Joomla

[Mercutio]

Does anyone out in SFland understand the point of Joomla? Someone just called my office asking about a class in it, and like everything else that no one has heard of, it was passed to me.

As far as I can tell it's just a way to populate data in a specific web page template.

Surely there must be something more to it than that, right?

 

[Will Rickards]

Looks like a fork of mambo according to the website.
It is a content management system, not just a way to populate data in a specific web page template. Kind of like blogging software but designed for multiple authors. Not that I know anything about it or them.

 

[timwhit]

Content Management is a powerful way to setup a website so that multiple authors or novices can edit webpage content. This also has a image library, object library, etc. It is not the easiest thing to setup.

Most serious websites utilize some kind of content management software. I think a Mambo class would be a good thing to offer (especially because it is free). You could go from showing how to install Mambo on a server to building templates that work in Mambo to building pages and utilizing objects on a variety of pages within the site. Setuping controls that limit what various authors can do would be another good thing to teach.

 

[timwhit]

I have gotten a request to convert a current website that I created for a company into something that is easily editable, so I was thinking about using Joomla to achieve this.

Has anyone installed Joomla before?

And most important, has anyone converted a already existing website to use Joomla or Mambo or any of the similar CMS?

 

[Mercutio]

Dreamhost.com will install Joomla for you...

I just ran through the configuration really quick. I didn't see anything like an option to import a database, and there's nothing like an import tool in the Administrative control panel.

 

[timwhit]

The website is already hosted by a small host, and I don't think they will be willing to change. From the Joomla website, it doesn't look like it is all that hard to create an installation.

I think I will have to build new templates from scratch and then move all the content over.

Has anyone ever done anything like this? I need to present them with a proposal of how much time this will take. Anyone have any idea?

 

[Handruin]

My experieince with Mambo has been good in the past in terms of install. It's all web driven and very friendly. In terms of editing the UI, it took me a while to figure it out. There are a ton of options in the admin control panel and learning the interface takes some time.

You may be faster at it than me, but you'll have to install and play with it to really guage how long of an estimate you'll need. If you need one setup ASAP, I could put one on my website just so you can play with the admin interface, or I could help you install it.

 

[timwhit]

Thanks for the offer. I don't think I will have much of a problem installing it, but if I do I will let you know.

I have also heard good things about Drupal. Anyone ever use it?

My goal is to get the templates designed as quickly as possible. I already know exactly what everything should look like, it is just a matter of translating all of this into a CMS.