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Joomla! A User's Guide
Michael J. Ross writes "Of all the content management systems (CMSs) from which a Web developer can choose for creating a new Web site, Joomla is generally considered to be one of the top choices -- partly because an experienced developer can create an attractive site faster with Joomla than with the majority of other CMSs. However, Joomla's online documentation leaves much to be desired, as is true for most if not all CMSs. Intermediate and especially new developers need a clear and comprehensive resource that can explain the terminology, customization, administrative panel, and other aspects of Joomla. A promising candidate is a book written by Barrie M. North, titled Joomla! A User's Guide: Building a Successful Joomla! Powered Website." Keep reading for the rest of Michael's review.
Joomla! A User's Guide
author
Barrie M. North
pages
480
publisher
Prentice Hall PTR
rating
8
reviewer
Michael J. Ross
ISBN
0136135609
summary
learn how to create and manage a website powered by Joomla!
It was published by Prentice Hall, under the ISBNs 0136135609 and 978-0136135609, on 21 December 2007 (although page 233 confusingly suggests that the material was written in November 2006). The book is available not only in print, but in electronic form as well, as part of the Safari Books Online library. On the publisher's Web page for the book, visitors can read the table of contents, the preface, and the index. Also, they can download a sample chapter -- "Creating a Pure CSS Template" -- as a PDF file. Lastly, visitors can check for updates to the book's content, i.e., reported errata, of which there are more than half a dozen, as of this writing.
The majority of the book's 480 pages are organized into 12 chapters, covering a number of topics: an introduction to CMSs and Joomla; installing Joomla; administration basics; content management; menus; extensions; WYSIWYG editing of content; search engine optimization (SEO); building a table-less template; and how to build Joomla sites for a school, a restaurant, and a blog. Four appendices cover: getting help on your Joomla problems; case studies; SEO basics; and installing WAMP5. The book offers plenty of screenshots, which make it possible for someone to follow the discussion even when away from their computer. Sadly, much of the text shown in the illustrations is extremely small, and could prove very difficult to read for anyone with diminished vision. Even some of the captions are so small as to almost require the use of a magnifying glass. Moreover, the illustrations are printed in light gray, which makes the situation even worse.
The intended purpose of the book is "to guide a non-technical user step-by-step in learning how to create and manage a website powered by Joomla" (page 7). The book is definitely geared towards people new to Joomla, and even new to Web development, given the amount of elementary material covered, such as the author's explanation of Joomla's need for a Web server.
In the preface, the author touches upon the growing popularity of Joomla for a wide variety of Web sites. He also mentions that PHP and CSS are not prerequisites for understanding the book; however, readers not well experienced in those technologies will struggle in implementing everything described in the book -- especially templates -- and this is substantiated by readers' comments online. Admittedly, a book that provided adequate coverage of PHP, CSS, and then Joomla, would likely be overwhelming in length. Readers unfamiliar with PHP and CSS should first secure a basic grounding in those technologies, prior to trying to create their own templates or other Joomla extensions. On the other hand, if a reader has no intention of creating any extensions of their own, then they can still use Joomla to build a new Web site, and use this book to learn how to do so.
In the first chapter, the author provides a valuable introduction to CMSs and the advantages they offer in separating content from the Web pages themselves. However, he refers to Joomla as a rebranding of Mambo, while it would be much more accurate to characterize it as a derivative project, having forked from Mambo, which still exists (sort of). The author also lists Joomla's major features, and the basic elements of a Joomla-powered Web site. Installing and configuring a CMS -- particularly for the first time -- is oftentimes a major stumbling block for any Web development newbie. Chapter 2 steps the reader through the process of downloading and installing the latest version of Joomla (the book uses version 1.5 RC1).
