Joomla is a great tool to create database driven web sites and content management systems quickly. Its main appeal lies in the availability of thousands of resources on the web. These resources include free joomla templates, third party components, add-ons and extensions, and joomla tutorials. Most of these resources are free for personal and commercial use. The commercial ones are also very reasonably priced as compared to other CMS products. Following is a list of some of Joomla web sites that offer downloadable resources for Joomla. The list is obviously just a representative of all Joomla web sites.
http://www.joomlatribune.com/
This is a good Joomla resource site offering free templates, articles and tutorials. It has a special news section that displays the latest news in Joomla world.
http://www.joomlajabber.com/
This site has a podcast for Joomla users. This site has some good free templates and extensions. It also has a discussion forum where you can discuss your problems with component developers and other users. There are few interviews of Joomla extension developers.
http://www.joomla-labs.com/
This site offers free templates, daily tips and tricks for Joomla users.
http://dev.joomla.org/
This site is for expert Joomla developers. It runs a Joomla Developer Network that contains Joomla development information and many resources for Joomla users. This site is a must for every serious Joomla programmer.
http://extensions.joomla.org/
This is another great site for serious Joomla developer. It features a Joomla extensions directory containing Joomla components, extensions and plug-ins. There is some documentation available for the components. You should visit this site often.
http://designforjoomla.com/
This site contains both free and commercial components, plug-ins, templates and modules. It has some useful tutorials on Joomla and other resources. This site is home site of eZine and User sync component. Some noteworthy modules are Instant search and Content Listing module and Image Extended Plug-in. You may find some excellent resources on this site that are not available anywhere else.
http://www.ty2u.com/
This site offers a small but excellent collection of Joomla templates and plug-ins.
http://www.joomlatemplates.com/
This is another site that offers Free as well as commercial templates for Joomla developers.
http://www.joomlart.com/
This site boasts a Joomla professional templates club targeted towards Joomla users. You can download the free List Preview component. It also offers some free templates.
http://www.joomla-addons.org/
As the name suggests, this site contains a good collection of open source and commercial components for Joomla developers. Some of them are – EasyFAQ, Easy Guestbook, Blocklit, ODT Indexer, YaNC and many others. Don’t miss this site.
http://www.joomlaco.com/
This site is for Joomla and Mumbo users. It offers some basic tutorials on Joomla and Mumbo, Getting started guides, Free Joomla Components, Free Joomla templates and Free Joomla Modules. It has a Joomla Directory section with various categories.
http://help.joomla.org/
This is Official Joomla help site that contains documentation on Joomla. You can download most of the manuals, Installation guide and developer information as PDF files for offline browsing.
http://www.joomlahut.com/
This is another Joomla site that offers free templates and other resources. It also has a News section for latest news on Joomla.
http://www.exskin.com/
This site contains free Joomla components, modules, templates and Joomla bots.
http://www.visualclinic.fr/
This site has categories like Yahoo! Web site. It offers various resources on Mumbo and Joomla arranged in a tree structure. It also contains an alphabetical listing of all downloadable resources. Every Joomla user must visit this site often.
Thursday, January 3, 2008
History of Joomla
Mambo – where it all started
Joomla is originated from a similar CMS product called Mambo in August 2005. Before the popularity of Joomla and joomla templates, Mambo was a popular product at that time, and it was supported by thousands of core developers and end-users. However, the company which owned Mambo, Miro International Pty Ltd, decided to protect their interests in the product and trademarked Mambo. As per the company, this step was taken so that they could fund the project to keep it alive, and also protect it from possible lawsuits against them.
Disappointment of Mambo Programmers
Many programmers at Miro International Pty Ltd didn’t agree with this logic, mainly because it contradicted with the open source movement. All these disappointed programmers came together and decided to start a new project on their own. The name of the new project was not decided initially, but they started a new web site as a first step to announce their plans to thousands of Mambo users. The named the web site as “OpenSourceMatters.org. Through this web site, they targeted the users of Mambo, developers, Web site developers and almost the entire community of devoted Mambo consumers. This developer team was headed by Andrew Eddie (also called as "MasterChief" by his colleagues).
