Building Websites with Joomla! 1.5: The best-selling Joomla! tutorial guide updated for the latest 1.5 release [Paperback]

Hagen Graf (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 184719530X | ISBN-13: 978-1847195302 | Publication Date: March 28, 2008 | Edition: 2nd edition

This book takes a practical step-by-step approach of teaching the installation and configuration of Joomla! 1.5, customizing it, creating your templates and extensions, and finally, building your own website. This book is suitable for web developers, designers, webmasters, content editors, and marketing professionals who want to develop a website in a simple and straightforward process. It does not require any detailed knowledge of programming or web development, and any IT-confident individual will be able to use the book to produce an impressive website.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Hagen Graf

Hagen Graf was born in July 1964. Born and raised in Lower Saxony, Germany, his first contact with a computer was in the late seventies with a Radioshack TRS 80. As a salesperson, he organized his customers' data by programming suitable applications. This gave him a big advantage over other salesmen. With the intention of honing his skills, he joined evening courses in programming and became a programmer. Nowadays he works in his wife's consulting company as a trainer, consultant, and programmer. Hagen Graf has published other books in German, about the Apache web server, about security problems in Windows XP, about Mambo, and about Drupal. Since 2001, he has been engaged in a nonprofit e-learning community called "machm-it.org e.V.", as well as in several national and international projects. All the projects are related to content management, community building, and harnessing the power of social software like wikis and weblogs. He chose Joomla! CMS because of its simplicity and easy-to-use administration. You can access and comment on his blog.

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Packt Publishing; 2nd edition edition (March 28, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 184719530X
• ISBN-13: 978-1847195302
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #883,437 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars If you want the basics..., July 29, 2008

By 

Richard Rogahn "Rick" (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Building Websites with Joomla! 1.5: The best-selling Joomla! tutorial guide updated for the latest 1.5 release (Paperback)

Get this book, but don't expect much more. The first half of the book is a complete snore if you have done any web development in the past, this includes HTML as it is completely non-technical. This book also introduces somthing that I haven't seen in a technical text in a while and that would be an editorial piece. Maybe I'm light on open source reading but I don't really care so much about someone's opinion on why companies that do not share the authors opinion are selfish and only open source developers go to heaven.

It might not be that extreme, but it really has no place in a technical / educational text. If I want those opinions I'll buy a different book, I'm just trying to learn a bit about the software.

If you want the technical approach, order the WROX book. Does a much better job from the get go digging into the technical aspects of the project and leaves the ego stroking to others.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good Reference, Weaker Tutorial, December 30, 2008

By 

Todd Biske (Columbia, IL, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Building Websites with Joomla! 1.5: The best-selling Joomla! tutorial guide updated for the latest 1.5 release (Paperback)

Packt Publishing sent me a complimentary copy of "Building Website with Joomla! 1.5" by Hagen Graf to review. I specifically was interested in this book as I was researching the use of Joomla! as part of redoing an elementary school website.

First off, the book was well organized. It begins with an introduction to web content management systems and the role they play today in web sites, covers a brief history of Joomla!, and then focuses the rest of the book on the installation and configuration options. As a first time Joomla! user, I can definitely say that the book helped me out quite a bit in understanding the way things were configured. Chapters 4 through 12 focus on different areas of Joomla!, including menus, extensions, components, and content in sufficient detail to make a useful reference but in a way that a first time user can get through the configuration. As a reference, this is the book's strong point.

Where I was a bit disappointed was that I was look more for a tutorial, rather than a pure reference book. Given that I was setting up a new site using Joomla! for the first time, I was hoping for an extended step by step approach that would take me through a complete site development. While there is a chapter in the book called "A Website with Joomla!," it was only 12 pages long and was presented more in the context of a demonstration than a tutorial.

Overall, I was pleased with the book. I think it will be a useful reference as I develop the site, but I also think I've still got more work ahead of me to get the site out the door.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A very good book for beginners, very useful book for advanced users, August 12, 2009

By 

Ivan Ilijasic (Zagreb, Croatia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Building Websites with Joomla! 1.5: The best-selling Joomla! tutorial guide updated for the latest 1.5 release (Paperback)

"Building Websites with Joomla 1.5" is an excellent choice for all developers and webmasters who didn't have a chance to work with Joomla! CMS. The book is very easy to read and it's really ideal for webmasters who didn't have a real development experience. Joomla! CMS is a good choice for entering the world of CMS-based websites and this book will provide you an excellent introduction how this popular CMS is working and how you can administer it.

At the beginning of the book you get all the information how to install Joomla! on different server types and after you complete your first installation, the book will give you all the necessary information about the frontend and backend. What I really like in this book is the fact that it gives a really good overview about the basic module functionalities: menus, login forms, online status, polls, breadcrums, banner management, etc. All web newbies will receive enough information how to use these modules and web veterans will use first few chapters as a quick overview of Joomla modules and components.

After first 200 pages you will learn how to expand your Joomla! installation with additional extensions and how to create your first template, custom component and how to integrate new functionality into your first Joomla! website. In chapter 16 you will use the knowledge from previous chapters to create a new website for vintner family Bertrand. This will be a good practice to test your Joomla skills.

As I said before, with this book basic knowledge of Joomla! Beginners will be very thrilled with this book, advanced users will appreciate it because it is a good resource for more advanced CMS-based projects.