In the third chapter, the author explains the most commonly used administrative tasks, and how to accomplish them in the Joomla 1.5 administrative panel. He intentionally does not cover all of the administrative settings, and this may prove frustrating to some readers who are looking for comprehensive coverage. Yet he does note that such readers should consult the official Joomla User Manual. Also available is the Administrator Manual. The fourth chapter describes in detail how Joomla displays content in pages, how it organizes that content in sections and categories, and the role played by the Front Page component. It concludes with a discussion of how to create menu items and how to connect them to components, as well as how to use module content. Especially valuable to Joomla beginners is the explanation of the two methods of deciding what content appears on a site's homepage.
As noted in the preface, the relationship among menus, menu items, pages, and modules, is one of the most confusing aspects of Joomla -- even after the improvements with version 1.5. In Chapter 5, the author explains this relationship, and then the major menu layouts and how to control them using the various sets of parameters. He mentions the overriding of global settings, and this points up how, prior to this, the book should have explained where to change those global settings, and recommended values. The index is of no help, because they are not mentioned. In Chapter 6, the author shows how to install and manage extensions, which comprise components, modules, plug-ins, templates, and languages. (Templates were missing from his list presented in the book's preface.) Chapter 7 examines the use of WYSIWYG editors for changing content on the back-end and front-end.
The most functional and attractive Joomla-powered Web site will be of little value if it receives few visitors. Thus, search engine marketing (SEM), discussed in the eighth chapter, is of critical importance, and the author's largely sensible advice is worth reading -- despite the nonsensical reference to cowboys and cowgirls (on page 198), and his reference to the "miserable failure" Google bomb, which was diffused back in January 2007. Note that the links provided to the SEM tools strongly recommended by the author -- WordTracker, PR Prowler, and Perry Marshall -- are affiliate referral links. Thus it seems disingenuous when he writes "...this might be the place I would have a few affiliate links!" (emphasis added). Speaking of emphasis, it seems as if too much weight is given to resources from which the author would receive affiliate compensation. This is not what readers typically expect in a book for which they have paid good money. Also discussed in the chapter are the important topics of Web standards, accessibility, keywords, referral traffic, pay-per-click traffic, Google AdWords, e-mail traffic, and common SEM mistakes. He correctly points out the low SEM value of Joomla's native "Read more..." anchor text. But his recommended solution, a mambot from Run Digital, does not appear to work with Joomla version 1.5.
Most of the templates written for Joomla and Mambo have used tables for page layout, instead of the more accessible and efficient CSS approach. CSS- based templates are only now becoming increasingly available, and Chapter 9 furthers this worthy goal by stepping the reader through the development of a pure CSS template. As noted earlier, readers unfamiliar with CSS will most likely find this chapter quite daunting, if not disheartening. The book's overall tutorial approach kicks into full gear in the last three chapters, in which the author shows in great detail how to create Web sites for a school, a restaurant, and a blog site. This material could prove very helpful to readers who wish to review and put into practice the more theoretical ideas introduced in the earlier chapters.
In general, readers should be pleased with this book. Even though the author is clearly a fan of Joomla, and the tone of the book is positive, he does not hesitate to point out Joomla's flaws, such as the misleading name of a module type. This is rare among technical authors nowadays, and for this Barrie North should be commended. Yet it is odd that he does not mention the obvious misspelling, "Imagess," in Extensions > Module Manager > module > Other Parameters.
Sprinkled throughout all of the chapters, the reader will find short paragraphs, with a dark background, labeled "The Least You Need to Know." These summarize the preceding paragraphs. This could perhaps be justified after a significant number of paragraphs, but unfortunately they also appear after just a couple paragraphs, which makes these "LYNTK" boxes redundant and unnecessary. Even worse, every chapter ends with a summary, which further repeats the boxes' content. With the book nearing 500 pages, the chapter summaries and even the LYNTK boxes should be excised, to good effect. Also, most of the chapters contain at least one footnote, which are not located at the bottom of the page or collected in a special section at the end of the book (as is traditional), but instead listed at the end of the chapter. Such material should instead be integrated into the text, if it is important enough to be included in the book, or left out entirely.
