David Tanguay asked:


In the last article we began looking at Joomla and, more specifically, the handy “Beginner’s Guide to Joomla” that the makers of this content management system provides at their web site. Hopefully by this time you have taken the time to sit down and really ask yourself what you want out of your own web site, as this is always the first step. Without this foundation, your web site may become a scattered assortment of pages that have no rhyme or reason.

Per the “Beginners Guide to Joomla” recommendations, an extremely helpful thing to do after you have figured out what you want out of your web site is to check out the Joomla v1.5 Quick Start Guide. Much time was spent in creating this helpful 49 page guide, and it is full of guidance, screenshots, and everything you need to get started. Once you install the program, the guide then teaches you how to configure extensions and work with components, modules, and plugins. The guide is an asset to beginning your web site, especially if you have never used Joomla’s system before.

For each component that you wish to configure, there will be both an administrator side of it and a site element. As the Joomla site states, “Components are the major portion of your page because a component is driven by a menu item and every menu item runs a component.” Next, you have your modules. The login component of your web site is a module, as well as the footer. Modules can be integrated into the components of your site, or they can stand alone. Plugins handle the events on your site. “When an event is triggered, plugins that are registered with the application to handle that event execute.”

Site administration is a crucial component to understand, as you will need it when you find it necessary to backup and restore your database. You just never know when these instances will arise, so it is best to know how to handle them prior to even getting your web site going.

One tip that Joomla cautions against is adding anything and everything to your site at the onset of starting out just because it “looks cool.” Here is what Joomla specifically says about this: “It’s best to maximize the use of the core code before you add extensions to your site. With each extension that you install, you complicate your site administration requirements and slow your site down. Upgrades are also more complicated. Extensions are great but make certain you really need them, first.”

This is an important tip because you really do not want to complicate your web site from the beginning. This undue frustration can be eliminated simply by taking some precautions and determining what it is you really need. The extensions are there for you to utilize. However, just like every web site is different, what you will actually need for yours will be different, too. Keep this in mind as you move ahead.

These tips, and many others, can be found at Joomla’s web site. Countless guides are available so you do not have to go through setting up your web site blindly. Simply taking some extra time to learn a bit about this content management program will save you time in the end.



Sign Language For Babies And Beyond

Christophe asked:


What is a Web Content Management System ?

A content management system (CMS) is a software system designed for organizing and easing creation and management of documents and other content. By content, we mean any type of digital information : text, images, graphics, audio, video files, archives etc. Specifically, a web content management system like Joomla! aims to facilitate the tasks required to publish web content on web sites, in a collaborative manner.

What can I do with Joomla! ?

Joomla! is a free open source content management system licensed under the GNU/GPL license which can be used to easily manage every aspect of a website, from adding content or graphics, to updating a product catalogue or managing important data. Joomla!, which means “all together” in Swahili, is a powerful, flexible, customisable, powerful and relatively easy to use Web Content Management System. To create and run a website site using Joomla!, all you need is a web hosting account with PHP and MySql support. Joomla!s use and scope is very large, from the creation and management of personal homepages or small businesses to complex enterprise-level websites or applications. It allows numerous themes and extensions (most of them will have to be installed and activated afer the main installation though). The template system is one of the easiest to learn in the Content Management System family. It offers two types of administration – a front-end for registered users, author and publisher and a back-end for the Manager, Administrator and Super Administrator groups.

A Brief History of Joomla!

Joomla! arrived in 2005 as a branch of another well-known CMS, Mambo after an epic controversy between the Mambo’s development team at that time and the Miro Corporation, which also develops its own commercial version, accused of betraying open-source and community values by granting most of the project’s control and future to Miro Corporation via the recently launched Mambo’s Foundation. As there were also several issues with Mambo’s name and copyright, all of this finally led the core team to resign from the Mambo project in August 2005, regrouped under the name of “Open Source Matters” in order to develop the project independently. The two code bases were almost identical at this stage but the latest version, Joomla! 1.5, has now been completely rewritten from scratch. Joomla! now powers millions of websites world-wide and its community is very active. Both Joomla! and Mambo have won numerous prizes and awards in the last three years and now live two separate lives.



How To Make A Diaper Cake

Muhammad Jalloh asked:


You can learn how to install Joomla on your website in a number of ways. However, the simplest and by far, the quickest is through Fantastico. This usually takes about 1-2 minutes once you know how. In this article, we are going to cover just that.

So, here is the step by step process for installing Joomla on your own website.

1. Log in to your hosting account’s Control Panel. This should usually be http://www.mydomainname.com/controlpanel, where ‘mydomainnane’ is replaced your own website that is hosted on that hosting account.

