Joomla as a Content Management System

"If you're new to web content management systems, or even new to building websites, this book will help you create powerful web applications and high-quality websites with Joomla", so runs the publicity blurb. With copy like that, it must be good, right? With a review copy in my hands courtesy of O'Reilly themselves, I agreed to find out and summarise my findings here at Izdihar.com

For those haven't heard of Joomla before, it's an Open Source Content Management System (CMS) first released at version 1.0 in September 2005 under the GNU General Public Licence (GPL). Originally based on the proprietary Mambo CMS, Joomla is currently available for download at version 1.5.15, with version 1.6 expected to be released later this year.

The 'Using xxx' series of books has been part of the O'Reilly range since 1995 and now amounts to 8 books on topics such as Drupal, Google and Samba, with a further book on SQLite due later this year. A first glance at the cover would suggest that the books' content is very much in line with the main part of their output, and is likely to be, both heavily technical in nature and full of lists of objects, attributes and values. My own tendency when trying to learn something new in the IT world is to grab the 'Dummies' guide, or similar, then roll my sleeves up with the real thing from O'Reilly. This isn't that kind of book though and appears to fall somewhere in the middle. The 'Using' in the title is there for a reason, as it's very much intended to assist with the use of an existing product and not to help you code up your latest fantasy solution. As it says in the preface, "if you're a developer looking to build extensions or extend and build on Joomla's framework, this book isn't for you".

Installing Joomla

The book starts with Chapter 1 covering the installation of Joomla, so the the first thing I did was head for Appendix A, naturally. There was good reason for this though, as the opening chapter assumes that you are working with hosted web space using cPanel and the Fantastico installation script library. The book recommends against this installation route though and suggests you take control over your own installation, which it details in Appendix A. Following their advice, I had Joomla up and running on a Netbook running Windows XP and configured with WampServer, including sample data, within a matter of 2 or 3 minutes. I tried the same on a Linux server later, with almost the same result, except I managed to trip over some long standing file permission issues of my own creation - not a 'live' server I hasten to add. So far so good then, a very easy sequence of steps to follow, though it's possible to argue that the simplicity and clarity of the Joomla installation routine, almost doesn't need hard copy documentation on hand.

Administrator Panel & Content Prep/Creation

With a server on hand then, the book moves into describing the Administrator Panel, Global Configuration, Content Preparation and Creating Content. All are well described, though there is a sense that in parts there is a little duplication going on; the method of creating 'categories' is much the same as that for 'sections' for example. Similarly, whilst it is handy to have a ready reference to the purpose of each field on a screen, I'm not sure most will need to be told that when creating a Web Link page, that they should "Enter the full URL here" for the 'URL' field. Still better to have too much explained than not enough.

Joomla Structure

From chapter 7 onwards, the book starts to delve much more into the underpinning structure of Joomla, taking the reader though setting up menus, the use of components, modules & plug-ins, before moving off into a look at templates. Whilst each of these chapters did give me detailed information about each of these structural aspects of Joomla, I found myself having some difficulty trying to relate these items to one another. This was one area where I felt the book could use a little work, fine that you cover everything in exquisite detail, but give me summary of how it all fits together on a real site, then take me into the guts of the thing.

Users, Media, Languages, Managing Extensions & Tools

Chapters 12, 13 & 14 cover off managing users, media content and languages; all very straightforward it is too. At this point it's worth noting that the book is based on v1.5.14 of Joomla where user management is quite a simple affair. As soon as version 1.6 comes out of it's alpha/beta cycle, users will being seeing the introduction of the much anticipated ability to create Access Control Lists, whereupon user management will step up a level in complexity and I suspect the book will be in need of revision in that area.

Next come a couple of short and easily digested chapters on the extension manager and tools; no problems here.

Converting a Site to Joomla

Then comes a chapter on what I suspect will be one of the commonest tasks any Joomla user is likely to want to tackle at a very early stage of their involvement with the tool, that of converting an existing site to Joomla. It's at this point that we come across the first example of a diagram that wasn't a screen-shot (of which there are dozens), in this case a wire-frame of the site to be replicated in Joomla. I was surprised at how short this chapter was to be honest, though having read through it, the set-up of a basic template isn't all that difficult. What will take longer will be styling that template using CSS, and this is given only cursory coverage. To be fair, this book isn't the place for that, CSS being a topic that needs several books all of it's very own. If you want to get into the guts of Joomla, you won't find out how from here, you're going to have to get your hands dirty, analyse the built-in templates, possibly open up a number of PHP files and then work at it with a good CSS reference for company.

Extensions

The largest chapter of the book is reserved for extending Joomla. Here you find excellent coverage of a range of commonly desired extra features, including a store-front, a blog, calendaring/event management, a discussion forum, a photo-gallery and more. Some of those covered are free downloads, other at relatively modest cost. Clearly the book can't cover every extension that's out there, but I did feel it gave a good sample of commonly desired features.

Chapters 19 and 20 cover off SEO and security. The SEO features for Joomla are quite simple, and therefore the book covers these off in a mere 8 pages. Security as a topic is similarly short, my only question here is "why bury it right at the back?". Wouldn't this be better covered off as the first port of call following installation?

Joomla v1.6

As I read the chapter on Joomla 1.6 and the features it will have within in, I recalled a comment written right up front of the book which said "...the goal of this book is to focus primarily on the functionality and extensions related to Joomla 1.6". Having read then that sections, trash, the front page manager, and integrated article archiving are to disappear from the newer version, I found myself hesitating over whether that goal has been met; all these depreciated features being covered in some length within the book. I did though find a guide to setting up the new ACL and associated user permissions for v1.6. I was also delighted to discover that the later version has also added enhanced compatibility with the now ubiquitous jQuery JavaScript library.

The book rounds off with a discussion on how to get involved with the Joomla Project, before heading into the appendices which aside from the aforementioned Appendix A, covers off how to choose the right extensions, developing for Joomla and a tips and tricks section.

Summary

Overall, I found that I had a far greater comprehension of how Joomla functions as well as gaining a much better understanding of what it can be made to do. As I said above though, there is a need to find a way of making some of the chapters hang together as a whole though, as at times it feels like the book has something of a stove-pipe mentality about it. Also, I still have a sense that this book isn't necessarily going to translate quite as well to Joomla v1.6 as it suggests it will; not having tried to follow it against a functioning copy of that version though, I will reserve judgement for now.

At this point in time, I'd rate this book as 3½ out of 5. There is room for improvement here and my guess is that the imminent arrival of a stable v1.6 of Joomla will provide the catalyst for its first revision.

Book Details:

Title: Using Joomla
By: Ron Severdia, Kenneth Crowder
Foreword By: Louis Landry
Publisher: O'Reilly Media
Formats: * Print * Ebook * Safari Books Onlin
Print Release: December 2009
Ebook Release: December 2009
Pages: 416
Print ISBN: 978-0-596-80494-7 | ISBN 10: 0-596-80494-6
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-4493-7741-0 | ISBN 10: 1-4493-7741-6