An open letter to entire Mambo Community
Andrew took a bold step to wake up the Mambo users, and wrote an open letter to the entire community about events at Mambo and how those could affect the open source movement in general. It also stated that the direction where Mambo was headed contradicted sharply with its original agreements and values. This open letter appeared on the Mambo official website, mamboserver.com, in the public forum section along with an announcement of their further actions.
Beginning of Joomla
This open letter aroused many reactions from the Mambo community, often mixed. One thousand users joined the opensourcematters.org forum within one day. This was a record in the history of Mambo (Now Joomla) community. This clearly indicated that the users wanted to support open source initiative as against the steps taken by Mambo people.
Discussions soon started among the open source community about what is really an open source product. Everyone offered their own views, and the debate went on for several weeks. One thing was certain, people didn’t want words like copyright, trademark enter into open source products. Within two weeks after the opensourcematters.org was announced, a new development team was formed and the new product was named as Joomla – which means “all together” or “as a whole”. The development team was not small – there were around 3000 developers in the team, all committed to open source movement.
Joomla 1.0.0
The first version of Joomla was announced on 16 Sep 2007 as Joomla 1.0.0. This was almost identical to Mambo version 4.5.2.3 which was the latest version at that time. The major changes were related to bug fixes and security level enhancements. It also supported all templates and plug-ins supported by Mambo. However, Joomla developers didn’t stop at this. They started rewriting the entire package in PHP5, and this was officially announced in 2006.
Joomla 1.5
This is the latest version of Joomla, with a third release candidate (RC3) announced in October 2007. The final version of Joomla 1.5 is expected in December 2007. It will be a complete rewrite of Joomla in PHP5, with many enhanced features.
Joomla is originated from a similar CMS product called Mambo in August 2005. Before the popularity of Joomla and joomla templates, Mambo was a popular product at that time, and it was supported by thousands of core developers and end-users. However, the company which owned Mambo, Miro International Pty Ltd, decided to protect their interests in the product and trademarked Mambo. As per the company, this step was taken so that they could fund the project to keep it alive, and also protect it from possible lawsuits against them.
Disappointment of Mambo Programmers
Many programmers at Miro International Pty Ltd didn’t agree with this logic, mainly because it contradicted with the open source movement. All these disappointed programmers came together and decided to start a new project on their own. The name of the new project was not decided initially, but they started a new web site as a first step to announce their plans to thousands of Mambo users. The named the web site as “OpenSourceMatters.org. Through this web site, they targeted the users of Mambo, developers, Web site developers and almost the entire community of devoted Mambo consumers. This developer team was headed by Andrew Eddie (also called as "MasterChief" by his colleagues).
An open letter to entire Mambo Community
Andrew took a bold step to wake up the Mambo users, and wrote an open letter to the entire community about events at Mambo and how those could affect the open source movement in general. It also stated that the direction where Mambo was headed contradicted sharply with its original agreements and values. This open letter appeared on the Mambo official website, mamboserver.com, in the public forum section along with an announcement of their further actions.
Beginning of Joomla
This open letter aroused many reactions from the Mambo community, often mixed. One thousand users joined the opensourcematters.org forum within one day. This was a record in the history of Mambo (Now Joomla) community. This clearly indicated that the users wanted to support open source initiative as against the steps taken by Mambo people.
Discussions soon started among the open source community about what is really an open source product. Everyone offered their own views, and the debate went on for several weeks. One thing was certain, people didn’t want words like copyright, trademark enter into open source products. Within two weeks after the opensourcematters.org was announced, a new development team was formed and the new product was named as Joomla – which means “all together” or “as a whole”. The development team was not small – there were around 3000 developers in the team, all committed to open source movement.
Joomla 1.0.0
The first version of Joomla was announced on 16 Sep 2007 as Joomla 1.0.0. This was almost identical to Mambo version 4.5.2.3 which was the latest version at that time. The major changes were related to bug fixes and security level enhancements. It also supported all templates and plug-ins supported by Mambo. However, Joomla developers didn’t stop at this. They started rewriting the entire package in PHP5, and this was officially announced in 2006.
