Customer Reviews

Joomla! Bible

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is far and away the best overview on Joomla, how to deploy a website in Joomla. This is not a book on how to develop in Joomla. The intended audience is someone who will be building Joomla websites, administrating them and doing mild customization in the HTML/CSS arena. Not a book about PHP programming or Joomla's MVC architecture (shame to even use that term, as Joomla MVC is horrific!).

Joomla is a great product for the right audience and this book is perfect for them!

The book covers a broad range of Joomla! topics. Comprehensive is how it is described and I think that is accurate. The text is most suitable for webmasters and site owners who are looking for a reference book. Hardcore programmers and web designers will want more specialized texts. While the book covers a lot of topics, few of the advanced topics are dealt with in detail, but I don't find that a problem -- it can't be all things to all people. It is a reference book for a specific software package (Joomla), not a guide to custom development in PHP or web design in general. We will be using this at our studio as documentation and training material for our clients who buy Joomla! websites.

A previous review faults the images as being too light in the Kindle edition. I noticed the same thing in the print edition. They are a bit light in the first couple of chapters, but they are fine elsewhere.

I have already been working with Joomla for a while. This book tends to explain every virtual button on the screen which are pretty intuitive by the name or label given.

I was really looking for some more in depth information about how to get Joomla to perform some functions to solve my needs.

This text does not (nor was it design to) explain the modules & extensions. I am using the Chronoforms, JEvents, PHP & MySQL to make a complete solution. I need something which could tie it all together.

As far as discovering the issues with Joomla, this book does a great job.

I enjoyed reading this book immensely !! The book is very thorough. It has an easy rhythm and is very logically organized. You will love Part V,after you are done learning about the core Joomla features, and functionality. It is here that Ric shines - very concise, to-the-point and professional advice on what to do when you are ready for real-world Joomla deployment. Another thing you will appreciate is information about the upcoming version of Joomla - sprinkled through-out the text. I recommend this book without reservation to new and experienced Joomla fans.

Ajay Mehta
MCT
e: ajay.mehta@me.com

This book is very good, the only one thing it was missing more info about building template for Joomla! 1.5 ... and maybe some info about changes in Joomla! 1.6. I will recommend this title to my students and other developers. I still waiting for a paper copy to read rest chapters ;).

Joomla! is a free, open source, content management system (CMS). It is a fully-featured system that allows for dynamic website creation without having to worry about coding, learning HTML or database functions. This book does an excellent job of explaining the basics so anyone can understand them, and then goes into more advanced features that experienced users may want to tackle. If you are going to buy only one Joomla! book, this is probably the best available.

I got this because I wanted help for Joomla 1.6. While the book says it covers it, it really just tacks a bit on the end about what the changes are. Not useful.

Also, when I buy books like this, it's because the help isn't enough. Help topics just describe what the options are rather than how to use them, and that's what I felt I got here.

Many functions merely parroted the tool tips for each option.

If you want any kind of "how to" forget it.

Reading this book is a little like trying to learn how to drive by reading the car manual. It describes everything, often in monotonous and unnecessary detail, but never really gives a clear idea of how to actually build a Web site with Joomla! If you are looking for a book that will help you through the concepts of putting a Web site together with Joomla!, giving just enough details to keep you moving forward, followed by chapters with more technical details, this isn't the one. It's not useless and someday after I actually learn how to Joomla! I may refer back to this book - or maybe not.

I purchased this book looking for customizing templates. The author does cover this by saying you should study the default templates and then change them to suit your preferences. I think it needed more substance on the Joomla framework, rather than just point you in the direction of finding the resources on-line. I learned more by trial and error than reading this book. I also bought the kindle version and the images are very light and very difficult to view.

I did not buy this book because it failed my "Table of Contents and Index" test. The book covers topics like installing Joomla! on your machine and developing a site based on Joomla! But then what? Once you have a site working on your development machine, it needs to be deployed to production servers. The table of contents makes no mention of how to deploy a site. The word "deploy" is conspicuously absent from the index.