Joomla! 2.5 Beginner's Guide

By Eric Tiggeler

In Detail

Joomla! is one of the most popular open-source Content Management Systems, actively developed and supported by a world-wide user community. Although it's a fun and feature-rich tool, it can be challenging to get beyond the basics and build a site that meets your needs perfectly. Using this book you can create dynamic, interactive web- sites that perfectly fit your needs.

Completely updated for Joomla! 2.5, this practical guide teaches you how to create professional, appealing and extendable websites, whether you want to create a full-featured company or club website or build a personal blog site.

The Joomla! Beginner's Guide helps beginners to get started quickly and to get beyond the basics to take full advantage of Joomla!'s powerful features. Completely updated from the first book, real-life examples and tutorials will spark your imagination and show you what kind of professional, contemporary, feature-rich websites any developer can achieve with Joomla!. This book thoroughly covers the concepts behind the software and creates a coherent picture of how the software works. This book is not about what Joomla! can do - it's about what you can do using Joomla!.

Approach

Written with a fast-paced but friendly and engaging approach, this Packt Beginner's guide is designed to be placed alongside the computer as your guide and mentor. Step-by-step tutorials are bolstered by explanations of the reasoning behind what you are doing. You will quickly pick up the necessary skills, tips, and tricks for building a successful Joomla! website.

Who this book is for

This book is written for beginners to website design. By the end of the book you will have built a complete custom content managed website, and be ready to build any kind of website.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Release date: Mar 26, 2012
• ISBN: 9781849517911

Eric Tiggeler

Eric Tiggeler is the author of the Joomla! 3 Beginner's Guide and has written several Dutch guides on Joomla! and other content management systems, all of which got excellent reviews. Eric writes tutorials for several computer magazines and Joomla! community websites. Over the last ten years, Eric has developed numerous websites, big and small, many of them using Joomla! Eric is fascinated by the Web as a powerful and creative means of communication, and by revolutionary software such as Joomla!, which enables anyone to create beautiful and user-friendly websites. His passion is making complex things easy to understand.

Book preview

Table of Contents

Joomla! 2.5 Beginner's Guide

Credits

About the Author

About the Reviewers

www.PacktPub.com

Support files, eBooks, discount offers and more

Why Subscribe?

Free Access for Packt account holders

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Time for action – heading

What just happened?

Pop quiz – heading

Have a go hero – heading

Reader feedback

Customer support

Downloading the color images of this book

Errata

Piracy

Questions

1. Introduction: A New and Easy Way to Build Websites

Join the CMS revolution

Why would you choose Joomla?

What kind of sites can you build with Joomla?

Learning to use Joomla

What you'll learn using this book

About the example site

Summary

2. Installation: Getting Joomla Up and Running

What do you need to start?

Hosting space

FTP software

A great browser (think Firefox)

Installing Joomla in four steps

Time for action – downloading the Joomla files

What just happened?

Time for action – placing the files on the web server

What just happened?

Time for action – creating a database

What just happened?

Time for action – running the Joomla installation wizard

What just happened?

Got stuck? Get help!

Pop quiz – test your knowledge of installing Joomla

Summary

3. First Step: Getting to Know Joomla

Making the switch—building websites the Joomla way

Sorry, web pages have ceased to exist

Why is this a good thing?

A website built of blocks

Introducing frontend and backend: the Joomla interface

Your workspace: the backend

And what's the frontend?

The frontend: the website as the user sees it

Time for action – tour the example site

What just happened?

Exploring the example content

Have a go hero – get familiar with other example sites

Taking control: administering your site in the backend

Time for action – log in to the backend

What just happened?

Taking a closer look at the Control Panel

Top menu

Shortcut buttons

Preview and Info Bar

Information panels

Understanding backend tools and controls

Getting your feet wet: start administering your site

Three types of backend tasks

Content management example: let's create some content!

Time for action – publish your first article

What just happened?

Extension management example: adding a module

Time for action – add a module to the site

What just happened?

Site management example: configuring basic site settings

Time for action – set Joomla preferences

What just happened?

Have a go hero – explore the configuration options

Pop quiz – test your knowledge of Joomla basics

Summary

4. Web Building Basics: Creating a Site in an Hour

What you will be making

Meet your client

Cleaning up: removing the sample data

Step 1: remove sample content

Time for action – deleting articles and categories

Step 2: delete menus and other modules

Time for action – deleting menus

What just happened?

