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How to make a Joomla website
Video #1 for this article
The more experience I get with Joomla the more I love the
application. As I mentioned on the forum
a couple of days ago one of our members asked me about using Joomla as a
shopping cart and since I have never used Joomla in that capacity I set up a
test site for him to play with. Well I also
set up a test site for me to play with and I have to say that so far it
functions really well. Don’t get me
wrong it’s not a full blown VPASP shopping cart but for a small store with a
couple of hundred products it is extremely easy to use. I also thought this would be the perfect
opportunity to teach the basics of Joomla to anybody who is interested in all
that it has to offer. And keep in mind
that this site you are on right now is a Joomla CMS website, so I will use it
as an example in the video for how to get started putting together this type of
website. In future installments I will
go into some of the other types of sites you can build with Joomla including a
shopping cart.
Before we get started I just want to let you know about a
few of the components, modules and plugins that you can add to your Joomla site
if you decide to expand your website in the future. I am not sure how Joomla would define each of
them but I would say that plugins directly affect the capabilities that you
site has, like being able to accomplish tasks.
I would describe components as the functionality of your site, like
being able to watch videos or having members interact with each other. And modules are the design of your site, each
piece around the outside of this article like the place where you can see your profile
picture and log in and out is a module.
Modules are like modular furniture; you can move them to wherever they
suit you best and only display them on certain parts of your site. If you noticed the modules on the right
disappear when you go to the forum to give the forum more room to display. Just keep in mind that while they are
independent of each other they usually work in unison.
Like on this website there are many components you can use
to have a forum on your site. I like
Fireboard the best because of the way that it integrates so well with Joomla
and another component called Community Builder.
Fireboard is easy to install but it is a bit of a pain to set up if you
have lots of categories on your forum.
The next component is community builder which allows you to have greater
member interaction with your site. You members
can build profiles and build relationships with other members through some of
its processes. There are thousands of
other uses for community builder that I will go into detail with in a future
lesson. There is a PM component for you
and your members to use, and once you have a large site you will appreciate having
PMs that don’t get lost or misfiled.
There are a number of video components but again you can tell from this
site that I like Seyret the best, but I also use a plugin called “all videos”
to put videos directly into the articles.
The only other component I will mention on this beginning article is SH404SEF
I give you the name because they are many others but this is the one that works
best for me. What is does is convert the
URLs of your site into a more friendly version for people to read. They call them search engine friendly, but
search engines don’t really care what the URL is, except to give your site a
higher ranking for having the exact search phrase as part of the URL. Some if not all of these components have mandatory
plugins and modules that you must also add to your site to make them work.
The video for this article will cover how to start with a
basic site set up with Fantastico through bluehost.com and walk you through the
process of setting up a few basic components a new template and getting the
global settings right for your site. I haven’t
started the video but just learning those basic steps will require a couple of
videos. Don’t be intimidated by it
though because once you learn how to use Joomla you will also see the amazing
flexibility that it has and will grow to love it as much as I do. Again I want to mention to everyone that if
you have any questions or don’t understand something about this lesson, go to
the forum and ask your questions there so that everyone can benefit from your
question. I usually find that if one
person is wondering something then there are more who are wondering the same
thing.
Video #1 for this article
Last update : 15-04-2008 03:45
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