Learn Joomla!: A Beginners Guide To Building Websites With The Joomla! Content Management System 0955445000, 9780955445002

Table of contents :
Title Page......Page 2
Table of Contents......Page 4
List of Figures......Page 8
List of Tables......Page 9
Who this eBook is for (and who it’s not for)......Page 10
Conventions......Page 11
About the author......Page 12
Preface......Page 13
1.1 Key benefits......Page 14
1.3 Examples of Joomla! websites......Page 16
2.2 Inside Joomla!......Page 17
2.3 Administrator Interface......Page 19
2.6 Plug-ins Components, Modules and Mambots......Page 20
2.8 Joomla! Demo......Page 22
3.1 Using a local server on your Windows PC......Page 23
3.1.1 Installation instructions for JSAS......Page 24
3.2.1 Getting the Files......Page 27
3.2.2 Creating your MySQL Database......Page 30
3.2.3 Completing the installation using your Web Browser......Page 31
4 The One Day Guide to Building a Joomla! Website......Page 35
5 A Worked Example - Building a Simple Website......Page 37
5.1.2 A blank Sheet......Page 38
5.2 First Look at the Administrator’s Interface......Page 40
5.2.1 Change the default template......Page 41
5.2.2 Entering our sample content......Page 44
5.2.3 Entering Words and Pictures Adding New Content......Page 46
5.3 Connecting it together building the menu......Page 48
5.3.1 Home Page Menu Link......Page 49
5.3.3 News Menu Link......Page 50
5.3.4 More about Templates......Page 51
5.3.5 Adding the Contact Us Page......Page 55
5.3.6 Adding the Links Section......Page 56
5.3.7 Adding a Search Facility to the site......Page 57
6.1.1 Configuration......Page 58
6.1.2 To set up a new user......Page 60
6.1.3 Installing the Login Form module......Page 62
6.1.4 Testing the Login Form......Page 63
6.1.5 Controlling access to Content......Page 64
6.1.7 User Editing Tools......Page 65
6.2 How to set up a user to add content and edit it on the website......Page 66
6.3 Limitations of standard Joomla! user management......Page 67
7.1 Modules to add greater functionality......Page 68
7.1.1 Enhancing the home page......Page 69
7.1.2 Latest News......Page 71
7.1.3 Popular......Page 72
7.2.1 How to create Summary Views of your content......Page 73
7.2.2 How to create Table Views of your content......Page 77
7.3 Building Menus to structure your site......Page 79
7.4 Banners......Page 83
7.5 Polls......Page 85
7.6 Incorporating external Newsfeeds into your site......Page 86
7.7 Syndicating your site......Page 89
7.8 Optimizing for Search Engines & Short Links......Page 90
8 Using 3rd Party Add-on Components and Modules......Page 91
8.1 Building an online Shop......Page 92
8.1.1 Setting up your shop......Page 95
8.1.2 How to take payments On-line......Page 96
8.2 How to add a Forum to your site......Page 98
8.3.1 How to get and install Docman......Page 101
8.3.2 Configuring DOCman......Page 102
8.4.1 How to get and install Acajoom......Page 104
8.4.2 Where to look/go next for more information......Page 107
8.5.3 What you get......Page 108
8.5.5 How to build a split menu......Page 109
8.5.6 How to build dynamic menus using CSS......Page 111
8.5.7 Where to look/go next for more information......Page 112
8.6.1 Community Builder......Page 113
8.6.3 Adding a Weblog using MamBlog......Page 114
8.6.5 Forms / database component - mosforms......Page 115
8.6.7 Blogg-X......Page 116
8.6.10 Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) - OpenSEF......Page 117
8.7 What next .........Page 118
9.1 Introduction......Page 119
9.2 Template positions, an example......Page 120
9.3 Trying out templates......Page 121
9.5 Taking templates to the next stage......Page 122
10.1 Tools Required......Page 123
10.2 Steps Involved......Page 124
10.3 The Template file structure - ’What’s in a template?’......Page 125
10.3.3 The index.php file......Page 126
10.4.2 Generic CSS......Page 131
10.4.3 Specific CSS......Page 132
10.5 An example - building a template the process......Page 136
10.7 A free resource for template ideas......Page 146
11 Hints, Tips & Howtos......Page 147
12 Where to go next to build your expertise and skills......Page 152
Joomla! Local PC server......Page 153
Suppliers of Commercial Support and Assistance for Joomla!:......Page 154
3.Development Tools and Test Tools......Page 155
Web Development Tutorials......Page 156
C Instructions for deleting all content and structure from a standard Joomla! install......Page 157
D Basic End User Instructions......Page 160
E Glossary......Page 162
Index......Page 170