Joomla 1.5
This is the latest version of Joomla, with a third release candidate (RC3) announced in October 2007. The final version of Joomla 1.5 is expected in December 2007. It will be a complete rewrite of Joomla in PHP5, with many enhanced features.
Advantages of Joomla, Joomla CMS Templates
There are many CMS products available today, both in freeware and commercial categories. Joomla is probably the most powerful open source CMS among them. And this is not because it is free, but because of its powerful features that help you create a simple five page personal web site or a full corporate web site with hundreds of pages with multiple backend databases. Not to mention the ease with which you can create your own custom joomla templates by following a few simple joomla tutorials.
Some of the main advantages of Joomla are listed below.
It is absolutely free of cost
Yes, as said earlier, this may not be the only reason to use Joomla, but when combined with the features listed below, this advantage is hard to beat.
It is supported by more extensions than any other CMS product
Almost all CMS products support additional modules, which enhance their inherent capabilities. As of today, even the commercial CMS solutions support less than 100 modules. Compare that to Joomla – it currently boasts more than 2000 modules!
It is easier to maintain
Maintaining a web site is not an easy task. It can become a nightmare for even a technical person. Joomla makes this task very easy. Even non-technical persons, who can use notepad or a word processor, can easily maintain and supervise a Joomla powered web site.
It supports multiple languages
Joomla has built-in support for multiple languages. This feature is present in very few CMS packages.
It can be controlled remotely using a web browser
You need not control the Joomla web site from its main console. It can be modified, edited and monitored from any corner of the world, using a web browser or even you iPhone.
Joomla powered web sites cost less than 1% of the other commercial solutions
Although Joomla is free, creating and maintaining a CMS web site needs some operating expenses. However, just before five years, a corporate web site would have required several thousands of dollars to do this task. Today you can do this all and more at the fraction of that cost. The future maintenance of the site is also inexpensive.
It is not dependant on any company or their proprietary product
This is probably the biggest advantage of using Joomla. For any other CMS package, you need to have personnel trained in that area. After you buy their products, you are forced to take services from the same company for a long time, either for modifying the web site or just to keep it running properly. With Joomla powered web sites, you are not dependant on any company or an individual. Any person having adequate knowledge of Joomla can maintain and upgrade your web site.
It supports LAMP technology
Many people who do not want to spend their money in commercial CMS solutions opt for LAMP technology. (LAMP is a short name for Linux + Apache + MySQL + PHP). Several thousands of web sites have been developed using LAMP. Joomla also supports LAMP since it is based on PHP and MySQL, and it operates on Linux as well. Apache server already has a built-in support for PHP.
Due to these and several other reasons, more and more people are moving towards open source CMS solutions, especially Joomla. With its expected release of version 1.5 in December 2007, it will remain the prime choice of developers for years to come.
Some of the main advantages of Joomla are listed below.
It is absolutely free of cost
Yes, as said earlier, this may not be the only reason to use Joomla, but when combined with the features listed below, this advantage is hard to beat.
It is supported by more extensions than any other CMS product
Almost all CMS products support additional modules, which enhance their inherent capabilities. As of today, even the commercial CMS solutions support less than 100 modules. Compare that to Joomla – it currently boasts more than 2000 modules!
It is easier to maintain
Maintaining a web site is not an easy task. It can become a nightmare for even a technical person. Joomla makes this task very easy. Even non-technical persons, who can use notepad or a word processor, can easily maintain and supervise a Joomla powered web site.
It supports multiple languages
Joomla has built-in support for multiple languages. This feature is present in very few CMS packages.
It can be controlled remotely using a web browser
You need not control the Joomla web site from its main console. It can be modified, edited and monitored from any corner of the world, using a web browser or even you iPhone.
Joomla powered web sites cost less than 1% of the other commercial solutions
Although Joomla is free, creating and maintaining a CMS web site needs some operating expenses. However, just before five years, a corporate web site would have required several thousands of dollars to do this task. Today you can do this all and more at the fraction of that cost. The future maintenance of the site is also inexpensive.
