Details: Parent Category: About Joomla!

The Joomla! team has millions of good reasons to be smiling about the Joomla 3. In its current incarnation, it's had millions of downloads, taking it to an unprecedented level of popularity. The new code base is almost an entire re-factor of the old code base. The user experience is still extremely slick but for developers the API is a dream. A proper framework for real PHP architects seeking the best of the best.

Joomla! takes a big leap into the mobile space with a total overhaul of both its frontend design and administrator interface. With the adoption of the Bootstrap framework, Joomla! has become the first major CMS to be mobile ready in both the visitors and administrator areas. Now every website can have mobile friendly content for visitors and mobile friendly tools for administrators.

Joomla administration has a brand new look and feel, built with the power of Bootstrap responsive framework, along with a touch of the awesome UI/UX work of the Joomla JUX team. Joomla comes ready to go and fully responsive for mobile devices, tablets, and normal computer screens. The entire backend of Joomla has a brand new look and feel that will improve your workflow with any type of device.

Joomla 3 has a whole brand new look and feel, along with many features under the hood features that bring Joomla to the forefront of the content management system world. Some of the main new features present in Joomla 3 include the following:

Extensive work on code style standardisation and consistency
Incorporation of Bootstrap into a jui media package.
A new responsive administrator template Isis and interface.
A new frontend template Protostar built using Bootstrap and updated accessible template called Beez3
PostgreSQL Driver. You will be able to run Joomla 3 sites using the PostgreSQL database.
PHP Memcached Driver
Use of JFeed for feed management rather than SimplePie
Installation of language packages directly from the extension manager
Guest user group present by default
Saving blank articles allowed
New administrator statistics module
Update TinyMCE to version 3.5.6
Continued clean up of older unused code, files and database fields and tables and improved standardization of tables.
Improvements to Smart Search
Unit testing in the CMS
Updated system tests in the CMS

Details: Parent Category: About Joomla!

The Joomla! Project has assembled a top-notch team of experts to form the new Joomla! Security Strike Team. This new team will solely focus on investigating and resolving security issues. Instead of working in relative secrecy, the JSST will have a strong public-facing presence at the Joomla! Security Center.

Support

Support for the Joomla! CMS can be found on several places. The best place to start would be the Joomla! Official Documentation Wiki. Here you can help yourself to the information that is regularly published and updated as Joomla! develops. There is much more to come too!

Of course you should not forget the Help System of the CMS itself. On the topmenu in the Back-end Control panel you find the Help button which will provide you with lots of explanation on features.

Another great place would of course be the Forum . On the Joomla! Forum you can find help and support from Community members as well as from Joomla! Core members and Working Group members. The forum contains a lot of information, FAQ's, just about anything you are looking for in terms of support.

Two other resources for Support are the Joomla! Developer Site and the Joomla! Extensions Directory (JED). The Joomla! Developer Site provides lots of technical information for the experienced Developer as well as those new to Joomla! and development work in general. The JED whilst not a support site in the strictest sense has many of the Extensions that you will need as you develop your own Web site.

The Joomla! Developers and Bug Squad members are regularly posting their blog reports about several topics such as programming techniques and security issues.

Documentation

Joomla! Documentation can of course be found on the Joomla! Official Documentation Wiki. You can find information for beginners, installation, upgrade, Frequently Asked Questions, developer topics, and a lot more. The Documentation Team helps oversee the wiki but you are invited to contribute content, as well.

There are also books written about Joomla! You can find a listing of these books in the Joomla! Shop.

Details: Parent Category: About Joomla!

Well you are reading it right now! This depends on what you want to achieve. If you are new to Joomla and have no clue how it all fits together, just install the sample data. If you don't like the English sample data because you - for instance - speak Chinese, then leave it out.

When installing a Joomla website template provided by a template design houses like Joomlart or Rocketheme, however, you would save yourself a lot of time and effort by using theri kickstart.php packages (the titles vary from provider to provider, so pay attention).

Using these "installation" packages allow you to import all styles and modules for a given template, so that if you want to keep them, you won't have to manually add them to the template CSS one by one.

Details: Parent Category: About Joomla!

Mambots have been renamed as Plugins.

Mambots were introduced in Mambo and offered possibilities to add plug-in logic to your site mainly for the purpose of manipulating content. In Joomla! 1.5, Plugins will now have much broader capabilities than Mambots. Plugins are able to extend functionality at the framework layer as well.