Have a go hero – clean out the list of modules

Building your new site in three steps

Step 1: customize the layout

Time for action – preparing a new logo image

Replacing the header image

Time for action – replace the header image

Time for action – tweak the design details

What just happened?

CSS stylesheets? Come again?

Have a go hero – explore layout settings

Step 2: add content

Create a foundation first: make categories

Time for action – create a News category

What just happened?

Add articles to the category

Time for action – create an article

What just happened?

Have a go hero – add your own images to articles

Making content visible on the site: create a menu link

Time for action – add a menu link

What just happened?

Now that's the all-important power of menus

Have a go hero – create more categories and articles

Create menu links to the new content

Add individual content pages: uncategorized articles

Time for action – add uncategorized articles

What just happened?

Have a go hero – clean up the Main Menu

Put some content on the home page—at last!

Add items to the home page

Time for action – adding items to the home page

What just happened?

Step 3: add extras through extensions

Components and Extensions, what's the difference?

Add a contact form

Time for action – create a contact

What just happened?

Time for action – create a Contact Form menu link

What just happened?

Have a go hero – clean up the Top menu

Add a special message block

Time for action – create a message block

What just happened?

Wrapping up: change site settings

Time for action – change site configuration

What just happened?

Pop quiz – test your basic Joomla knowledge

Summary

5. Small Sites, Big Sites: Organizing your Content Effectively

Building on the example site

Grouping content: a crash course in site organization

Designing a site map

Time for action – create a future proof site map

What just happened?

Transferring your site map to Joomla

How do you turn a site map into a website?

Creating categories and subcategories

Time for action – create a category and subcategories

What just happened?

In what case do you need more subcategory levels?

Have a go hero – rearrange existing categories

Adding content to new categories

Displaying main categories and subcategories on your site

Time for action – create a link to point to a main category

Have a go hero – explore the possibilities of category pages

Refining your site structure

Time for action – move content from one category to another

What just happened?

Have a go hero—moving entire categories

Renaming categories

Time for action – rename a category

What just happened?

Have a go hero – name and rename!

Changing category settings

Building a site without using categories

How do you go about building a small site?

Have a go hero – organize a site!

Pop quiz – test your site organization knowledge

Summary

6. Creating Killer Content: Adding and Editing Articles

Articles, content pages, what's the difference?

Creating and editing articles: beyond the basics

Making your words look good: formatting article text

Time for action – add styling to article text

What just happened?

Have a go hero – change the formatting

Adding images to articles

Time for action – upload images

What just happened?

Time for action – inserting and aligning images

What just happened?

Have a go hero – adjust the image settings

Extending the possibilities of the Media Manager

Time for action – enabling the Flash image uploader

Changing the way the article displays

One lump or two? Split the article in an intro text and main text

Time for action – creating an intro text

What just happened?

Creating multi-page articles

Time for action – using page breaks to split up an article

What just happened?

Have a go hero – use sliders and tabs

Tweaking the details: changing article settings

Article Permissions

Setting general preferences for all articles

Articles tab

Category tab

Categories, Blog/Featured Layouts, List Layouts, and Shared Options tabs

Integration tab

Text Filters tab

Permissions tab

Archiving articles

Time for action – creating a news archive

What just happened?

Pop quiz – test your article expertise

Summary

7. Welcoming your Visitors: Creating Attractive Home Pages and Overview Pages

Why do you need overview pages, anyway?

Creating the perfect home: mastering home page layout

Changing the way the home page is arranged

Time for action – rearrange the layout of articles on the home page

What just happened?

Have a go hero – tweak home page layout options

Adding items to the home page

Controlling the order of home page items manually

Setting criteria to automatically order home page items

Time for action – show the most recent items first

What just happened?

The Featured Articles menu item type – an overview of all options

Layout Options

Article Options

Integration Options

Link Type Options

Page Display Options

Metadata Options

Module assignment for this Menu Item

Creating more than one page containing Featured Articles

Another type of home page: using a single article

Time for action – creating a different home page

What just happened?

Have a go hero – undo!

Creating category overview pages

Two main choices: Blog layout and List layout

The first type of overview page: creating Category Blog layouts

Time for action – create a facebook using the Blog layout

What just happened?

Have a go hero – add a category description

Showing full articles on a category overview page

Have a go hero – experiment with Category Blog layout settings

Blog Layout Options, Article Options, Integration Options, Link Type Options, Page Display Options, and Metadata Options

Category Options

The second type of overview page: Lists

Time for action – add a link to a Category List layout

What just happened?