Citation preview

Joomla! Version 1.0.x

Learn Joomla! A Beginner’s Guide to Building Websites with the Joomla! Content Management System by Michael A Lloyd

ARTONEZERO Artonezero is a British publisher of eBooks based in London Artonezero Limited 16 Manette Street LONDON W1D 4AR United Kingdom c Michael A Lloyd 2007 Copyright ° First Published January 2007 Typeset in LATEX with Palatino and Helvetica typefaces All rights reserved. No part of this ebook may be copied, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted to a third party in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing by Artonezero Limited. Enquiries regarding reproduction should be sent to the rights department at the above address. The licensee is permitted to make up to three electronic copies of this ebook, and to print copies for personal use. LEARN Joomla! Edition 1.0 A beginners guide to building websites with the Joomla! Content management system ISBN-10: 0955445000 ISBN-13: 978-0955445002 www.learnjoomla.co.uk Published in PDF format by Artonezero Limited, London

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Contents 1 Introduction to Joomla! 1.1 Key benefits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 Building a Joomla! Website . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3 Examples of Joomla! websites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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2 A Brief Tour of Joomla! 2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 Inside Joomla! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3 Administrator Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4 Design Template . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.5 Content Structure Sections and Categories . . . 2.6 Plug-ins Components, Modules and Mambots 2.7 User Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.8 Joomla! Demo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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3 Installing Joomla! 3.1 Using a local server on your Windows PC . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1.1 Installation instructions for JSAS . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 Installing Joomla! on a Web Hosting server . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.1 Getting the Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.2 Creating your MySQL Database . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.3 Completing the installation using your Web Browser

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4 The One Day Guide to Building a Joomla! Website

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5 A Worked Example - Building a Simple Website 5.1 Starting at the beginning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1.1 The brief . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1.2 A blank Sheet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2 First Look at the Administrator’s Interface . . . . . . . . . 5.2.1 Change the default template . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2.2 Entering our sample content . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2.3 Entering Words and Pictures Adding New Content 5.3 Connecting it together building the menu . . . . . . . . . . 5.3.1 Home Page Menu Link . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3.2 About Menu Link . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Contents 5.3.3 5.3.4 5.3.5 5.3.6 5.3.7

News Menu Link . . . . . . . . . . More about Templates . . . . . . . Adding the Contact Us Page . . . Adding the Links Section . . . . . Adding a Search Facility to the site

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6 Adding Users to your Site 6.1 User management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1.1 Configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1.2 To set up a new user . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1.3 Installing the Login Form module . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1.4 Testing the Login Form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1.5 Controlling access to Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1.6 User content editing from the website . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1.7 User Editing Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2 How to set up a user to add content and edit it on the website . . . . 6.3 Limitations of standard Joomla! user management (and the solution)

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7 Taking it to the next stage 7.1 Modules to add greater functionality . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1.1 Enhancing the home page (and other pages) . . 7.1.2 Latest News . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1.3 Popular . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2 Creating Views of your content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2.1 How to create Summary Views of your content 7.2.2 How to create Table Views of your content . . . 7.3 Building Menus to structure your site . . . . . . . . . . 7.4 Banners . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.5 Polls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.6 Incorporating external Newsfeeds into your site . . . . 7.7 Syndicating your site . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.8 Optimizing for Search Engines & Short Links . . . . . .

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8 Using 3rd Party Add-on Components and Modules 8.1 Building an online Shop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.1.1 Setting up your shop . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.1.2 How to take payments On-line . . . . . . 8.2 How to add a Forum to your site . . . . . . . . . 8.3 Installing a document management system . . . 8.3.1 How to get and install Docman . . . . . . 8.3.2 Configuring DOCman . . . . . . . . . . . 8.3.3 Where to go next for more information . 8.4 Setting up an email newsletter . . . . . . . . . . . 8.4.1 How to get and install Acajoom . . . . .

