HTML course
CSS course
AJAX course
PHP/MySQL course
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Kolkata
033 4004-6575
Asansol
0341-2254067
Chandannagar
033 2683-2960
Mumbai
9819139735
Kolkata
033 4004-6575
Asansol
0341-2254067
Chandannagar
033 2683-2960
Mumbai
9819139735
JOOMLA course
Why Open Source for a Web Developer?
Using Open Source software such as Joomla, Apache and other applications you can be more competitive in an already competitive market. By basing your websites on free products that have large developer and user communities you can keep your prices down, take advantage of the community maintenance, and participate in the software projects to gain valuable experience, contacts and work opportunities as well as the chance to keep up to date with updates to the software you choose to use. There is also a huge amount of web developer resources available freely to you, so you can cherry-pick the best possible tools and code to create your own unique service.
Prerequisites
Cost and Time
For Saltlake, Asansol, Chandannagar Course fee Rs. 6000/- and time 4 weeks For Mumbai Course fee Rs.8000/- and time 4 weeks Time breakup : 3 days per week (2 hrs in a day)
Why Standards Matter
Web standards such as HTML are vital to ensuring your audience can access your website in the way you want it to look, regardless of the web browser or operating system they use. Adhering to W3C (http://w3c.org) standards is very important for the following reasons:
maintaining the look and feel you have worked so hard to create, regardless of the browser or operating environment (Mac, Windows, Linux)
ensuring vision impaired individuals can browse your website (this is very important, particularly if you ever want to get Government work) ensuring the future-proofness of your work. You don't want a website to break just because a new version of IE has come out You want your site to work on mobile devices too!
Understanding CMS's
A Content Management System (CMS) offers some really compelling benefits to a web developer. There are also some things you have to compromise on when using a CMS so let's explore the pros and cons and when to use a CMS. The majority of CMS's are not actual applications, just a bunch of scripts talking to a database.
CMS Pros
Non-technical web contributers – CMS
typically makes it easy to contribute
information through a web interface.
This gives non-technical users the ability to
publish data, ie –you don't end up doing all the
publishing! Consistency –across a website it can be
consistent without too much effort.
Most CMS's use a CSS+HTML templating approach. Functionality –easily available, and you don't
have to create it. Available custom look and feel –There are
loads of templates available for tweaking or
using as is. Speedy publication –Very fast to get a website
goingas you stand on the shoulders of giants
rather than building everything from scratch Typically quite easy to back up "Clean" code
CMS Cons
Tricky to "craft" You are not a unique snowflake–hard to
not look like a CMS Resource cruncher–because it requires
some underpinning applications
When to use a CMS
Need something in a rush Need certain functionality Need to ensure non-technical users
can publish easily Want to maintain lots of websites easily Want to offer CMS functionality in a
web hosting business
Planning out your CMS
Goals
What are the real goals of your website?
What is the company/organisation message
and existing branding? What will make your
employer feel the investment in your skills
has paid off? Think about possible goals like: Informing the masses Selling tickets to something Donations Participation in forums Organisational due diligence Messaging might include things like: "Soccer –the real football" "Bringing medicine to you" A particular colour scheme or logo/icon set You'll most likely need to consult with your
employers marketing department to get
their messaging correct.
Users
Who are the users of your website? First categorise them into web users and web contributors which will assist us when we set up our security later on. Categorise your users into types of users. Eg –for a community organisation website, you might have members, newcomers, sponsors, sister organisations, press. Try and figure out the sorts of questions your users might have in coming to your website. We'll use this to then figure out what information needs to be directly linked, and how we can group the information. Categorise your contributors into groups, depending on what you want the to be able to do. Administrators are a given, but these are not necessarily your content creators. You may need different groups for different parts of the business (marketing, sales), or you may need just a group of content creators, who have certain rights but not all. This ensures all of your contributors have the correct permissions to achieve what they need without permissions to parts of the system they don't need. In some companies you need to setup workflow systems, which basically means a structure of approval and content collaboration through multiple people/groups before going live to the web.
Content
First brainstorm on the information you need on the website, eg - information about the organisation, latest projects, case studies, contact details. Then make a mind map of the information you need. Large pieces of butcher paper are highly recommended! See if you can create two categories of links that will appear from the main page. Functional information (eg –contact us, about us, aggregator, blog) and contextual information (specific to the website, eg –safety around the home, About OSS).