Customizing lists: exploring Category List options

Required Settings

Category Options

List Layouts

Article Options, Integration Options, Link Type Options, Page Display Options, and Metadata Options

How are multi-level categories displayed in Lists?

Pop Quiz – test your knowledge of home pages and overview pages

Summary

8. Helping your Visitors Find What they Want: Managing Menus

How many menus can you have?

Creating user-friendly navigation—cleaning up the Main Menu

Option 1: Change the order of menu items

Time for action – changing menu item order

What just happened?

Option 2: Create submenu items

Time for action – creating a secondary menu item

What just happened?

Option 3: Add a separate new menu

Time for action – creating a new, empty menu

What just happened?

Time for action – moving hyperlinks to the new menu

What just happened?

Time for action – telling Joomla where to display the menu

What just happened?

Have a go hero – changing menu settings

Creating split submenus

Have a go hero – arrange menus any way you like

Exploring menu module settings

Two ways to switch to the menu module screen

Details

Menu Assignment

Basic Options

Advanced Options

Have a go hero – try out the menu settings

What types of menu links are available?

Have a go hero – try out Menu Item Types

Creating plain text links

Time for action – creating text links

What just happened?

Pop quiz – test your knowledge on menus

Summary

9. Opening up the Site: Enabling Users to Log in and Contribute

What are the default user groups and their permissions?

Public—the guest group

Registered users—the user group that can log in

Author, Editor, and Publisher—the frontend content contributors

Manager, Administrator, and Super User—the backend content contributors and administrators

Shop Suppliers and Customers—two example user groups

Enabling users to log in and contribute content

Time for action – adding a user with frontend authoring permissions

What just happened?

Enabling content contributors to log in to the frontend

Time for action – put a Login Form on the home page

What just happened?

Time for action – logging in as a frontend content contributor

What just happened?

Have a go hero – create a frontend User Menu

Reviewing and publishing team content submissions

Time for action – reviewing and publishing submitted content

What just happened?

Have a go hero – explore different User Group permissions

Find out what editors and publishers can do

Find out what backend users can do

Enabling self-registration—allowing visitors to register

How do you enable users to create their own account?

Displaying a Login menu link

Time for action – register yourself and log in

What just happened?

Hiding content for non-registered users

Time for action – hiding content for non-registered users

What just happened?

Have a go hero – change access level settings

Getting your visitors to 'register to read more'

Time for action – partially hiding content from non-registered users

What just happened?

Creating custom-made user groups

What are the permissions you can assign to user groups?

What Viewing Access Levels are available?

Creating a custom user group to manage contacts

Time for action – create a user group

What just happened?

Time for action – tell Joomla what the group can see

What just happened?

Time for action – tell Joomla what the group can do

What just happened?

Time for action – add users to the new group

What just happened?

Pop quiz – test your knowledge of Joomla user management

Summary

10. Getting the Most out of your Site: Extending Joomla

Extensions in all shapes and sizes

The big ones—Components

The medium ones—Modules

The tiny ones—Plugins

Where do you get extensions from?

Enhancing your site using core extensions

Highlighting articles using the Newsflash module

Time for action – adding a Newsflash to the home page

What just happened?

Have a go hero – change the Newsflash settings

Creating a list of contacts using the Contacts component

Time for action – add a series of contacts

What just happened?

Have a go hero – try out contact component settings

What extensions are part of the Joomla core?

Enhancing your site using third-party extensions

Trying out an alternative Newsflash module

Time for action – downloading and installing an extension

Time for action – putting the extension to work

What just happened?

Have a go hero – explore module options

Showing images in a lightbox gallery

Time for action – create an image gallery

What just happened?

Do you want more from your photo gallery?

Using extensions to enhance your work space

Time for action – replace Joomla's default text editor

What just happened?

So much more to explore

Updating extensions

Pop quiz – test your knowledge of Joomla extensions

Summary

11. Creating an Attractive Design: Working with Templates

This is what templates do

And this is why templates are so much fun

Where can you get a new template for your site?

Changing the settings of the current template

What are Template Styles?

Customizing the current template using built-in options

Time for action – changing the site color and layout options

What just happened?

Changing to a different template

Previewing available templates

Setting a different template as the default

Time for action – activating a different template

Time for action – changing the logo and header image

What just happened?

Applying Template Styles to individual pages

Time for action – creating a Template Style for one specific page

Downloading and installing a new template

Time for action – downloading and activating a new template

Time for action – place modules in new template positions

What just happened?

