Joomla!, exclamation point and all, is one of the most searched-for and hired-for open source content management systems in the world. Since 2007, the combination of Joomla! and Dan Rahmel's bestselling Beginning Joomla!, From Novice to Professional have made it so that all you have to do is read a single book to learn how to build sites that take community-authored content and turn it instantly into published web pages with all the latest features like rich templating, community member profile management, forums, photo management, and article commenting.

Now revised and updated for the new Joomla! 1.6, this second edition "job-in-a-book" provides the solid core of know-how that you'll need to get the most out of your Joomla! deployment, written to fully exploit the features of latest version of Joomla!. More than just a simple "build a toy web site" guide, Beginning Joomla!, Second Edition will give you a wealth of life-saving tips, tricks, tools, and fixes that experienced Joomla! developers use to build powerful, popular web sites while avoiding major headaches. This book covers

• How to use content versioning and multi-blogger support, among the latest changes to Joomla!

• Access management and how documents, photos, and other content are managed in Joomla! 1.6

• E-commerce integration, search engine optimization, and even extending Joomla! by creating your own plug-ins

• And much more...

Dan Rahmel explores the latest updates to Joomla! 1.6 that you'll need if you already use Joomla! and explains, using the latest terms, how to build a web site from scratch if you don't already use Joomla! An update to the best-selling Joomla! title on the market, this is the Joomla! book to get.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 41 Ratings

Very Good book - 2009-05-18
Reviewer Rating:
It was very helpful for me. I'd been poking around in Joomla! for a while and needed more. The book helped explain a lot of stuff I didn't understand and I was up and running in no time.

I would have liked less space allocated to discussing other tools (like site layout tools and FTP clients). I also would have preferred that the chapter on extensions was moved up a bit - it would have made more sense before the chapter on creating your own templates. I cared more about different extensions that I did making my own template.

Awesome Book on Joomla! - 2009-09-01
Reviewer Rating:
Joomla has been around for awhile now but until recently (past year or so) has gained a lot of popularity. People are finally realizing what a stable, easy to use CMS (Content Management System) it is.

With al the other CMS out on the market (open source and commercial), Joomla has risen to the top of the food chain so to speak in how it is perceived by the community. It really has become one of the most popular small to medium sized content systems on the market today.

This book by Dan Rahmel (author of over 20 computer books) has written one of most easy to follow and understand books on Joomla. He assumes no prior programming or development knowledge and steps you through installation to administrations to customization of your Joomla website.

Joomla can be used to create a fully functioning website, blog or a full user community. Its flexibility is its greatest feature and Dan goes through all the different scenarios of creating these different web sites.

The first real chapter (chapter 2 & 3) goes through a complete installation and also goes through all the different customizations that can be done based upon what operating system or web server setup you are using. These are two great chapters and the author uses plenty of screenshots and simple explanations to make sure you are up and running as painless as possible.

A chapter that I really like is chapter 5 which talks about Administering Joomla which can be a little tricky for setting up users and account permissions. I always find myself coming back to this section time and time again. Another great chapter I like is chapter 6 which explains how to create your own page templates. Joomla gives you existing templates for which you can create you website with but there are always customizations that will be necessary for your specific site. The author goes through a whole bunch of "real-life" examples that you can use for your own website. You have to get your feet wet with some HTML and CSS but it is explained very nicely if you are a newbie.

The rest of the chapters:

Chapter 4: Adding Content
Chapter 7: Joomla! Extensions
Chapter 8: Web Community Features

These will help you create any type of site you may need.

Bonus chapters such as chapter 11 (E-commerce)and chapter 12 (Search Engine Optimization - SEO) help complete the book giving you professional-grade advice on setting up an ecommerce site that will accept payment (credit card), configure taxes and organizing your products into categories as well as making sure your site (whatever type it is) is seen on top search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN).

After reading this book, you should have your site up and running and almost be an expert in using Joomla yourself. But of course Dan has also written and Advanced Joomla! book that will take your expertise to the next level.

A great book and worth buying ASAP.

helpful - 2009-04-21
Reviewer Rating:
For an individual not experienced with Joomla, Beginning Joomla is a good introduction to the software.

If you managed to install Joomla on your own, you don't need this book - 2009-03-20
Reviewer Rating:
This is the first time I write a review on Amazon, but I really felt I had to, as a warning for potential buyers. If you managed to install Joomla on your own and have played with it even just a little, you do _not_ need this book. You will already know the vast majority of the contents.

I know some reviewers pointed this out, but after going through other reviews and the TOC, I figured there would still be things to learn. Well, I was unfortunately dead wrong.

I scanned through the book in 30mn: the first 200 pages revolve around installing Joomla, then you have quite a bit of list of administrator settings / actions with a short description of what they do (nothing more than what you would get through the built-in joomla help), no info on optimizing Joomla performance, no info on how Joomla internals work (if only for the curious folks), no that much information about security issues, etc... To be fair, you do have sections on how to organize your website, how to setup community building around your website, which could be useful to novice users, but not useful to people looking for technical information. Sometimes, the book also turns into a catalog of open source software you could use for a given job. I don't think that's relevant to the core topic, and would rather have had more Joomla related content.

For a technical book, this is also quite average: the progression in introducing new concepts, the structure... all could be better. Here's a concrete example, which to me says it all: there's not even a single graphic showing in one place what's a module, a component, a menu and so on in a rendered Joomla page. Sometimes, you have a screenshot with an arrow pointing at something. It really feels like the illustrations where an afterthought which is quite strange for a supposedly technical book.

To conclude, the subtitle "From novice to professional" is really misleading: I know it's a hyperbole and you can't expect anymore to become a real professional after reading a 300 pages book, but still, the subtitle should really be: "building your first website with joomla".

Too Dated for beginners - 2009-04-07
Reviewer Rating:
This book began very well and may, for more experienced Joomla users, have continued thusly. But, Joomla's dashboard changes frequently and had changed at least ONCE since the book was written. I became bogged down just trying to get through the install and get into Joomla because none of the diagrams matched what I was seeing on my screen. The book gathers dust on my shelf because it doesn't make sense with the tools of today.

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