The writing quality of the book is generally solid, and the writing style is straightforward and friendly. Yet it does contain some blemishes that should have been caught by the publisher's editors, e.g., multi-word adjectives missing hyphens; misuse of the terms "that" versus "who"; inconsistent use of lowercase and title case for Joomla roles, even in the same paragraph; the same inconsistency in menu names, such as in Chapter 4; and the inexcusable "try and explain" (should read "try to explain"; page 19, among others). Thankfully, the author intentionally leaves off the silly exclamation mark from the Joomla name, starting after the preface, for greater readability. The book contains some misspellings/errata, such as "eXtensible" (page 2), "Wordpress" (pages 7 and 8), "over writing" (page 22), "Cpanel" (pages 27 and 29), "php html" (page 148), "api" (page 150), "flash" (page 209), "sight" (should read "site"; page 221), and "add fee" (should read "ad fee"; page 225). The author incorrectly states that the acronym PHP stands for only "Hypertext Preprocessor," but it actually is now a recursive acronym of "PHP Hypertext Preprocessor."
Overall, the book's production quality is up to snuff. The book stays open fairly well, despite the absence of any special lay-flat binding. The pages were produced using recycled paper, which is always encouraging to see. Unfortunately, the pages are thinner than in any other technical book I have ever seen, thereby allowing the text on the other side of each page to show through. This exacerbates the aforementioned problem of the text within the figures being difficult to read. Moreover, all of the copies that I have seen have an unusual diagonal ridge along the bottom edge, suggesting that the page cutting machinery was malfunctioning -- at least for one batch of copies produced, and perhaps more. In addition, some of the pages have small ink blotches. At a list price of almost $45, the book might seem a bit pricey. But online bookstores are fully discounting it, such as Amazon.com's current price of under $30.
The book may have some minor weaknesses, noted above, but otherwise, Joomla! A User's Guide is a logically organized and potentially quite valuable resource for beginning and intermediate Joomla developers -- perhaps the best Joomla book currently available.
Michael J. Ross is a Web developer, writer, and freelance editor.
You can purchase Joomla! A User's Guide from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
The majority of the book's 480 pages are organized into 12 chapters, covering a number of topics: an introduction to CMSs and Joomla; installing Joomla; administration basics; content management; menus; extensions; WYSIWYG editing of content; search engine optimization (SEO); building a table-less template; and how to build Joomla sites for a school, a restaurant, and a blog. Four appendices cover: getting help on your Joomla problems; case studies; SEO basics; and installing WAMP5. The book offers plenty of screenshots, which make it possible for someone to follow the discussion even when away from their computer. Sadly, much of the text shown in the illustrations is extremely small, and could prove very difficult to read for anyone with diminished vision. Even some of the captions are so small as to almost require the use of a magnifying glass. Moreover, the illustrations are printed in light gray, which makes the situation even worse.
The intended purpose of the book is "to guide a non-technical user step-by-step in learning how to create and manage a website powered by Joomla" (page 7). The book is definitely geared towards people new to Joomla, and even new to Web development, given the amount of elementary material covered, such as the author's explanation of Joomla's need for a Web server.
In the preface, the author touches upon the growing popularity of Joomla for a wide variety of Web sites. He also mentions that PHP and CSS are not prerequisites for understanding the book; however, readers not well experienced in those technologies will struggle in implementing everything described in the book -- especially templates -- and this is substantiated by readers' comments online. Admittedly, a book that provided adequate coverage of PHP, CSS, and then Joomla, would likely be overwhelming in length. Readers unfamiliar with PHP and CSS should first secure a basic grounding in those technologies, prior to trying to create their own templates or other Joomla extensions. On the other hand, if a reader has no intention of creating any extensions of their own, then they can still use Joomla to build a new Web site, and use this book to learn how to do so.