Time for action – replace the logo file

Time for action – adding a banner module

What just happened?

Have a go hero – change template settings

Customizing a template: tweaking CSS styles

Understanding the very basics of CSS

Tweaking the banner image CSS

Diving deeper into Joomla CSS: using Firebug

Time for action – editing CSS on the fly using Firebug

What just happened?

Expanding your CSS toolkit

Expanding your CSS knowledge

Editing the template HTML

Time for action – removing the fixed footer text

What just happened?

Backing up and restoring a customized template

Creating your own template

Template building resources

Pop quiz – test your knowledge of Joomla templates

Summary

12. Attracting Search Engine Traffic: Tips and Techniques

Why do you need to accommodate for search engines?

Optimizing articles for findability

The article title: Make it meaningful

The article structure: Use clear formatting

Adding H3 through H6 headings

Adding an second H1 page heading

Time for action – adding a page heading to an article

What just happened?

Page Heading and Page Title—what's the difference?

The article body text: Use relevant keywords

Update articles regularly

The images: Explain what they're about

Configuring HTML page titles

Time for action – setting the HTML page title

What just happened?

Adding the Site Name to the page title

Adding meaningful metadata

Time for action – personalize the site metadata

What just happened?

Choosing what metadata to set

Have a go hero – find metadata to fit your site

Use search engine friendly URLS

Adding extra links to site content

Creating an automatically generated list of hyperlinks

Time for action – add a list of links to popular articles

What just happened?

Have a go hero – add link lists

Redirecting visitors to pages that have been moved

Time for action – creating page redirects

Redirecting multiple old URLs in one go

Getting to know more about your site traffic

More SEO resources

Pop quiz – test your knowledge of Joomla search engine optimization

Summary

A. Keeping the Site Secure

Update regularly

Choose a safe Administrator Username

Choose a strong password

Protect files and directories

Setting File Permissions

Using extensions to secure your site

Have a backup ready

Creating a Backup with Akeeba Backup

Restoring a backup

Stay informed!

B. Pop Quiz Answers

Chapter 2, Installation: Getting Joomla Up and Running

Pop quiz – test Your Knowledge of Installing Joomla

Chapter 3, First Step: Getting to Know Joomla

Pop quiz – test your knowledge of Joomla basics

Chapter 4, Web Building Basics: Creating a Site in an Hour

Pop quiz – test your basic Joomla knowledge

Chapter 5, Small Sites, Big Sites: Organizing your Content Effectively

Pop quiz – test your site organization knowledge

Chapter 6, Creating Killer Content: Adding and Editing Articles

Pop quiz – test your article expertise

Chapter 7, Welcoming your Visitors: Creating Attractive Home Pages and Overview Pages

Pop quiz – test your knowledge of home pages and overview pages

Chapter 8, Helping your Visitors Find What they Want: Managing Menus

Pop quiz – test your knowledge on menus

Chapter 9, Opening up the Site: Enabling Users to Log in and Contribute

Pop quiz – test your knowledge of Joomla user management

Chapter 10, Getting the Most out of your Site: Extending Joomla

Pop quiz – test your knowledge of Joomla extensions

Chapter 11, Creating an Attractive Design: Working with Templates

Pop quiz – test your knowledge of Joomla templates

Chapter 12, Attracting Search Engine Traffic: Tips and Techniques

Pop quiz – test your knowledge of Joomla search engine optimization

Index

Joomla! 2.5 Beginner's Guide

---

Joomla! 2.5 Beginner's Guide

Copyright © 2012 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.

Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

First published: March 2012

Production Reference: 1200312

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

Livery Place

35 Livery Street

Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.

ISBN 978-1-84951-790-4

www.packtpub.com

Cover Image by Karl Moore (<[e-mail]>)

Credits

Author

Eric Tiggeler

Reviewers

Peter Martin

Mohamed Abdelaziz

Acquisition Editor

Robin De Jongh

Lead Technical Editor

Chris Rodrigues

Technical Editors

Manasi Poonthottam

Ankita Shashi

Manali Mehta

Apoorva Bolar

Copy Editors

Leonard D'Silva

Laxmi Subramanian

Project Coordinator

Sai Gamare

Proofreaders

Bernadette Watkins

Stephen Swaney

Indexer

Hemangini Bari

Graphics

Manu Joseph

Production Coordinator

Melwyn D'sa

Cover Work

Melwyn D'sa

About the Author

Eric Tiggeler is the author of Joomla! 1.5 Beginner's Guide and has written several Dutch books on Joomla!, all of which got excellent reviews. He's also written a successful Dutch guide to the Drupal 7 CMS. Eric writes tutorials for several computer magazines and Joomla! community websites.