So there are four steps here: Brainstorm Prioritise (according to your goals and users) Cluster Split into functional vs informative
information (website stuff vs informative)
Browsability
Do a little role playing game where you put yourself in the mindset of your different users and see whether the website would answer their queriesquickly and easily. You don't want them to have to click through any more than 2 clicks, otherwise you lose them. Test your mind map on other people, see if it makes sense to them. Getting referring URLs from visitors Environment variables Showing different content to different browsers (IE, Netscape, Mozilla, Opera, etc) Handling HTTP and MIME headers
Content types
What type of content do you need to put on the website. This will help you determine the functionality you require. Newsfeeds? Newsletters? Text? Photo Gallery? Online Store? Languages?
Joomla Setup
There are a few ways to set up Joomla. Joomla requires a few things, mainly MySQL (a database), PHP (the language it is written in), and Apache (a web server). Joomla itself is basically just a bunch of PHP scripts that interfaces with the database and webserver to give you your site. Your install options include: Joomla standard –simply install the requirements on your Linux server, and then unpack Joomla (which can be downloaded from joomla.org) into where you want the website to sit. Create a database for Joomla in MySQL. Setup Apache to point to your joomla folder and then browse to the site. You'll need to put in a load of information to the web browser including your MySQL database name, username and password, then it will set itself up. Joomla Standalone server –this bundles Joomla and all its dependencies into a single install suitable for Microsoft Windows
Personalising the website
You can change the settings of your Joomla to ensure the defaults are aligned with how you want your website to work. Check out Global Configuration and Contacts to start.
Look and feel
To start, find a template that reasonable suits your mind-map. We'll play with this later so don't worry about getting something too perfect. Check out the links in the references at the end of the document.
Components and Modules
Find the components and modules you need according to your "Content Types". Install the ones you think would work, and uninstall them if they don't suit.
Components –functionality you need for the website, eg - newsletter Modules –front page interfaces to your component functionalities Please note –do not uninstall anything that was already there! You can always unpublish which is better than unintentionally removing something needed.
Your User Permissions
According to your contributors information, have a look at the default user groups and see whether they meet your requirements. Also, you'll find that by default registered users can edit some webpage content when they are logged in to the main website. They'll see an "edit" icon that gives them permission. Play with setting up usergroups with these permissions to give your users easy access to updating webpages without having to use the administrative backend.
Bling
How are you going to attract people to your site? Differentiate yourself? You could try some of the following tactics:
A free and useful information pack download Games Interactive sessions with peoples' heroes Competitions
Joomla Administration
Backups
You can backup Joomla a variety of ways:
Joomla backup components Directory backups (for web structure) MySQL database backups (for web content –you'll do this more with Paul next week)
Because the content is in the database you can simply backup the database.
Disaster recovery
There are a few ways to ensure fast recovery or failover
A staging site/server Recent backups kept online Offsite data backups and a DR plan
Upgrading Joomla
Upgrading Joomla is actually quite simple. You simply extract the latest version in the same place as the existing file. Basically you are not upgrading an application, just a bunch of PHP scripts.
Follow these basic steps:
Backup your entire website (database and site directory) Download the latest version of Joomla Upload this to your server and extract in the Joomla directory Run the website Done
Website monitoring and optimisation
Monitoring tools are useful to see what is popular on your website, what needs improving, and what already works well. I would suggest both resource and webpage monitoring.
Resource monitoring
Resource monitoring means monitoring the components of your server to make sure it is coping with the load. You can monitor CPU usage, RAM, Hard disk,network bandwidth and more. NAGIOS is a great tool for this.
Webpage Monitoring
Monitoring what is popular on your website, what breaks, and determining how people are coming across your site and where they are leaving it can all help you to optimise the website to achieve whatever it is supposed to (sales, information, contact, whatever). You can also monitor the types of users you get, how long they stay on your website, where they come from and what browsers they use to optimise the users' experience. Joomla has some components for doing statistics, and some of this monitoring, however some great third party tools include AWStats which you can install on your server, or Google Analytics which you can register for using your Google logon. There are many other tools out there but these are pretty good.
Community and OSS
Community is a word I've thrown around a bit, and it is worth mentioning that the best part of Open Source Software (OSS) is that there is a huge global and non-discriminating (mostly) community that you can participate in. You can benefit from the many contacts, learning opportunities and work opportunities that come from being involved in a technical community as well as have the opportunity to contribute yourself and thus have a long term positive impact. Ways to participate are:
Find a usergroup that aligns with your interest/s Join mailing lists Read blog or news aggregators Blog about your interest and get your blog added to a community aggregator Attend meetings and conferences (conf.linux.org.au and osdc.com.au) Participate in forums
Template tweaking
Changing the CSS
The CSS is the backbone of the templating for Joomla and many other CMS's. Make a copy of what is in the CSS by default, and then try tweaking it to make it useful for your purposes.