2. Look for the smiley icon that says “Fantastico” and click on it. This is where you will be installing the Joomla package from. Note that Sometimes, it may say “Fantastico De Luxe.” Don’t worry it is the same thing. Much like saying “my room” and “my bedroom”

3. Look for “Joomla” under the “Content Management” category of scripts in Fantastico and click on it. Also, note that the title ‘Joomla’ may sometimes have some numerical suffixes showing which version it is. For example, the title may read “Joomla 1.5″ for version 1.5 of the CMS. Just click on the most recent version and go to the next step.

4. Look for the hyperlinked blue “New Installation” link and make sure you have at least as much as the minimum disk space required for you to install Joomla on your website. This is usually about 25 MB of disk space.

This is not usually a problem, with most people’s disk space running into the tens of gigabytes. But it is still good to make sure you have enough to hold a new Joomla installation.

5. Choose where on your website you want to install Joomla. Will it be on your main domain, an existing sub-domain or a new not-yet-existing sub-domain or directory? Indicate it in this part of the installation process.

6. Fill out other required fields that are required to smoothly install Joomla on the site. This includes creating an Admin username and password. Don’t choose ‘Admin’ and ‘password’ as your username and password. Many people do this and have been hacked. Also, fill out the site name or main keyword, email address and other details here.

Then click the “Install Joomla” button.

7. On the next page, make sure that all the needed information is correct. Also, note down your Admin username, password and backend page (the one that ends with /administrator).

Finally, hit that “Finish Installation” of a button.

Voila! You have just learned how to install Joomla on your website. This should usually take only 1 or 2 minutes at most. After all, all you are doing is just hitting buttons, except for when choosing a username, etc.

If it still sounds a little like “nerd talk” (with all due respect to all the nerds out there ), you can watch the video version of this article where you see the Joomla installation done live on the screen and see if you can learn how to install Joomla after that.



Baby Sleep Tonight

IC asked:


Building a web site takes a great deal of work, we all know that. From design to HTML/PHP/ASP/JS coding, it is all time consuming which affects our income directly. Designing custom headers, image objects, animations using utilities such as Photoshop, Dreamweaver, After Effects, Cold Fusion, are all time intensive tasks indeed.

This is where automation, and powerful management systems come into play. We have all heard the phrase “Content is King”, which is in fact true, and it is very unlikely to change. The more useful and niche specific content our web site provides the better our search engine ranking will be, the more visitors and subscribers we will have and the more revenue can be derived from such online ventures.

This all sounds very nice but when the time comes to put that principle into action we face the terrible truth: “It takes a lot of time and effort”. Having a web site fully designed and managed through starter tools such as Microsoft Frontpage proves to be a serious disadvantage. To make the argument clear, pay attention to the following scenario:

You realize that constantly updated content brings you more traffic as well as feed subscriptions so you set a certain amount of time to content generation, after several hours of writing you finish the first phase of the project.

The second phase involves creating the web pages for each article and organize a proper link structure within the site so that the new content can be found easily. This involves remaking the home page linking structure, content arrangement and even design. This step will undoubtedly take a lot of time. even if templates are used.

The third stage involves checking that all the articles and links are valid and do not show 404 errors as well as placing the most relevant ad units in the right places. This is also a time consuming task.

The fourth stage involves synchronizing and making sure that all the files in your local drive match those files on your web host.

You now may be thinking “There’s got to be an easier way to do all this”, and luckily for all of us, there is!. The solution is often referred to as CMS which stands for “Content Management System”. Using a proper CMS will cut the time spent doing all of these tedious tasks by more than half ( 66.67% to be precise) because you know don’t have to worry about step 2, 3 and 4 but only about step one.

A content management will generate all the pages dynamically, include the right graphics and targeted ad units automatically. One of the most popular CMS is called Joomla. This CMS will require a MySQL database to store all of this information.

The right hosting service will not only help you set this system up but it will also have a one click installation ready for you, which cuts the time and problems involved in manually installing and configuring folder permissions for this useful software. The right hosting solution will provide the necessary support and scripts needed to run this configuration.

The most important tools needed to run Joomla include: PHP 4.2, MySQL 3.23 and Apache 1.3 (or above). Online business becomes more profitable through the use of the right tools along with the best hosting support to help you gain minutes throughout the day.



How To Make A Diaper Cake

David Tanguay asked:


If you have been contemplating whether a Joomla-based website is right for you, you may want to check out Joomla’s “Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Joomla.” Much of the information found in the rest of this post will be condensed from this informative web page, so if you desire more in depth knowledge, visit Joomla’s site.

One nice feature that Joomla allows you to do is take a “test drive” with their system. They let you go to a demonstration site, sign in as a backend Administrator, and change some options to see what an end product will look like. This feature helps you to get familiar with the content management system so that you can test out whether it is something that would be right for the needs of your own web site.