In the first chapter, the author provides a valuable introduction to CMSs and the advantages they offer in separating content from the Web pages themselves. However, he refers to Joomla as a rebranding of Mambo, while it would be much more accurate to characterize it as a derivative project, having forked from Mambo, which still exists (sort of). The author also lists Joomla's major features, and the basic elements of a Joomla-powered Web site. Installing and configuring a CMS -- particularly for the first time -- is oftentimes a major stumbling block for any Web development newbie. Chapter 2 steps the reader through the process of downloading and installing the latest version of Joomla (the book uses version 1.5 RC1).
In the third chapter, the author explains the most commonly used administrative tasks, and how to accomplish them in the Joomla 1.5 administrative panel. He intentionally does not cover all of the administrative settings, and this may prove frustrating to some readers who are looking for comprehensive coverage. Yet he does note that such readers should consult the official Joomla User Manual. Also available is the Administrator Manual. The fourth chapter describes in detail how Joomla displays content in pages, how it organizes that content in sections and categories, and the role played by the Front Page component. It concludes with a discussion of how to create menu items and how to connect them to components, as well as how to use module content. Especially valuable to Joomla beginners is the explanation of the two methods of deciding what content appears on a site's homepage.
As noted in the preface, the relationship among menus, menu items, pages, and modules, is one of the most confusing aspects of Joomla -- even after the improvements with version 1.5. In Chapter 5, the author explains this relationship, and then the major menu layouts and how to control them using the various sets of parameters. He mentions the overriding of global settings, and this points up how, prior to this, the book should have explained where to change those global settings, and recommended values. The index is of no help, because they are not mentioned. In Chapter 6, the author shows how to install and manage extensions, which comprise components, modules, plug-ins, templates, and languages. (Templates were missing from his list presented in the book's preface.) Chapter 7 examines the use of WYSIWYG editors for changing content on the back-end and front-end.
The most functional and attractive Joomla-powered Web site will be of little value if it receives few visitors. Thus, search engine marketing (SEM), discussed in the eighth chapter, is of critical importance, and the author's largely sensible advice is worth reading -- despite the nonsensical reference to cowboys and cowgirls (on page 198), and his reference to the "miserable failure" Google bomb, which was diffused back in January 2007. Note that the links provided to the SEM tools strongly recommended by the author -- WordTracker, PR Prowler, and Perry Marshall -- are affiliate referral links. Thus it seems disingenuous when he writes "...this might be the place I would have a few affiliate links!" (emphasis added). Speaking of emphasis, it seems as if too much weight is given to resources from which the author would receive affiliate compensation. This is not what readers typically expect in a book for which they have paid good money. Also discussed in the chapter are the important topics of Web standards, accessibility, keywords, referral traffic, pay-per-click traffic, Google AdWords, e-mail traffic, and common SEM mistakes. He correctly points out the low SEM value of Joomla's native "Read more..." anchor text. But his recommended solution, a mambot from Run Digital, does not appear to work with Joomla version 1.5.
Most of the templates written for Joomla and Mambo have used tables for page layout, instead of the more accessible and efficient CSS approach. CSS- based templates are only now becoming increasingly available, and Chapter 9 furthers this worthy goal by stepping the reader through the development of a pure CSS template. As noted earlier, readers unfamiliar with CSS will most likely find this chapter quite daunting, if not disheartening. The book's overall tutorial approach kicks into full gear in the last three chapters, in which the author shows in great detail how to create Web sites for a school, a restaurant, and a blog site. This material could prove very helpful to readers who wish to review and put into practice the more theoretical ideas introduced in the earlier chapters.
In general, readers should be pleased with this book. Even though the author is clearly a fan of Joomla, and the tone of the book is positive, he does not hesitate to point out Joomla's flaws, such as the misleading name of a module type. This is rare among technical authors nowadays, and for this Barrie North should be commended. Yet it is odd that he does not mention the obvious misspelling, "Imagess," in Extensions > Module Manager > module > Other Parameters.