Changing/modifying templates
Try uploading a new template and playing with it. See how it changes the entire website. Try making your own template.
Why Open Source for a Web Developer?
Using Open Source software such as Joomla, Apache and other applications you can be more competitive in an already competitive market. By basing your websites on free products that have large developer and user communities you can keep your prices down, take advantage of the community maintenance, and participate in the software projects to gain valuable experience, contacts and work opportunities as well as the chance to keep up to date with updates to the software you choose to use. There is also a huge amount of web developer resources available freely to you, so you can cherry-pick the best possible tools and code to create your own unique service.
Prerequisites
Cost and Time
For Saltlake, Asansol, Chandannagar Course fee Rs. 6000/- and time 4 weeks For Mumbai Course fee Rs.8000/- and time 4 weeks Time breakup : 3 days per week (2 hrs in a day)
Why Standards Matter
Web standards such as HTML are vital to ensuring your audience can access your website in the way you want it to look, regardless of the web browser or operating system they use. Adhering to W3C (http://w3c.org) standards is very important for the following reasons:
maintaining the look and feel you have worked so hard to create, regardless of the browser or operating environment (Mac, Windows, Linux)
ensuring vision impaired individuals can browse your website (this is very important, particularly if you ever want to get Government work) ensuring the future-proofness of your work. You don't want a website to break just because a new version of IE has come out You want your site to work on mobile devices too!
Understanding CMS's
A Content Management System (CMS) offers some really compelling benefits to a web developer. There are also some things you have to compromise on when using a CMS so let's explore the pros and cons and when to use a CMS. The majority of CMS's are not actual applications, just a bunch of scripts talking to a database.
CMS Pros
Non-technical web contributers – CMS
typically makes it easy to contribute
information through a web interface.
This gives non-technical users the ability to
publish data, ie –you don't end up doing all the
publishing! Consistency –across a website it can be
consistent without too much effort.
Most CMS's use a CSS+HTML templating approach. Functionality –easily available, and you don't
have to create it. Available custom look and feel –There are
loads of templates available for tweaking or
using as is. Speedy publication –Very fast to get a website
goingas you stand on the shoulders of giants
rather than building everything from scratch Typically quite easy to back up "Clean" code
CMS Cons
Tricky to "craft" You are not a unique snowflake–hard to
not look like a CMS Resource cruncher–because it requires
some underpinning applications
When to use a CMS
Need something in a rush Need certain functionality Need to ensure non-technical users
can publish easily Want to maintain lots of websites easily Want to offer CMS functionality in a
web hosting business
Planning out your CMS
Goals
What are the real goals of your website?
What is the company/organisation message
and existing branding? What will make your
employer feel the investment in your skills
has paid off? Think about possible goals like: Informing the masses Selling tickets to something Donations Participation in forums Organisational due diligence Messaging might include things like: "Soccer –the real football" "Bringing medicine to you" A particular colour scheme or logo/icon set You'll most likely need to consult with your
employers marketing department to get
their messaging correct.
Users
Who are the users of your website? First categorise them into web users and web contributors which will assist us when we set up our security later on. Categorise your users into types of users. Eg –for a community organisation website, you might have members, newcomers, sponsors, sister organisations, press. Try and figure out the sorts of questions your users might have in coming to your website. We'll use this to then figure out what information needs to be directly linked, and how we can group the information. Categorise your contributors into groups, depending on what you want the to be able to do. Administrators are a given, but these are not necessarily your content creators. You may need different groups for different parts of the business (marketing, sales), or you may need just a group of content creators, who have certain rights but not all. This ensures all of your contributors have the correct permissions to achieve what they need without permissions to parts of the system they don't need. In some companies you need to setup workflow systems, which basically means a structure of approval and content collaboration through multiple people/groups before going live to the web.
Content
First brainstorm on the information you need on the website, eg - information about the organisation, latest projects, case studies, contact details. Then make a mind map of the information you need. Large pieces of butcher paper are highly recommended! See if you can create two categories of links that will appear from the main page. Functional information (eg –contact us, about us, aggregator, blog) and contextual information (specific to the website, eg –safety around the home, About OSS).
So there are four steps here: Brainstorm Prioritise (according to your goals and users) Cluster Split into functional vs informative
information (website stuff vs informative)
Browsability
Do a little role playing game where you put yourself in the mindset of your different users and see whether the website would answer their queriesquickly and easily. You don't want them to have to click through any more than 2 clicks, otherwise you lose them. Test your mind map on other people, see if it makes sense to them. Getting referring URLs from visitors Environment variables Showing different content to different browsers (IE, Netscape, Mozilla, Opera, etc) Handling HTTP and MIME headers
Content types
What type of content do you need to put on the website. This will help you determine the functionality you require. Newsfeeds? Newsletters? Text? Photo Gallery? Online Store? Languages?