Joomla recommends something that you should do no matter what system you use to manage your website, and that is to plan in advance. You will want to look at the big picture. Joomla poses 4 questions that may help you to do this:

* What do you want to accomplish with your website?

* What is the nature and quantity of content you wish to present?

* Who is your audience, and how do you want to interact with them?

* What types of budgets or timetables are you working within?

Regarding any of these 4 questions, the last thing you want to do is get “web site happy” and go in without a plan. You will end up spending a great deal more money than you would had you simply sat down and focused on the answers to these questions.

So, unless you already know somebody who has explained how Joomla has benefitted their own web site, you are probably asking yourself “What can Joomla do for me?” Joomla allows the user to:

* Edit the content of every page of your site through a word processor-style interface.

* Add new pages to your site using a point-and-click interface.

* Add images and other media through Web-based uploads.

* Control site elements like navigation menus and page layout.

These are only a few of the features you will get with Joomla’s Content Management System. The company makes it beyond easy to create and manage your web site. You do not need a web site designer at your disposal to have the kind of web site you see other companies have. In fact, there is a good chance that the other sites you see from various companies are managed through someone using the Joomla system.

Although Joomla does use the PHP programming language within its system, as a user you do not need to know and understand this language to install it and create the web site in the way you want.



Pick Your Babys Gender

Muhammad Jalloh asked:


To design Joomla websites, you only need to follow five simple steps. While many Joomla website designers try to overcomplicate the process, it should not be necessarily so.

Without wasting your time and mine, here are the five steps that you have to take. You should note, however, that these are sequential steps. This means that you have to do the first one first, followed by the second, etc. While you may sometimes, be able to still build a Joomla site without actually following some of these steps sequentially, it is best not to do so. You will see why as we move along.

So, here is what you need to do.

1. Install Joomla: Well, you can’t actually do anything until after installing Joomla on your website. There are a number of ways to do this.

One of the most common two is to install the CMS using “Fantastico” on your hosting account Control Panel. This takes about 3 minutes at most and is the simplest and easiest way of installing Joomla.

The other way is to install it manually. This requires you to upload the Joomla installation package on your website. You will then follow the instructions to install it from there.

2. Configure Joomla: After successfully installing Joomla, you can now login to the Joomla Admin area or Backend to configure it. The directory of the admin area is the /administrator directory of your Joomla site. Therefore, if-for example- you installed Joomla on mywebsite.com, your admin area will be mywebsite.com/administrator .

Once you login, select the “Site” tab on the far left and click on the “Global Configuration” link. Follow the instructions here to configure your site, server and system information. This may take you anything from 3 to 10 minutes to finish.

3. Create Joomla Content: The next necessary step to designing your Joomla website is to create your content sections, categories and content items or pages.

The content sections are the broadest divisions of content on your Joomla site. The categories are the sub-divisions of content for each section.

The content items, pages or articles (as they are variously called) are the pieces of content that are posted under each category. For example, to find your “How to Design a Joomla Website” article or page on your website, I may have to go to the CMS section, select the Joomla Category and there I will find the “How to Design Joomla Websites” article or page.

This content hierarchy will look like this:

Section ====> Category ===> Content Item/Page.

It is just a very simple and organized way of managing your content in Joomla.

Do note that you can have as many content sections, categories or content pages as you want. It is virtually unlimited. So, whether you are designing a Joomla article directory or just a simple niche website, you will still find that the Joomla CMS will serve your purpose all the same.

4. Create Menus: The Joomla Menu or site navigation system is divided into categories.

So, for example, you may have a menu category for your paid products, another one for your freebies and even another for your niche articles.

Now, under each category you will have menu items. So, if -for example-you want to have your paid products accessible from the same menu category, you may therefore, have an “Internet Marketing Products” menu category.

Under this, you will have one menu item that links to your blogging ebook, another menu item that links to your “social networking” course; and yet still another one that points to your traffic generation membership site. And so on.

You can also have any of the menu items point to a content section, category or page of your website. It is all about simple creativity.

5. Modify and Customize the Site: One good reason to design Joomla websites is that you can actually modify and customize your Joomla site as much or as little as you want to. So, we may both be using the same template, for example, but each of us can modify the template and rearrange the modules in such a way that the finished website may not look anything similar to the original site.

You can customize your Joomla website by:

• Installing new templates and modifying them according to your taste.

• Modifying and customizing existing templates that come with Joomla

• Installing new Joomla components

• Installing and modifying modules and changing their positions on the website.

• And so much more…

You can do these and more from the “Extensions” tab in your Admin area.



Pick The Gender Of Your Baby