Sprinkled throughout all of the chapters, the reader will find short paragraphs, with a dark background, labeled "The Least You Need to Know." These summarize the preceding paragraphs. This could perhaps be justified after a significant number of paragraphs, but unfortunately they also appear after just a couple paragraphs, which makes these "LYNTK" boxes redundant and unnecessary. Even worse, every chapter ends with a summary, which further repeats the boxes' content. With the book nearing 500 pages, the chapter summaries and even the LYNTK boxes should be excised, to good effect. Also, most of the chapters contain at least one footnote, which are not located at the bottom of the page or collected in a special section at the end of the book (as is traditional), but instead listed at the end of the chapter. Such material should instead be integrated into the text, if it is important enough to be included in the book, or left out entirely.
The writing quality of the book is generally solid, and the writing style is straightforward and friendly. Yet it does contain some blemishes that should have been caught by the publisher's editors, e.g., multi-word adjectives missing hyphens; misuse of the terms "that" versus "who"; inconsistent use of lowercase and title case for Joomla roles, even in the same paragraph; the same inconsistency in menu names, such as in Chapter 4; and the inexcusable "try and explain" (should read "try to explain"; page 19, among others). Thankfully, the author intentionally leaves off the silly exclamation mark from the Joomla name, starting after the preface, for greater readability. The book contains some misspellings/errata, such as "eXtensible" (page 2), "Wordpress" (pages 7 and 8), "over writing" (page 22), "Cpanel" (pages 27 and 29), "php html" (page 148), "api" (page 150), "flash" (page 209), "sight" (should read "site"; page 221), and "add fee" (should read "ad fee"; page 225). The author incorrectly states that the acronym PHP stands for only "Hypertext Preprocessor," but it actually is now a recursive acronym of "PHP Hypertext Preprocessor."
Overall, the book's production quality is up to snuff. The book stays open fairly well, despite the absence of any special lay-flat binding. The pages were produced using recycled paper, which is always encouraging to see. Unfortunately, the pages are thinner than in any other technical book I have ever seen, thereby allowing the text on the other side of each page to show through. This exacerbates the aforementioned problem of the text within the figures being difficult to read. Moreover, all of the copies that I have seen have an unusual diagonal ridge along the bottom edge, suggesting that the page cutting machinery was malfunctioning -- at least for one batch of copies produced, and perhaps more. In addition, some of the pages have small ink blotches. At a list price of almost $45, the book might seem a bit pricey. But online bookstores are fully discounting it, such as Amazon.com's current price of under $30.
The book may have some minor weaknesses, noted above, but otherwise, Joomla! A User's Guide is a logically organized and potentially quite valuable resource for beginning and intermediate Joomla developers -- perhaps the best Joomla book currently available.
Michael J. Ross is a Web developer, writer, and freelance editor.
You can purchase Joomla! A User's Guide from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
joomla sounds like the first name of some mudjahidin
it's a book about using an open source cms and I can't download it? So I have to wait for it to be delivered, then I have to keep up with it? I have to sort through it on my desk without using common search tools to find what I am looking for?
And I'm supposed to BUY this?
Yeah, right.
It's! "Joomla!"!, not! "Joomla"!
I've seen conflicting reports so I must ask...
Has joomla changed much (other than bug fixes) between 1.5 RC1 as covered by the book and the final 1.5 release?
The shortest chapter is about preventing script kiddies from comprom!#$^@in#%g@#!$nkHACKED BY CHINESE
I am actually developing a site with Joomla right now for a large client. This was my first time actually developing a fully-functioning CMS-based site like this, even though I have been developing sites for a long time. It is a breeze to use. It was difficult to set up, only because I am not a php and database expert and the server we set it up on did not have all of those things installed from the get-go, but an experienced php/mySQL user can deal with the configuration issues with no problem. However, Joomla 1.5 is a breeze, as long as you are experienced with CSS/HTML. It is actually mostly intutitive, with the exception of understanding sections vs categories and their relationship to the overall menu structure, but a quick read through the online help for this solved the problem. I went with this over Drupal partly because it is so easy to use, and very robust.