Eric is fascinated by the Web as a powerful and creative means of communication—and by revolutionary software such as Joomla!, enabling anybody to create beautiful and user-friendly websites.

On a daily basis, Eric works as a consultant and copywriter at a communication consultancy company affiliated with the Free University of Amsterdam. Over the last few years, he has written more than ten Dutch books on writing and communication. His passion is making complex things easy to understand.

Eric Tiggeler is married and has two daughters. He lives and works in Hilversum (the Netherlands). On the Web, you'll find him at www.erictiggeler.nl (in Dutch) and www.joomm.net (in English).

About the Reviewers

Peter Martin has a keen interest in computers, programming, sharing knowledge, and how people (mis)use information technology. He has a bachelor's degree in Economics (International Marketing Management) and a master's degree in Mass Communication. He discovered PHP/MySQL in 2003 and Joomla!'s predecessor, Mambo CMS, a year later. Peter has his own business www.db8.nl (founded in 2005) and he supports companies and organizations with Joomla! and Joomla! extension development.

Peter is actively involved in the Joomla! community where he is a member of the Community Leadership Team and Global Moderator at Joomla forum.

Peter has also reviewed the following Packt Publishing books:

Joomla! 1.5 Templates Cookbook by Richard Carter

Joomla! 1.6 First Look by Eric Tiggeler

His other interests are open source software, Linux (Debian, Ubuntu, DSL, Arch Linux), plug computers, music (collecting vinyl records), and art house movies. Peter lives in Nijmegen, the Netherlands.

Mohamed Abdelaziz was born in 1977, in Alexandria, Egypt. He is married and has two children, Reem and Omar. He obtained his bachelor's degree in Computer Science from the Automatic Control department, Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University, in the year 2000.

After working for about eight months in Egypt as a FoxPro developer, he joined EJADA Systems in Riyadh, KSA as an Oracle developer (forms and reports) until 2005.

He became a Sun Certified Professional in October 2005. However, after a short time, PHP and Joomla! attracted him because of the increasing demand on this excellent CMS in the web development market. He launched his first Joomla! 1.0.x site in 2006, www.egyptianreviewer.com, which was a services directory covering all cities of Egypt. He developed his first Joomla! component, Member Care System (MCS), and had it published on JED; this was his starting point in the Joomla! development world. Since then, he has completed a lot of Joomla! projects; installation, customization, and development from scratch. Currently, he has four extensions published on JED.

www.PacktPub.com

Support files, eBooks, discount offers and more

You might want to visit www.PacktPub.com for support files and downloads related to your book.

Did you know that Packt offers eBook versions of every book published, with PDF and ePub files available? You can upgrade to the eBook version at www.PacktPub.com and as a print book customer, you are entitled to a discount on the eBook copy. Get in touch with us at for more details.

At www.PacktPub.com, you can also read a collection of free technical articles, sign up for a range of free newsletters and receive exclusive discounts and offers on Packt books and eBooks.

http://PacktLib.PacktPub.com

Do you need instant solutions to your IT questions? PacktLib is Packt's online digital book library. Here, you can access, read and search across Packt's entire library of books. 

Why Subscribe?

Fully searchable across every book published by Packt

Copy and paste, print and bookmark content

On demand and accessible via web browser

Free Access for Packt account holders

If you have an account with Packt at www.PacktPub.com, you can use this to access PacktLib today and view nine entirely free books. Simply use your login credentials for immediate access.

Preface

Joomla is one of the most popular open-source content management systems, actively developed and supported by a world wide user community. It's a free, fun, and feature-rich tool for anyone who wants to create dynamic, interactive websites. Even beginners can deploy Joomla to build professional websites, although it can be challenging to get beyond the basics and build a site that completely meets your needs. This book will help you to get started building websites with Joomla quickly and get the most out of its advanced features.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Introduction: A New and Easy Way to Build Websites—In this chapter, you'll learn why you want to use Joomla: to create a cool looking, feature-rich site that's easy to expand, customize, and maintain.

Chapter 2, Installation: Getting Joomla Up and Running—You'll learn how to install Joomla on your own computer or on a web server, and how to install a sample site.