Joomla Setup
There are a few ways to set up Joomla. Joomla requires a few things, mainly MySQL (a database), PHP (the language it is written in), and Apache (a web server). Joomla itself is basically just a bunch of PHP scripts that interfaces with the database and webserver to give you your site. Your install options include: Joomla standard –simply install the requirements on your Linux server, and then unpack Joomla (which can be downloaded from joomla.org) into where you want the website to sit. Create a database for Joomla in MySQL. Setup Apache to point to your joomla folder and then browse to the site. You'll need to put in a load of information to the web browser including your MySQL database name, username and password, then it will set itself up. Joomla Standalone server –this bundles Joomla and all its dependencies into a single install suitable for Microsoft Windows
Personalising the website
You can change the settings of your Joomla to ensure the defaults are aligned with how you want your website to work. Check out Global Configuration and Contacts to start.
Look and feel
To start, find a template that reasonable suits your mind-map. We'll play with this later so don't worry about getting something too perfect. Check out the links in the references at the end of the document.
Components and Modules
Find the components and modules you need according to your "Content Types". Install the ones you think would work, and uninstall them if they don't suit.
Components –functionality you need for the website, eg - newsletter Modules –front page interfaces to your component functionalities Please note –do not uninstall anything that was already there! You can always unpublish which is better than unintentionally removing something needed.
Your User Permissions
According to your contributors information, have a look at the default user groups and see whether they meet your requirements. Also, you'll find that by default registered users can edit some webpage content when they are logged in to the main website. They'll see an "edit" icon that gives them permission. Play with setting up usergroups with these permissions to give your users easy access to updating webpages without having to use the administrative backend.
Bling
How are you going to attract people to your site? Differentiate yourself? You could try some of the following tactics:
A free and useful information pack download Games Interactive sessions with peoples' heroes Competitions
Joomla Administration
Backups
You can backup Joomla a variety of ways:
Joomla backup components Directory backups (for web structure) MySQL database backups (for web content –you'll do this more with Paul next week)
Because the content is in the database you can simply backup the database.
Disaster recovery
There are a few ways to ensure fast recovery or failover
A staging site/server Recent backups kept online Offsite data backups and a DR plan
Upgrading Joomla
Upgrading Joomla is actually quite simple. You simply extract the latest version in the same place as the existing file. Basically you are not upgrading an application, just a bunch of PHP scripts.
Follow these basic steps:
Backup your entire website (database and site directory) Download the latest version of Joomla Upload this to your server and extract in the Joomla directory Run the website Done
Website monitoring and optimisation
Monitoring tools are useful to see what is popular on your website, what needs improving, and what already works well. I would suggest both resource and webpage monitoring.
Resource monitoring
Resource monitoring means monitoring the components of your server to make sure it is coping with the load. You can monitor CPU usage, RAM, Hard disk,network bandwidth and more. NAGIOS is a great tool for this.
Webpage Monitoring
Monitoring what is popular on your website, what breaks, and determining how people are coming across your site and where they are leaving it can all help you to optimise the website to achieve whatever it is supposed to (sales, information, contact, whatever). You can also monitor the types of users you get, how long they stay on your website, where they come from and what browsers they use to optimise the users' experience. Joomla has some components for doing statistics, and some of this monitoring, however some great third party tools include AWStats which you can install on your server, or Google Analytics which you can register for using your Google logon. There are many other tools out there but these are pretty good.
Community and OSS
Community is a word I've thrown around a bit, and it is worth mentioning that the best part of Open Source Software (OSS) is that there is a huge global and non-discriminating (mostly) community that you can participate in. You can benefit from the many contacts, learning opportunities and work opportunities that come from being involved in a technical community as well as have the opportunity to contribute yourself and thus have a long term positive impact. Ways to participate are:
Find a usergroup that aligns with your interest/s Join mailing lists Read blog or news aggregators Blog about your interest and get your blog added to a community aggregator Attend meetings and conferences (conf.linux.org.au and osdc.com.au) Participate in forums
Template tweaking
Changing the CSS
The CSS is the backbone of the templating for Joomla and many other CMS's. Make a copy of what is in the CSS by default, and then try tweaking it to make it useful for your purposes.
Changing/modifying templates
Try uploading a new template and playing with it. See how it changes the entire website. Try making your own template.