I thought Joomla was a robotic vacuum cleaner.
No... wait... That's a Roomba.
Sorry!
In the time it takes to configure a system like this to spec, and learn it's obnoxious 'mambot' system of plug ins, you could pick up any random programming language and build a better mouse-trap all by yourself.
A vigilant open-sourcer at my company was able to get approval to use this hunk of junk for a production web-site. Trouble is, when he left, it was quicker to re-write the whole damn thing (in .Net, no less) than continue development for other clients. We now have 1 client running on a shitty Joomla portal, and 6 clients on our much sexier high performance portal.
Attention microcomputer idiots:
Please stop using the TLA CMS for your worthless crap. "CMS" will always stand for the "Conversational Monitoring System" component of VM/370, VM/SP, VM/ESA, etc.
Damn kids.
here is my review from my journal. If you don't feel like reading the whole thing - I guess I could sum it up by saying I pretty much agree with Michael.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
idiots guide to web development
I just did my first site in Joomla!, and I will never use it again. It took me far longer than it should have to figure out how to do anything useful as far as creating custom components. It's so much easier with Drupal, because the documentation is so much better and creating custom modules is so much easier.
If anyone's been to Meetup.com, they know that (a) it's a pretty convenient site, and (b) they charge a hell of a lot of money for what they do. It seems like with a CMS like Joomla or Drupal, you should be able to mirror much of the functionality of the site on your own (basically: event calendar, mailing list, member roll, and RSVP).
I've tried playing around with various CMSs but it seems like they're just too heavyweight for me to wrap my head around a simple event calendaring system. Has anyone put together a HOWTO for this sort of thing? (Or done it themselves?)
~ roscivs
What's with the stream of Joomla news all of a sudden?
I remember a joomla book review (from the same user) some weeks ago ( http://books.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/05/14/1335211 )?
if( theCMS.getName().endsWith("!") ) { next; }
...before I created my site. It is quite a bit of a different paradigm to use a system such as this.
Getting a mod to be able to publish instantly and post directly to the front page without using the administrator page is a must. I use myContent.
"What's the use of a good quotation if you can't change it?" - Doctor Who
In my evaluation, I determined that Joomla kind of sucks. It tries to be powerful and flexible like Drupal, yet as simple as Wordpress. Unfortunately, it ends up being just as complicated as Drupal and no better than WordPress.
I don't know any web developer that uses or likes Joomla. I've been developing websites since the late 80's and honestly Joomla is one of the worst development tools I've ever used. Not that I think any of them are very good. But saying that Joomla is "generally considered to be one of the top choices" is like saying that if one wishes to breathe a non-poisonous gas Carbon Dioxide is generally considered one of the top choices. Yes, it's there. Yes, it's free. That's all I can say that's good about it.
I love open source software. But Joomla needs to be broken down, destroyed, and then completely rebuilt. It's actually easier and faster to straight text edit webpages then to build them in Joomla. And so I do.
-Jordan
for ease and use i use symfony, yahoo bookmarks! uses the same framework and it has 15 million users to said project.
Ugh! You modern hominids and your fancy 'technology.' CMS has stood for 'Cave Management System' (AKA Mrs. Ogg) ever since I married her, uhh, many moons ago.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
The reviewer is right about that Joomla's documentation leaves much to be desired. I just bought a competing book. It too, leaves much to be desired.
I'd rather use Xoops but it will not work for my current project.
Barrie's book is really interesting, a worthwhile read, imho. Of course you can get free manual of Joomla, but this book has way more of a business perspective on how to best use Joomla effectively for your site. Something that you won't find in the free manual ;)
It's a free CHM format download on Bitspyder or more specifically: http://www.bitspyder.net/details.php?id=27307.
Ugh why CHM? Pain in the butt for Linux users...
A search for CVE identifiers related to Joomla returns 244 hits:
http://nvd.nist.gov/nvd.cfm
New exploits for the vulnerabilities are released several times per week:
http://milw0rm.com/search.php?dong=joomla
Sounds like really good quality stuff...