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Contents

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8.4.2 Where to look/go next for more information . Get more from Menus with Extended Menu module . 8.5.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.5.2 How to Get it . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.5.3 What you get . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.5.4 How to install it . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.5.5 How to build a split menu . . . . . . . . . . . 8.5.6 How to build dynamic menus using CSS . . . 8.5.7 Where to look/go next for more information . 10 more indispensable extensions . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.6.1 Community Builder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.6.2 Guest book - Easybook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.6.3 Adding a Weblog using MamBlog . . . . . . . 8.6.4 A flexible banner system - Artbanners . . . . . 8.6.5 Forms / database component - mosforms . . . 8.6.6 Content Item module . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.6.7 Blogg-X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.6.8 mycontent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.6.9 AdSense . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.6.10 Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) - OpenSEF What next ... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

9 Introduction to Templates 9.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.2 Template positions, an example . . 9.3 Trying out templates . . . . . . . . 9.4 Installing a new Template . . . . . 9.5 Taking templates to the next stage

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10 Make your own template 10.1 Tools Required . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.2 Steps Involved . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.3 The Template file structure - ’What’s in a template?’ 10.3.1 The core files (required) . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.3.2 Additional files (Optional) . . . . . . . . . . . 10.3.3 The index.php file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.4 The CSS styling file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.4.1 Joomla! CSS Classes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.4.2 Generic CSS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.4.3 Specific CSS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.5 An example - building a template the process . . . . 10.6 Editing a template ’in situ’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.7 A free resource for template ideas . . . . . . . . . . .

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Contents 11 Hints, Tips & Howtos

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12 Where to go next to build your expertise and skills

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A Useful websites

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B Open Source Software Tools & Tutorials

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C Instructions for deleting all content and structure from a standard Joomla! install 156 D Basic End User Instructions

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E Glossary

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List of Figures 2.1 2.2 2.3

How Joomla! generates a website . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Joomla! Administrator Control Panel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Joomla! content is structured into Sections and Categories . . . . . . .

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The JSAS Control Panel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Make a note of your new database settings . . . . The Joomla! Installer pre-installation check screen The Joomla! Installer database settings . . . . . . .

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The AnyTown Zoo ’Worked Example’ website . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Joomla! Template Manager showing template selection method . Default Joomla! Modules installation settings in Module Manager . . The Tiny MCE HTML Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Inserting an Image into an article . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Example CSS styling displayed by Firefox Web Developer plugin . . . A Table View of the News articles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Template positions for the LJ_metro01 template . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119

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10.1 A new 3 column design visual for the AnyTown Zoo template . . . . . 136 10.2 The Visual ’marked up’ for coding (only some markup shown) . . . . . 137 10.3 The LJ_andreas01 template . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144

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List of Tables 5.1

The four standard Joomla! menus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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7.1 7.2 7.3

Controlling the Blog page CSS styles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Date Format parameters (strftime) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Summary of Menu Link Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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10.1 PHP Template Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128

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Who this eBook is for (and who it’s not for) If you are completely new to Joomla! and have a reasonable knowledge of web site concepts and some practical knowledge of HTML this book will introduce you to the basic concepts behind Joomla! and get you to build your first site more quickly than if you have to sift through the somewhat disjointed material out there at the moment If you are a hot web development house, with great PHP skills and award winning graphic designers, and you already know about Joomla! concepts, this book is only likely to be useful if you have new members on the team and you want something to get them up to speed fast on the basics. This is not a book for developers planning to do component or module development. It’s a book for people who are short of time and want to build quality content based websites and want to know how to make Joomla! do it for them quickly. This book covers Joomla! version 1.0.x A Joomla! version 1.5.x eBook is planned for early 2007. See http://www.learnjoomla.co.uk for more details

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Using this book If you are new to Joomla! Read through the Introduction and the Tour and take a look at the online demo, before installing Joomla! as explained in Chapter 3. You are strongly advised to NOT install the sample content that is an option with Joomla! but instead use the content supplied with this book, otherwise you will not be able to follow the worked example exactly and you may miss some key concepts which are explained via the Worked Example. You should work through the example Chapter 5 first before working through Chapters 6,7, and 8 as these build on the key concepts you learn in Chapter 5. If you are interested in understanding how visual design in Joomla! works you can go straight to Chapter 9.

If you have some Joomla! experience You may have bought this book to fill in gaps in your Joomla! understanding. Learn Joomla! is designed primarily as a tutorial guide, rather than a reference manual, however you can use the Table of Contents or the Index to go directly the concept you wish to research. All the Notes, Tips and Hints are linked from the Index. You may wish to go straight to the template section if you need to modify or build your own template - this section does not require you to read the earlier material first.

Conventions Navigation: The instruction Site > Template Manager > Site templates means Go to the Site item on the pull down menu, click Template Manager from the options presented, and select the submenu option Site Templates. Commands: Commands to be entered are shown thus $ chown -R 777 /web Buttons: Buttons to be clicked are shown as Save Code: Code (including HTML, XML, CSS and PHP) samples are displayed as