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The Unofficial Joomla Guide |
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Sunday, 22 June 2008 |
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This is the unofficial guide to people looking for assistance in Joomla. It's a great CMS not only because it is free but because it has so much support and has even more features than some commercial software. With this unofficial guide, I can give you advice towards choosing the right template and the right extensions. All in all, you save many hours and hair-pulling.
We'll go step-by-step on this unofficial guide.
Web-hosting
Avoid GoDaddy at all costs. Their systems are lame and I had a HELL of a time trying to setup SSL on their server. Save yourself the hassle and do not host your joomla site at Godaddy. You can buy an SSL certificate from them if you want. That's fine, just don't host there.
Joomla 1.0 VS Joomla 1.5
This one is a no-brainer. There have been many people who are comfortable with version 1.0.x and they feel no need to upgrade. The truth is sooner or later, all extensions and all support will move to 1.5.x so you don't really have a choice. If you're just installing Joomla now, please save yourself the future migration hassles later and just get Joomla 1.5 and stick to extensions that work on Joomla 1.5 native.
Finding the Perfect Template
There are many important things you must consider when choosing a template. Most important of all is the built-in features and options. You should never count out a template because of the way it looks. All it takes is a little magic to turn a template into a real professional web portal.
Good things to look for in a template are cleanliness, ease-of-use, and clever design that looks good but also easy for users to navigate. Always aspects like design, corners, font, and color can always be changed in a template. Layout is a bit tougher but possible. Make sure you like the way the menus fit and be sure to use a bit of imagination to think ahead and see if that template will work out for you. You have to do some foresight in your head but it's worth it.
Best Graphical Extensions
FrontPageSlideshow - This template is still the best slideshow you can get. Very many options to give your site the most professional looking slideshow.
AllVideos Reloaded - Great video extension for Joomla 1.5. Great support and great easy-to-use features. Perfect for running your own "youtube" site.
Best Functional Extensions
Virtuemart - I have been using this for years and it's matured into a really powerful system. While it doesn't work perfectly out of the box, it's the closest you can get to a totally free shopping cart! Get a professional developer to re-design some of the buttons and you will have a super smooth site in NO TIME!
Acajoom - By far the best and easiest newsletter component to use! I have been using them for 2 years now.
ArtForms - Back then, it use to be PerForms, now it's ArtForms. ArtForms is an awesome form creator that is very easy to use and does not require all sorts of fancy do-it-yourself CSS design.
Jomcomment - I've been a customer here at www.azrul.com for almost 2 years and they still have the best Joomla commenting component! It looks great, functions very well, and is just plain easy to use. The $25 you pay is well worth it!
Fireboard - A VERY easy and powerful forum component to put into your website! I highly recommend it to all. Easy to setup and easy to use. Plus it's FREE!
Simple Image Gallery PRO - I highly recommend the pro version but you're welcome to be cheap and use the free version if you like. Their extension has set the Joomla standard for the easy lightbox photo gallery effect. Try it and see how it can be great for your site.
DOCMAN - Another great site for managing downloads. Great for users to upload to and download from the site. It's amazingly easy permission-based administration allows for many wonderful applications. Use your imagination to see what you can do with it.
JoomlaCloner - These guys are very professional. They have save me many hours of scratching my head before. Their extension works very well and is easy to use! Be prepared for a 10 minute learning curve but you will save many hours soon after. It is well worth paying their price!
FREE vs Commercial Extensions
The old saying is somewhat true here, "You get what you pay for." When it comes to templates, PLEASE check out the links below and buy templates from a company with an active community and excellent support. The money you pay is WELL worth it because you will soon realize that you want to make many changes to the template and the paid support will give you instant help. Again, this is worth every penny and will save you a lot of stress. In some scenarios, you will find that you need even more support. In this case, I recommend that you go to elance.com and post a bid on there. There are many excellent programmers that can help you for $10-25/hr. For just $100, you can get major bug fixes and hacks to your favorite templates or extensions within 24 hours.
Best Joomla Template and Extension Sites
www.joomlart.com - Joomlart is great with boxy design or very web 2.0 style of design. They have a very strong community and their templates are very professional and load quickly.
www.rockettheme.com - Another very professional template site with a large community. Their templates are very snazzy, great for busy portals with massive content, and very good at making templates with many round effects like round corners.
www.joomlajet.com - Very professional template design company that makes sure the text is aesthetically pleasing as the graphics. Their templates are great for portfolio sites. Their memberships fees are a bit on the high side while their templates are pretty low in functionality. Nonetheless, their stuff is VERY professional looking.
www.joomlashack.com - Another very good template site, very professional design and many wonderful graphical features.
www.gavick.com - A new and upcoming template website. They have great designs but are still maturing when it comes to support. In time, this creative template company will be a force to wreckon with. I will say that I think many of their template menus look a bit too plain for my taste but that's just my opinion.
www.joomlaworks.gr - They have BEAUTIFUL extensions. Enough said, check out their site and enjoy all the free goodies they have!
Joomla Developers to Watch Out For
I'm not saying these guys are bad, I just want to say that their support is far below part compared to everyone else. Avoid them at all costs.
www.yootheme.com - Very new company in its infant stages. They have many fancy looking templates and extensions but the problem is that they don't all work together. Visit the forums if you can and you'll see that there are hundreds of unanswered posts of people complaining. This company promises too much and doesn't come close to supporting their products. Every month, they create new things without ever fixing the old bugs. Don't take my word, go there and see for yourself.
Phil Taylor - If you've even scouted the joomla extensions list, this guy can be a real jerk sometimes. He's very helpful at times and very snobby at other times. While I've never been on the receiving end of his spiteful comments, I've seen him flame many users before and get angry at users for not being Joomla guru's. His extensions are far from perfect and so is his temperament.
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