Wasn't that one of the utterances that Timmy would proclaim between saying his own name?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I still can't beleive I have to pay for the stupid book to tell me how to use a stupid program - why dont they just document the code better - most real programmers do. Joomla! is a waste of time for the most part - if you are planning on developing a community site there is no basis built in for different user classes (not without a lot of work or paying someone $$$) - its not easy to work with and to modify it takes way too much effort because of the lack of documentation.
Eh? There is no core content module in Joomla, that is the point of a framework. There are a number of small content modules that work together and are all very configurable, so it is quite easy to extend their workings without replacing the 'core' because their is no core. There are also a number of open source as well as commercial options, although options for 1.5 (the one built on a framework) are limited because it just came out.
I'm happy for you that you've found a CMS you like, though. That's nice. Just don't identify with it to the point that when someone likes something else, it feels like a personal attack. That's bad.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Many funny, in a silly kind of way, but definitely not insightful.
Ugh! You mammals and your caves. CMS has stood for Cretaceous Mollusc Survival for the past 145 million years.
I know it's not open source, however Expression Engine I believe is THE most powerful CMS for non-technical minded people. There is a free 'base' version for personal use, however the commercial license is cheap as chips in my opinion. I know that there has been some debate between Exp.Eng. & Drupal, however I believe for non-tech users, Expression Engine wins hands down. That said, Joomla is a better 'out of the box' solution if you wanted to have a fully functional portal on install. However I find it frustrating as hell to customise it for basic brochure ware sites. Expression Engine shines when you want precise control over how functions look and feel, and is very easy to set up quick & sexy solutions. Sorry, went off-topic.
I prefer e107 it is very simple to use and things fall into place in a very logical manner. With Joomla that's often not the case. This could be because e107 was the first cms that I used, but I tell you this when you go from something logical to illogical it's painful.
"I guess I'm gonna fade into Bolivian."
actually? How many times are you actually going to say that word?
Both have the obvious advantages of an existing framework to develop from. This requires learning the structure and core functions of them in order to build custom web applications.
For someone that would like to divulge themselves into an open source community in the CMS development world I see no harm in learning the joomla and or drupal structure. I say this only because you will inevitably take the lessons you learn from these open source CMS solutions and apply them to your own proprietary CMS solutions in the future.
I'll just stick with the .NET technology CMS's out there, at least that way I get support.
Bah, you living things and their TLAs. CMS has stood for Creator of the Milky way and Stuff since the dawn of time.
God.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
I just build a website with Joomla I faced a lot of problems.
First Joomla documentation as stated in the summary is at best obscure.
I needed to consult more than a website to understand that anything you put on the page is called a module. To understand the twisted logic that makes a menu itself a module and that in order to get a menu you have to install the module first was not easy in itself.
Then templates may not have all the same regions so a content visible in some of them becomes unaccesible in others...
But the worst part is instructing a customer manage the content on the site you just intalled... this topic really needs some more books (And Joomla is still more easy than Drupal)
If you are curious the website is at http://www.solecoazzurro.it/
Joomla is nice, but I've found that as far as CMS's go, It's really hard to beat Drupal when it comes to sheer functionality. I've just spent a while throwing together a new Joomla website, but kept coming up on petty issues like user group handling and comments functionality. A lot of the Joomla Extension/Module developers have adopted capitalism in it's finest form, which is fine since I'm willing to spend a bit of money to save some time, however you will find your choices quite limited. Joomla styles have hands down been some of the best I've seen in a CMS, but that's not enough to keep most people's attention after they find themselves wrestling with the mundane details. Great CMS, but it still is a long way off from being my 1st choice yet.
Why would anyone use this over DotNetNuke open source? DNN is open source, the SQL backend (Microsoft SQL 2005 Express) is free, and the web development tool (Visual Studio express) are all free and completely object oriented. PHP reminds me of old ASP which was god awful to write web pages in.