my joomla experience

Joomla! Template: Module Positions in Front End

2008-10-21T18:03:00.000-07:00

Joomla's front end is what your visitors see when they access your Joomla website. It is where your content, components, modules will be displayed to be viewed by your visitors.

Understanding module location/position in your template will give you the liberty on where to place your Joomla! modules to be displayed in your front end.

You can easily view where your module positions are displayed in your template by adding "?tp=1" code (without the quotes) at the end of the URL of your website.

Hence, if your URL is "http://www.yourdomain.com/" just add "?tp=1" in its end, as shown below,

"http://www.yourdomain.com/?tp=1" (without the quotes)

You will see the label of your module position in your template. You can then easily decide on where you will place your modules that would best fit your template. The common modules positions of templates are "left," "right," "top," and "bottom." Other templates have extra module positions available like "user1," "user2," and "banner."

Enjoy tinkering on where you will place the modules in your template.

Joomla Templates: How Your Website Looks

2008-10-20T18:34:00.000-07:00

Joomla! gives you the option on selecting the design, layout, color, module position of the template that you can use. In short, you are free to use whatever templates you chose.

As of this writing, there are about 15,200,000 sites offering Joomla! templates when I searched at google, that is using the keyword "joomla templates" (with the quotes).

Being an open source, there are a lot of third party providers that offers free Joomla! templates. However, you must test the templates before putting it online. Some templates will not work well with other internet browsers and sometimes the layout would break when you add other components into your Joomla! website. So be sure to check and test before launching your website.

Premium (paid) Joomla! templates may answer the issue mentioned above since the developer may have tested the template in different internet browsers and installed several modules and components that are available for Joomla!.

To start browsing for Joomla! templates, just do a google search or you may opt to visit the following websites:

http://www.siteground.com
http://www.joomla24.com

The two websites above will give you numerous Joomla! templates to choose from. Just select the design that fits your website's concept, niche, industry, as well as help your visitors identify your website as "yours" or what they call branding.

Enjoy lookimg for Joomla! templates that fits you site's needs

A membership site for an Airsoft Team

2008-10-20T02:14:00.000-07:00

One of the main advantage of using Joomla is its interactivity.

We used Joomla to build a website for an airsoft team in our locality. When we were planning on how to set-up the site, we decided first on what functionality will we add to the website. What we've consider was the forum, membership manager, photo gallery and events.

We used the team's name as the domain and selected a reliable web host (Joomla ready) to house our site.

We then selected a template, luckily a free joomla template is available that would fit perfectly for the teams agreed color. The template that we used is capable of displaying 3 columns (only 2 if there are no entry in the 'right' module container). However its module containers is only limited to the 'left' and 'right' hence we could not add modules on the 'top' and 'bottom' position hence we will add our custom html codes for display at the bottom at the template html.

We then replaced the decorative part of the template and replaced it with the teams logo and name to personalize the site.

The site know has several articles and installed components.

The team members use the forum to discuss issues and to communicate with each other. The calendar is used to remind the team of their upcoming activities.

The site is currently being used to market the upcoming Airsoft Tournament that the team is co-sponsoring. They posted the game rules, game updates and other information that are relevant to the event.

Hopefully the site would grow as the airsoft team grows. Also the team would use the site for communication and updates.

Local Online Community Portal

2008-10-20T01:48:00.001-07:00

It's been a year since I've launched my very first website.

I intended to make it a local community portal for our city. With the capability of Joomla!, I was able to integrate several components that I think would be beneficial on a community website.

Aside from the basic articles, city info, and news articles; I also installed several components such as Events, Forum, Site Map, Classified Ads, Real Estate, City Map (Google), Jobs, Search Engine Friendly URL, Membership Manager, and Business Directory. All the components are available for free at the extensions.joomla.org website.

Although I have not implemented any marketing strategy to promote my website, (not even in my email sig), I enjoy a significant number of visitors per day from the search engines.

I am hoping to promote the site, or maybe formally launch it someday, through the business community of our town and the local residents.

domain name registration

2007-05-28T01:45:00.000-07:00

domain name registration

this blog is in relation to my article about my attempt to use joomla for my website development.

after reading a lot of materials about website development, which i think is too much for me, i am still not sure which tool i will be using in building my site.

however, as what i've read, aside from the knowledge on website development that is needed in putting up a website, i still need a lot of things to consider. i will tackle in this article on how i plan to register my domain name.

after researching and browsing through the net and reading several articles about domain name registration, i learned that godaddy.com indeed had a lower rate in terms of domain name registration.

i used their search facility in looking for available domain names. luckily, there are available domain names that i can consider when putting up my website.

i just need to deposit the needed amount on my debit card so i can purchase my domain name. however, i'm not intending to purchase it yet until my website is up and running. i just hope that the domain name that i had in mind is not yet taken when i am going to purchase it.

new to joomla

2007-05-22T19:47:00.000-07:00

i was glad that my boss gave me her support when i told her that i'm planning to build a website for our office. i cited to her the advantages of having our very own website. however, we have no personnel who has the capacity and ability to build a website, the task of building the site was assigned to me - with no background, whatsoever, on how to build a website.

with no background on website development, i read several resources on html, css, the do's and dont's of web development, etc. however, it took me a lot of time to understand the intricate details of building a website from scratch, hence i looked for other resources to "simplify" and reduce my learning curve. that was when i stumbled with nvu (a freeware wysiwyg editor). i also tried microsoft frontpage since it was already installed in my office pc.

i was overwhelmed with too much things to learn in order to build a website - particularly in template designing, color harmony, and layout - even with the use of the wysiwyg editors that i've mentioned above.

with lots of options and lacking of focus, i asked several friends from other government agencies who were in-charge with their office web development. a friend suggested to use joomla because, according to him, joomla is easy to use. since then, i busied myself reading all the materials that i could get my hands into. i relied on online forums (forum.joomla.org). i also downloaded all the tutorials that i could find to help me build our office website. i read about the user's manual of joomla 1.0.11 as my basic reference.

there are tons of information that i had gathered during my online research regarding web development using joomla which overwhelmed me (again!). however, i finally refocused myself when i read about the tutorial on creating a school website using joomla (a sample chapter of the book about joomla 1.5) to be published by www.compassdesignes.net. i also read about organizing contents with joomla at the same site.

i learned a lot from that tutorial since it gave information that i could use in developing our site, such as organizing content, creating "sections" and "categories," "drop down" menu using css, using forums, and many more.

i hope to publish our site once our central office will assign a subdomain and grant a webspace for our site.