It is not dependant on any company or their proprietary product
This is probably the biggest advantage of using Joomla. For any other CMS package, you need to have personnel trained in that area. After you buy their products, you are forced to take services from the same company for a long time, either for modifying the web site or just to keep it running properly. With Joomla powered web sites, you are not dependant on any company or an individual. Any person having adequate knowledge of Joomla can maintain and upgrade your web site.
It supports LAMP technology
Many people who do not want to spend their money in commercial CMS solutions opt for LAMP technology. (LAMP is a short name for Linux + Apache + MySQL + PHP). Several thousands of web sites have been developed using LAMP. Joomla also supports LAMP since it is based on PHP and MySQL, and it operates on Linux as well. Apache server already has a built-in support for PHP.
Due to these and several other reasons, more and more people are moving towards open source CMS solutions, especially Joomla. With its expected release of version 1.5 in December 2007, it will remain the prime choice of developers for years to come.
Install Joomla, How To Install Joomla
Before you create your own custom joomla templates we need to review how you can install Joomla in two ways. The easiest way is to use Joomla Web installer using a web browser. Second and difficult method is to install Joomla manually. We will see both ways of installation in this article. However, we recommend that you use the semi-automatic GUI installation (using web browser) which is much easier and safe. For any kind of installation, first download the latest version of Joomla installation files from Joomla web site (http://www.joomla.org/)
Semi-Automatic Joomla Installation (Using web browser)
After you have downloaded the Joomla core pack of files from the Joomla web site, follow these steps to install joomla.
Normally, the Semi-automatic installation method works for most of the users. However, in some special cases, when Semi-automatic installation is not possible, you can still install Joomal using Manual mode of installation. This is not as user-friendly as the GUI method, but it is quite straight-forward. The actual steps are as below -
Semi-Automatic Joomla Installation (Using web browser)
After you have downloaded the Joomla core pack of files from the Joomla web site, follow these steps to install joomla.
- Start the web browser and type the url where Joomla installation files are stored into the web browser. (e.g. http://localhost/joomla)
- You will see a screen with a list of languages. Select appropriate language of your choice. The default is English.
- Next, you will see the “Pre-Installation check” screen. In this step, the Joomla installer checks if your system meets the minimum requirements for successful Joomla installation. Please confirm that your system meets the pre-installation criteria. If any of the options displayed on the screen says no, rectify the problem first and then restart the installation.
- Next screen presents “Database Configuration” options. Here you can select the database of your choice. Most probably, you would select MySQL database.
- Next screen offers “FTP Configuration” choices. You should enter the proper user name and password to proceed further. In case you are just using one computer for Joomla development, you can skip this step by clicking the NEXT button.
- The next screen is the Main configuration screen. This is an important screen since it contains three critical options –
- Site name – Enter a site name of your choice
- Administrator email address – Enter email address of the administrator. All important emails, error messages, warnings etc will be sent to this email address.
- Install sample data – Here you have a choice of using Joomla sample data, or data from previous installation of Joomla, or none. There may be some additional details depending upon your choice of sample data.
- This is the last screen of semi-automatic Joomla installation – The finish page. If you arrive at this page, then you have completed the Joomla installation successfully.
Normally, the Semi-automatic installation method works for most of the users. However, in some special cases, when Semi-automatic installation is not possible, you can still install Joomal using Manual mode of installation. This is not as user-friendly as the GUI method, but it is quite straight-forward. The actual steps are as below -
- Create and edit the configuration file - Create a copy of configuration.php-dist file in the the Joomla installation folder. Rename this copy as configuration.php. Open this file in your favorite text editor, and change the following variables to their appropriate values
- Var $sitename = ‘Your site name’
- Var $dbtype = ‘mysql’
- Var $host = ‘localhost’
- Var $user = ‘database user name’
- Var $Password = ‘Database password’
- Var $db = ‘Database name’
- Var $dbtype = ‘mysql’
- Var $dbprefix = ‘your prefix’ <----- Default is ‘jos_’
- Var $secret = ‘random alphanumeric characters’
- Var $ftp_host = ‘FTP Host name’
- Var $ftp_port = ‘FTP port number’
- Var $ftp_user = ‘FTP user name’
- Var $ftp_pass = ‘FTP password’
- Var $ftp_root = ‘FTP root folder for client’
- Var $ftp_enable = ‘1’
- Var $tmp_path = ‘/tmp’
- Var $log_path = ‘/var/logs’
- Var $mailfrom = ‘Your email address’
- Var $fromname = ‘Your website name’
- Edit the SQL file – Open installation/sql/mysql/joomla.sql file. Replace all occurrences of “#_” with “jos_”
- Upload the files to web server – After you have finished the above changes, update the entire set of Joomla files to the web server.
