Course Description

This is a fast-paced course in Joomla! Development. Joomla! is an Open Source Content Management System that enables you to make professional and exciting web standards compliant websites very quickly with no coding knowledge. Joomla! is the perfect solution for web designer's clients that want to maintain their own website. Clients, once logged in, can administer their site from the frontend with no knowledge of coding required. They can then add, edit or delete content at their own pace - even upload images, files, video etc - all through Joomla! The Joomla CMS is used by many different types of websites, such as these: The United Nations Harvard University IHOP Restaurants Outdoor Photographers Magazine This course is designed to take you through the development of a site - LVS Garden Center - demonstrating the easy way to do it with plenty of tips throughout. With nearly 150 screenshots, you will be guided through the organization of a site to the completed product - avoiding many of the pitfalls that new Joomla! users can fall into! Joomla is suitable for any type of website from a personal website to an e-Commerce Site, and from a News or Magazine Site to a Blog. Joomla! Class blog: http://lvsonline.com/online-joomla-class/ The Joomla!(R) logo is used under a limited license from Open Source Matters in the United States and other countries. LVS Online is not affiliated with or endorsed by Open Source Matters or the Joomla! Project. This is a 5 week, self-paced, online course. If you need additional help understanding the material presented, you can communicate with the instructor and fellow classmates. The instructor will monitor and track your progress throughout the class. LVS Online offers many wonderful learning tools to help you get the most out of your online course, including an online portfolio service that manages all your course registrations, certificate of completion option, a class discussion board to interact with your instructor and fellow classmates, free hosting account, and a student upload area. LVS is a Corel Training Partner. LVS students may purchase Corel products at a significant savings. Follow this link for details. LVS students are eligible to receive software and hardware at a discount. Follow this link for details. Students are also eligible take advantage of special offers made available specifically for LVS by famous software developers such as Andromeda, AV Bros, Extensis, Harry Heim, namesuppressed, Nik Multimedia, and Ulead. Details are provided in the classinfo link found in the confirmation of registration. Show off your LVS Online spirit with an item from the LVS Store If you would like to receive more information regarding this course, click on the "Contact Us" link in the Information section and we'll try to answer any of your questions within the day.

Course Requirements

Students are required to use webspace and a database from LVS Hosting. The login details will be emailed after check-in on the Class Message Board. At the end of the course, instructions will be provided so students can download their completed demo site within two weeks after the session has ended. Alternately, students can transfer to an LVS paid hosting account to continue developing their site. All lessons are available in PDF format. Adobe Acrobat Reader is required to view/print the lessons. Plan to devote 3 - 5 hours per week on the lesson and assignment.

Course Prerequisites

Of course, all Web Development is easier if you understand some code and Joomla is flexible and excellent for coders. But non-coders will find it easy to use with some spectacular tools available. The only real prerequisite is to have an 'eye for detail' and to be able to work through the lessons step-by-step, accurately, with the course materials provided. Each lesson builds on the previous one so each should be completed sequentially.

Course Syllabus

Lesson 1 What is Joomla! and CMS Our Clients' Brief Site Organization - Sections & Categories Lesson 2 Site back-ups Global Configuration File & Folder Management Assigning Templates Lesson 3 Templates - what they are, User Positions Creating a new Module Position Adding Newsflashes with images Using a better WYSIWYG editor Lesson 4 Adding more Modules Module Class Suffix Menus Lesson 5 More Menus Completing Clients' Web Site: Adding more modules Adding content with video Styling content Lesson 6 Search Engine Optimization Installation Course Summary What now?

Course Excerpt

LESSON 1 With Joomla you can develop a 'dynamic' website fast using the 'core' Joomla code and add extra components and extensions for further functionality. Templates are used for site presentation - content is displayed in 'modules'. A content management system (CMS) manages content! Content can be anything from a text article to a media file such as a video. A static website (or flat website) loads the pages you have created one by one into the browser. They never change unless you manually edit them and reupload to the server. Dynamic Joomla websites, once built, change without your input. Content is stored in the database and the user can choose what they want to view (call in from the database). The page changes are dependent on the users actions - if they, for example, click on an image or some text new content can be loaded. There are no 'pages' eg about.html or sitemap.html. Note - This is a very brief description! But in the true LVS way, you are going to learn by 'doing'. I slipped in quite a lot of words that might not make sense such as Components, Extensions and Modules - hang on in there - all will be revealed during the course. Think about how you surf the web at the moment - do you buy online? Most stores are content management systems written in PHP and connected to a MySql Database. The Joomla CMS is used by many different types of site from The United Nations [http://www.unric.org/] to Harvard [http://gsas.harvard.edu/], IHOP Restaurants [http://www.ihop.com/], Outdoor Photographers Magazine [http://www.outdoorphotographer.com/]. The list is endless and includes personal sites, hobby sites, forum sites, stores - you name it and Joomla can do it and it is definitely Web Developer friendly. Another Note - There I am flinging things like PHP and MySql around and I could have added XHTML, CSS, Mootools, Javascript, JQuery but hey! that's the beauty of Joomla...You just don't need to know about these things to set up a really good, stable website and anything you do need to know you will learn gradually during this course and afterwards when you get curious! To get you up to Joomla speed very quickly, LVS is providing you with webspace and a database for your use during this Course. It is required that you use this for your assignments. Different servers may have different problems which we cannot cover during this six weeks - your LVS Server is optimised for Joomla. At the end of this course, I will show you how to 'pack up' your site and database ready for easy installation on your own server or, alternatively, you can continue to use your space with LVSHost as a paid service. Packing up is only a five minute job and you will have two weeks after the last lesson is posted to remove it before your space is deleted. This webspace is for the specific purpose of the Joomla Class only. To get your free database and webspace, please check into the Class Message Board if you haven't already done so and you will be emailed your log in details. You will see that 'hils' has been added as another Super Administrator as well as you which will help me sort out any problems during the course. I am deletable at the end of the course! Enough! Let's get on - we have a website to develop... Just a few class rules to adhere to: Continued... Please note: Lessons provide step-by-step instructions with detailed screen captures.

Course Goals

To make you completely comfortable, and familiar with, using the backend/administration of Joomla to present your Joomla Website. To create a demo Joomla web site that you will be able to use for your own purposes - use as an 'aide memoire' when developing your own site or perhaps adapt it for your own development. It will be a springboard!

Course Reviews

Pat Woolf: "The success of any class is its instructor .. in this case also the author. What a Lady ! Hils handled some 1500 questions with patience and gentleness. Not only did she have the class to appease and instruct, but there were many technical changes that took much of her time ... "first class" problems that wouldn't ordinarily arise. Hils led this class with such panache that you never felt afraid to ask questions - even if you knew it was something everyone else understood! I am disappointed that the class has to end ... many of us became a family of searchers led by a Lady we trusted! Thank you Hils! " More...