Details: Parent Category: About Joomla!

Many users log into Joomla admin panel for the first time and are able to intuitively find out how to create an article and how to remove it. All you need to do is to find the tab Content and click on it and then use the buttons at the top of your screen. But to be specific, let us explain in detail how to remove an article in Joomla.

Joomla allows you to Unpublish and Trash articles with a remarkable ease. Unpublish, naturally, means remove from view but keep it in the database whereas Trash...well, trash means delete. If you are new to Joomla it is advisable not to Trash anything in the first couple of months but rather Unpublish, just to be on the safe side.

To completely remove an Article, select the Articles that you want to delete and move them to the Trash. Next, open the Article Trash in the Content Menu and select the Articles you want to delete. After deleting an Article, it is no longer available as it has been deleted from the database and it is not possible to undo this operation.

Details: Parent Category: About Joomla!

General

In Joomla! 1.5 all User interfaces can be localised. This includes the installation, the Back-end Control Panel and the Front-end Site.

The core release of Joomla! 1.5 is shipped with multiple language choices in the installation but, other than English (the default), languages for the Site and Administration interfaces need to be added after installation. Links to such language packs exist below.

Details: Parent Category: About Joomla!

The collation option determines the way ordering in the database is done. In languages that use special characters, for instance the German umlaut, the database collation determines the sorting order. If you don't know which collation you need, select the "utf8_general_ci" as most languages use this. The other collations listed are exceptions in regards to the general collation. If your language is not listed in the list of collations it most likely means that "utf8_general_ci is suitable.

Details: Parent Category: About Joomla!

Joomla! runs on any platform including Windows, most flavours of Linux, several Unix versions, and the Apple OS/X platform. Joomla! depends on PHP and the MySQL database to deliver dynamic content.

The minimum requirements are:

Apache 1.x, 2.x and higher
PHP 4.3 and higher
MySQL 3.23 and higher

It will also run on alternative server platforms such as Windows IIS - provided they support PHP and MySQL - but these require additional configuration in order for the Joomla! core package to be successful installed and operated.

Details: Parent Category: About Joomla!

Joomla! runs on the PHP pre-processor. PHP comes in many flavours, for a lot of operating systems. Beside PHP you will need a Web server. Joomla! is optimized for the Apache Web server, but it can run on different Web servers like Microsoft IIS it just requires additional configuration of PHP and MySQL. Joomla! also depends on a database, for this currently you can only use MySQL.

Many people know from their own experience that it's not easy to install an Apache Web server and it gets harder if you want to add MySQL, PHP and Perl. XAMPP, WAMP, and MAMP are easy to install distributions containing Apache, MySQL, PHP and Perl for the Windows, Mac OSX and Linux operating systems. These packages are for localhost installations on non-public servers only.
The minimum version requirements are:

Apache 1.x or 2.x
PHP 4.3 or up
MySQL 3.23 or up

For the latest minimum requirements details, see Joomla! Technical Requirements.

Details: Parent Category: About Joomla!

Installing of Joomla! is pretty easy. We assume you have set up your website and you can access it via your browser (i.e. Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome)

Download Joomla!, save it to your local hard drive, unzip it, and then upload/copy the files into the directory you website points to, start your browser and enter your website address, and the installation will start.

For full details on the installation processes check out the Joomla.org website; questions are answered on the forums.

Details: Parent Category: About Joomla!

Within the Installer you will find a wide collection of languages. The installer currently supports the following languages: Arabic, Bulgarian, Bengali, Czech, Danish, German, Greek, English, Spanish, Finnish, French, Hebrew, Devanagari(India), Croatian(Croatia), Magyar (Hungary), Italian, Malay, Norwegian bokmal, Dutch, Portuguese(Brasil), Portugues(Portugal), Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Svenska, Thai and more are being added all the time.

By default the English language is installed for the Back and Front-ends. You can download additional language files from the Joomla!Extensions Directory.

Details: Parent Category: About Joomla!

When you Archive an Article in Joomla, the content is put into a state which removes it from your site as published content. The Article is still available from within the Control Panel and can be retrieved for editing or republishing purposes. Trashed Articles are just one step from being permanently deleted but are still available until you Remove them from the Trash Manager. You should use Archive if you consider an Article important, but not current. Trash should be used when you want to delete the content entirely from your site and from future search results.

Details: Parent Category: About Joomla!