Chapter 3, First Step: Getting to Know Joomla—In this chapter, you'll get familiar with the basic concepts of Joomla: the Joomla interface and the principles of a website constructed out of 'building blocks'.

Chapter 4, Web Building Basics: Creating a Site in an Hour—Face a real-life challenge: use Joomla to build a basic but expandable website fast. Customizing Joomla's default sample site to fit your needs, adding content, menu links, and changing the site's look and feel.

Chapter 5, Small Sites, Big Sites: Organizing your Content Effectively—Making it easy to add and find information on your site: designing a clear, expandable, manageable structure for your content.

Chapter 6, Creating Killer Content: Adding and Editing Articles—In this chapter, you learn how to create content pages that are attractive and easy to read, and you'll learn about different ways to tweak the page layout.

Chapter 7, Welcoming your Visitors: Creating Attractive Home Pages and Overview Pages—When you've got your content set up, you'll create a home page and overview pages to entice visitors to discover all your valuable content.

Chapter 8, Helping your Visitors Find What they Want: Managing Menus—In this chapter, you'll practice designing clear and easy navigation through menus and see how you can help the visitor to easily find what they want.

Chapter 9, Opening up the Site: Enabling Users to Log in and Contribute—You'll learn how to give users access to the site, allowing them to create content and manage the website.

Chapter 10, Getting the Most out of your Site: Extending Joomla—In this chapter, you'll learn how to extend Joomla's capabilities using all sorts of extensions: using an image gallery to attractively display pictures, automatically showing article teasers on the home page, or enhancing your workspace by installing an easier content editor.

Chapter 11, Creating an Attractive Design: Working with Templates—Templates will give your site a fresh look and feel and make it easy to create an individual look, different from a typical Joomla site. You'll learn how to install and customize templates.

Chapter 12, Attracting Search Engine Traffic: Tips and Techniques—This chapter shows you how to increase your site's visibility for search engines applying search engine optimization (SEO) techniques, such as creating friendly URLs.

Appendix A, Keeping the Site Secure—You'll learn what steps you can take to keep your site safe from hackers or data loss.

What you need for this book

To follow the tutorials and exercises in this book, you'll need a computer with Internet access. It's recommended to have a web hosting account, so that you can install Joomla online.

Who this book is for

Joomla! 2.5 Beginner's Guide is aimed at anyone who wants to build and maintain a great website and get the most out of Joomla. It helps you build on the skills and knowledge you may already have of creating websites—but if you're new to this subject, you won't have any difficulty understanding the instructions. Of course, we'll touch upon basic terms and concepts (such as HTML and CSS), but if you're not familiar with these, you'll also find references to some web resources.

Conventions

In this book, you will find several headings appearing frequently.

To give clear instructions of how to complete a procedure or task, we use:

Time for action – heading

Action 1

Action 2

Action 3

Instructions often need some extra explanation so that they make sense, so they are followed with:

What just happened?

This heading explains the working of tasks or instructions that you have just completed.

You will also find some other learning aids in the book, including:

Pop quiz – heading

These are short multiple choice questions intended to help you test your own understanding.

Have a go hero – heading

These set practical challenges and give you ideas for experimenting with what you have learned.

You will also find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text are shown as follows: You can change the .contentheading style in the text editor.

A block of code is set as follows:

#logo span

{

  color:#fff;

  padding-left:50px;

  font-size:0.3em !important;

  text-transform:none;

  font-family:arial, sans-serif

}

}

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

#logo span

{

  color:silver;   padding-top:20px;   font-size:0.5em !important;

 

  text-transform:none;

  font-family:arial, sans-serif

}

}

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: In the Menu Manager: Edit Menu Item screen, click on the Page Display Options panel name on the right-hand side of the screen to open this panel.

Note

Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.

Tip

Tips and tricks appear like this.

One final point: the official name is Joomla!, with an exclamation mark. That is how it's written in the book title. But in the book itself we'll simply write Joomla, because an exclamation mark in the middle of a sentence is rather unusual and can be confusing.

Reader feedback

Feedback from our readers is always welcome. Let us know what you think about this book—what you liked or may have disliked. Reader feedback is important for us to develop titles that you really get the most out of.

To send us general feedback, simply send an e-mail to <[e-mail]>, and mention the book title via the subject of your message.

If there is a book that you need and would like to see us publish, please send us a note in the SUGGEST A TITLE form on www.packtpub.com or e-mail .

If there is a topic that you have expertise in and you are interested in either writing or contributing to