Posted on June 1, 2007 in Tools-Resources, with 2 comments.

I just got the word that soon I’ll be working on a Joomla! based site, so I thought a little initial research might be good.

Part 1: The Joomla! homepage

8:36 Hmm…site looks nice. A little too shiny for my tastes, but professional, and I get a sense that the product is professional from the get-go.

8:37 Clicking on the Joomla! Logo link brings you to a very thourough explanation of not only the logo, and it’s meaning (it’s made up of 4 ‘J’s), but also proper use and copyright info as well.
There’s also a downloadable PDF of the logo brand manual. Wow.

The attention to detail, just about the logo, is outstanding. I think I’m starting to like these guys already.

9:00 The about page links to a cool developer’s profile page, which has pics of all the current developers, and bios. Nice touch.

9:06 Time to get down to business. The first FAQ is mighty interesting:

Is Joomla! a fork of Mambo? Some call it a fork. Some call it a spoon. Some call it an entire table setting. Whatever your philisophical persuasion, the facts are that Joomla is a continuation of the work of the Development Team which unanimously resigned from the Mambo project in August 2005.

9:07 It seems even the name Joomla has some meaning. From the FAQ’s

The name Joomla is a phonetic spelling for the Swahili word “Jumla”, which means “all together” or “as a whole”.

With all this meaning, and thoughtfullness put into the branding, I can only hope the product is as polished.

9:13 After a quick registration, I can browse around a demo version of Joomla free of charge.

Theres a lot to take in here. The admin panel has some obvious, and not so obvious features. One not-so-obvious feature is something called ‘Check In My Items’. Not sure what that pertains to. All in all the interface is fairly slick. A little heavy compared to something like Textpattern , but useful none the less.

I think it’s cool the way the admin stuff is worked into the design of the site (I think, it’s a little hard to tell), that way you can browse your site, while at the same time updating content. Having separate admin panels can be a pain. But I wonder how confusign it might be for novice users.

9:22 Hopping over to the extension repository for Joomla! I am just amazed at how many different plug-ins they have. From guestbooks, to shopping carts, to recipe plug-ins. It seems there’s more than enough extensions to work your site the way you want it.

9:26 Wow, over 100,000 forum members, and a whole host of useful-looking posts. Oooh, a link to a site with Joomla themes.

9:30 Well, it was interesting looking at all the different Joomla! themes available. Rigth off the bat they seem a little crowded with info. Most of them rely on a boxy-type layout. I wonder if this is native to the Joomla! CMS, or if that’s just the current style.

I have to say, even though it might be like comparing apples to oranges, the Wordpress themes I’ve seen are much nicer.

Conclusion

Well, all in all, it seems Joomla! might be a lot easier than I first thought. My fears though, are when we get to developing a custom theme for our client. I hope we’re not gonna end up with something horribly boxy.

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