course, you could pay for software AND spend lots of time learning it and adding content too.

After installing and configuring Joomla! on your Web site, anyone you grant permission to can add stories through their local computer's web browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, etc.). Here are the basic requirements to install Joomla!:

A Web server running the following software (all open source - free):

Advantages of a Joomla! site (once the site is set up)
It's simple to add, remove, change and archive your content. You can have people who submit articles with complete formatting but not publish it until the editor/publisher approves it. This distributes the workload from the technology savvy employee to the wordsmith, and can help solve a bottleneck in the publishing process.

The default formatting of the site (look and feel) is handled by the Joomla! template system. This can be overridden by a someone with html/CSS skills. Reporters and editors don't have to understand coding to prepare an item for publication, but skills can be added a little at a time.

Joomla! features a small, easy-to-understand set of icons that control how a story looks. This includes adding photos, videos, type sizes, italics and bold face.

How the Joomla! system is organized and pages are made
Articles must be organized by both a category and section hierarchy system. The largest area heading "section" (like Editorial) can contain many "categories" (like op/ed, news, sports, etc.).

The system then uses your "labeling" of the articles with category and section to organize what appears on the pages.

You can have, for example, a page of articles within the "Editorial" section  (organized by date, most recent on top) that displays after the Web user chooses the menu item "Editorial." This page would use a section page layout when set up in the Joomla! menu.

You can give the Web user a menu item "Sports" and the same sports articles you had in the "Editorial Page" now displays on the "Sports Page," but in this case only the "Sports" category articles display. This page would use a category page layout when set up in the Joomla! menu.

Other additions can be added to Joomla!
You might have an advertisement on the right side of the Sports "category" page. Using the module mod_banner, you could add a gif file from the client. This module gives you control to have the ad on the right side (the top, the bottom or anything between) of the page or any page of the site.

The mod_banner module gives you a way to organize content through categories and clients.

This is just the tip of the iceberg
New modules and plug-ins are added weekly to the Joomla! Web site. Updates are released every month or two and a new version upgrade is due out soon (one per year).

This software is supported by a large community of users and is available on most popular Web ISP's, mostly for free with your monthly site fee.

Templates provide the look and feel of your site
Template choices are everywhere. With so many, how do you choose the best? I would choose based on these areas in the following order:

First, your menu system.  Choose this based on look and browser compatibility.

Second, templates layout.  Templates divide pages into smaller areas that are used by your content. All templates seem to do well with section, category, article content, but a newspaper has other needs. Advertising, classifieds, obits, etc. Where are these to be displayed? Carefully study the templates architecture. Good template builders have detail pages to show you the usable areas and the labels for each.

Third, templates support.  The placement of ads may be critical for your site to make money, and if you are unable to place the ads where needed, you may need access to the template builder (custom programming ) to fix this. Support for your template may be costly, unless you know and can communicate your needs. Get the hourly fees up front before you buy into a template.

Fourth, template design/look. Looks are important, but programming the look (type size, font, color) is easy compared to changing other areas of the template.

Disadvantages of a Joomla!  site
The things you can't do with Joomla! are almost not worth mentioning, mostly because you can add systems to the site outside Joomla! and make it appear to be part of the system.

When I first started working in the system, I was teaching Dreamweaver and programming mySQL databases, so if I hit the wall in Joomla!   I just added it in Dreamweaver/mySQL and moved on.

Many times I could have found a module/plugin to use in Joomla! but programming was faster for me. Modules take time to research and choose, then learn, but some probably are the only way to get what you want.

Editing modules makes life easier for users who type in the browser window of Joomla!. This is the only way to get this type of function, and you must go with a module.

All in all, I still think Joomla! was the best choice for our site and it could be the best for yours.

The following site is offering training in Texas.

http://joomlatraining.com/

 
 
 
 
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