- Create the database and import the joomla.sql data - In this step, you can start PHPMyAdmin or any other similar SQL control utility and create the database with the name that you entered in configuration.php file in step 1. Then import data from joomla.sql file into this newly created database.
- Create Primary Administrator user account - Create database administrator user account using the MySQL administration panel with user name as “admin” and password as “admin”. You can change this later if required.
- Import the sample_data.sql – This step is optional. You can use PHPMyAdmin to select the sample data and import it into the database.
- Delete the installation directory – This is the final but important step. You must delete the installation directory from the web site root directory.
As in the Semi-Automatic joomla templates installation, if any error occurs in the manual installation, first perform the clean-up from the installation directory, correct the error, and start from step 1.
Joomla Templates & Why Use It?
An excellent way to quickly create a Web site using pre-designed website Joomla Templates. You can easily find free or paid templates on many web sites on the web.
Free Templates
If you are really determined to get out of the models, a better way to do this is to use those who come for free software with all that you use. Joomla or Word Press, for example, is very clean, attractive models. But you do, though, you must understand that freedom will never be unique templates: your site will be just like hundreds of other Web sites there are the same model as you did it for free.
Cheap Templates
Once you begin to enter the territory paid for the models, things began to investigate. The idea behind the sites that sell models is that they can pay the designers of interest rates, do something good once, and then resell it as many times as they wish for a relatively low price. This option allows designers to be paid for the greatest number of models they want, without ever having to deal with customers, and it allows customers to buy and use models for a price substantially below what they were used to pay for something much more serious-T And they can see in advance.
Exclusive Templates
After seeing how some people dislike the other sites being able to use their design, but many sites began selling exclusive models of those sold only once, to a site, then removed. They met a runaway hit on their hands. In this way, designers are free to create something great, and customers can consider whether they like it or look at hundreds of other solutions if they do not. It takes all the uncertainty and negotiation at both ends, and both the designer and the client leaves much happier than they would have been. Of course, if there is something that you want changed little, most of the sites are happy to get the designer to do it for you for a small fee.
Joomla - Why Use It?
Why use complex software, rather than putting up a few pages?
When the Internet began, all sites are simple HTML pages in very simple. They existed as a page or several pages of a site. The browser went to these sites, the browser introduced these files for you and you just read or looked at the content and it was about everything that happened.
In recent years, the open source community has made several software systems available that greatly empower websites. It adds more features, she adds security, and there can be many things that previously required a lot of experience and expertise to establish a Web site that could do what no Joomla.
CMS. Officially Joomla is called a content management system or CMS. That title means he knows how to manipulate the content of your site, where the content is a reference in an article you write, or that you display photos on pages or movies or audio clips that you play. How all this content is presented to the viewer is controlled by software that we call Joomla.
There is other CMS system that exists. Several of them are free and there is a lot of commercial systems. But Joomla is one of the well-known open source packages that is free to be used by anyone.
Joomla Versus the old method. The reason Joomla is valuable for the construction of a web site by hand, one page at a time is that Joomla organizes everything, and provides functionality that has been de-bugged, tested and used by hundreds others - so that, with little effort, you can install a complex site.
Once it is installed, administrative capacity integrated into Joomla allow you to maintain this Web site easily.
What is the maintenance? A healthier must constantly add content to this site. Joomla provides tools to add content and functionality of the site. It also provides functions you need for a website for general use. It comes with pages of contact for sending e-mails from visitors, without spammers hijacking function. It allows you to add advertisements in your Web pages easily. It allows you to edit files, change models and to modify and customize the appearance of the site.
