Comments on: Early thoughts on Joomla (nee Mambo)

By: Rap

Rap — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 23:12:13 +0000

I agree with your assessment of the admin UI. It’s very well done and consistent, but with so much out there just finding the piece you need is a bit much right out of the box. After about 3hours of work, tho, I think I’m getting the hang of it. Things are where they need to be, pretty much.

By: hostcu

hostcu — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 20:25:02 +0000

thanks

Barrie, thanks for the link to the tutorial.

By: jim mccann

jim mccann — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 19:42:49 +0000

Ive been using Joomla for about two years for a couple of sites but I sometimes think the back end admin is a bit overpowering for “normal” users. I am thinking of transferring to Wordpress.

By: Nate

Nate — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 17:00:00 +0000

Talk about co-incidence … Don Little and I were just looking at this tool because we want a more “weblike” appearance than a wordpress blog can give. I mean, sure, you can hack the daylights out of the wordpress themes but we were both curious about what a full CMS might offer over a blog engine. The granularity of user function (front office/back office — public, registered, author, etc) is very nice!

Your problems with template installation are curious, tho. My install (joomla 1.0.4) worked perfectly .. I just downloaded the zip file I wanted, then used the Template Manager > New function to select the zip from my drive and the ‘Upload and Install’ just worked. Is there some kind of permissions problem that’s getting in the way of yours?

Module placement is not REALLY intuitive, but after dealing with Drupal, it’s pretty famliar construct. I’ve moved some stuff around but this is something new to play with

By: my weblog » Blog Archive » Early thoughts on Joo

my weblog » Blog Archive » Early thoughts on Joo — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 17:00:00 +0000

[...] Early thoughts on Joomla (nee Mambo) at D’Arcy Norman Dot Net I grabbed a copy of Joomla the other day, to play around with another option for a CMS to use for projects at the Learning Commons. Some early thoughts: [...]

By: Jason

Jason — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 17:00:00 +0000

I have recently installed Joomla on top of IIS for our school web site. I have added a few modules and components to add some functionality – things like event calendar, snazzy bookmarks organizer, integration with Coppermine Photo Gallery, etc. It seems, so far, to be pretty decent software for this purpose.
I have found that I can give less admin options to other admin accounts. This will cut down a bit on the feeling of being overwhelmed, so I’m pretty happy about that. This may help a bit with the overabundance of admin options that you noted.
I plan to set up spaces for individual teachers, clubs, and so on. Joomla looks like it will scale well, but I guess we’ll have to see.
I love reading your stuff. Keep up the great work.

(By the way, I am looking into doing my M.Ed. in ed tech through U of Calgary. Put in a good word for me!)

By: Barrie North

Barrie North — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 17:00:00 +0000

Hey guys,

I think your review(s) pretty much nailed it. Joomla is very powerful, free, and has a steep learning curve. As a web designer, I don’t design “static sites” anymore, I do everything with Joomla. You can get a template to look like anything on the web, and the amount of add-ins is huge.

There are copious tutuorials on the web, I do a shameless plug for one of mine, more of a developer one: http://www.compassdesigns.net/livesite.

I also recommend frequenting the forums at forum.joomla.org. They are very active and have many developers/designers helping people with their questions.

Cheers

By: D'Arcy

D'Arcy — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 17:00:00 +0000

Barrie, thanks for the link to the tutorial. I’ll check it out ASAP.