How do I know Joomla? Joomla is a complex tool. How do you learn to use it? First, the community Joomla is very large. This means that there are many tutorials and forums assets that are excellent sources of information. For example, Joomla Tutorials you will find step-by-step procedures for installation, modification and maintenance of a site Joomla.
More useful functions. There are other benefits to a facility Joomla. There is a strong community of developers who provides modules, plug-ins and add-ons. They are easily installed in Joomla and give you items such as forums, services, community-based, email lists, and other tools. You can customize your site - for free - well beyond what you could do, even with a limited budget. There are hundreds of modules which allow additional functionality. Most of them are free, but there are also many commercial modules.
So if you want an easy, fast, high-performance computing to build your site, do not need to go any where else use Joomla Tutorials and make your website.
Free Templates
If you are really determined to get out of the models, a better way to do this is to use those who come for free software with all that you use. Joomla or Word Press, for example, is very clean, attractive models. But you do, though, you must understand that freedom will never be unique templates: your site will be just like hundreds of other Web sites there are the same model as you did it for free.
Cheap Templates
Once you begin to enter the territory paid for the models, things began to investigate. The idea behind the sites that sell models is that they can pay the designers of interest rates, do something good once, and then resell it as many times as they wish for a relatively low price. This option allows designers to be paid for the greatest number of models they want, without ever having to deal with customers, and it allows customers to buy and use models for a price substantially below what they were used to pay for something much more serious-T And they can see in advance.
Exclusive Templates
After seeing how some people dislike the other sites being able to use their design, but many sites began selling exclusive models of those sold only once, to a site, then removed. They met a runaway hit on their hands. In this way, designers are free to create something great, and customers can consider whether they like it or look at hundreds of other solutions if they do not. It takes all the uncertainty and negotiation at both ends, and both the designer and the client leaves much happier than they would have been. Of course, if there is something that you want changed little, most of the sites are happy to get the designer to do it for you for a small fee.
Joomla - Why Use It?
Why use complex software, rather than putting up a few pages?
When the Internet began, all sites are simple HTML pages in very simple. They existed as a page or several pages of a site. The browser went to these sites, the browser introduced these files for you and you just read or looked at the content and it was about everything that happened.
In recent years, the open source community has made several software systems available that greatly empower websites. It adds more features, she adds security, and there can be many things that previously required a lot of experience and expertise to establish a Web site that could do what no Joomla.
CMS. Officially Joomla is called a content management system or CMS. That title means he knows how to manipulate the content of your site, where the content is a reference in an article you write, or that you display photos on pages or movies or audio clips that you play. How all this content is presented to the viewer is controlled by software that we call Joomla.
There is other CMS system that exists. Several of them are free and there is a lot of commercial systems. But Joomla is one of the well-known open source packages that is free to be used by anyone.
Joomla Versus the old method. The reason Joomla is valuable for the construction of a web site by hand, one page at a time is that Joomla organizes everything, and provides functionality that has been de-bugged, tested and used by hundreds others - so that, with little effort, you can install a complex site.
Once it is installed, administrative capacity integrated into Joomla allow you to maintain this Web site easily.
What is the maintenance? A healthier must constantly add content to this site. Joomla provides tools to add content and functionality of the site. It also provides functions you need for a website for general use. It comes with pages of contact for sending e-mails from visitors, without spammers hijacking function. It allows you to add advertisements in your Web pages easily. It allows you to edit files, change models and to modify and customize the appearance of the site.
How do I know Joomla? Joomla is a complex tool. How do you learn to use it? First, the community Joomla is very large. This means that there are many tutorials and forums assets that are excellent sources of information. For example, Joomla Tutorials you will find step-by-step procedures for installation, modification and maintenance of a site Joomla.
More useful functions. There are other benefits to a facility Joomla. There is a strong community of developers who provides modules, plug-ins and add-ons. They are easily installed in Joomla and give you items such as forums, services, community-based, email lists, and other tools. You can customize your site - for free - well beyond what you could do, even with a limited budget. There are hundreds of modules which allow additional functionality. Most of them are free, but there are also many commercial modules.
So if you want an easy, fast, high-performance computing to build your site, do not need to go any where else use Joomla Tutorials and make your website.
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