This Web site is powered by Joomla! The software and default templates on which it runs are Copyright 2005-2008 Open Source Matters. The sample content distributed with Joomla! is licensed under the Joomla! Electronic Documentation License. All data entered into this Web site and templates added after installation, are copyrighted by their respective copyright owners.

If you want to distribute, copy, or modify Joomla!, you are welcome to do so under the terms of the GNU General Public License. If you are unfamiliar with this license, you might want to read 'How To Apply These Terms To Your Program' and the 'GNU General Public License FAQ'.

The Joomla! licence has always been GPL.

Details: Parent Category: About Joomla!

In Joomla! versions prior to 1.5 there were separate processes for creating a Static Content Item and normal Content Items. The processes have been combined now and whilst both content types are still around they are renamed as Articles for Content Items and Uncategorized Articles for Static Content Items.

If you want to create a static item, create a new Article in the same way as for standard content and rather than relating this to a particular Section and Category just select Uncategorized as the option in the Section and Category drop down lists.

Details: Parent Category: About Joomla!

You indeed can change the Menu Item's Type to whatever you want, even after they have been created.

If, for instance, you want to change the Blog Section of a Menu link, go to the Control Panel->Menus Menu->[menuname]->Menu Item Manager and edit the Menu Item. Select the Change Type button and choose the new style of Menu Item Type from the available list. Thereafter, alter the Details and Parameters to reconfigure the display for the new selection as you require it.

Details: Parent Category: About Joomla!

The improved Installer can be found under the Extensions Menu. With versions prior to Joomla! 1.5 you needed to select a specific Extension type when you wanted to install it and use the Installer associated with it, with Joomla! 1.5 you just select the Extension you want to upload, and click on install. The Installer will do all the hard work for you.

Details: Parent Category: About Joomla!

Got a question? With more than 210,000 members, the Joomla! Discussion Forums at forum.joomla.org are a great resource for both new and experienced users. Ask your toughest questions the community is waiting to see what you'll do with your Joomla! site.

Do you want to show off your new Joomla! Web site? Visit the Site Showcase section of our forum.

Do you want to contribute?

If you think working with Joomla is fun, wait until you start working on it. We're passionate about helping Joomla users become contributors. There are many ways you can help Joomla's development:

Submit news about Joomla. We syndicate Joomla-related news on JoomlaConnect^TM. If you have Joomla news that you would like to share with the community, find out how to get connected here.
Report bugs and request features in our trackers. Please read Reporting Bugs, for details on how we like our bug reports served up
Submit patches for new and/or fixed behaviour. Please read Submitting Patches, for details on how to submit a patch.
Join the developer forums and share your ideas for how to improve Joomla. We're always open to suggestions, although we're likely to be sceptical of large-scale suggestions without some code to back it up.
Join any of the Joomla Working Groups and bring your personal expertise to the Joomla community.

These are just a few ways you can contribute. See Contribute to Joomla for many more ways.

Details: Parent Category: About Joomla!

Out of the box, Joomla! does a great job of managing the content needed to make your website sing. But for many people, the true power of Joomla! lies in the application framework that makes it possible for developers all around the world to create powerful add-ons that are called Extensions. There are over 7000 Joomla extensions! They provide an ability to create complex sites within days - and with high quality too. All Joomla extensions - commercial or free-for-download - undergo a thorough certification process before they are released to users on the official extensions.joomla.org website. This certificationn is one of the most reputable in the software development world - GNU License.

An Extension is used to add capabilities to Joomla! that do not exist in the base core code. Here are just some examples of the hundreds of available Extensions:

Dynamic form builders
Business or organisational directories
Document management
Image and multimedia galleries
E-commerce and shopping cart engines
Forums and chat software
Calendars
E-mail newsletters
Data collection and reporting tools
Banner advertising systems
Paid subscription services
and many, many, more

You can find more examples over at our ever growing Joomla! Extensions Directory. Prepare to be amazed at the amount of exciting work produced by our active developer community!

A useful guide to the Extension site can be found at:
http://extensions.joomla.org/content/view/15/63/

Types of Extensions

There are five types of extensions:

Components
Modules
Templates
Plugins
Languages

You can read more about the specifics of these using the links in the Article Index - a Table of Contents (yet another useful feature of Joomla!) - at the top right or by clicking on the Next link below.

Components

A Component is the largest and most complex of the Extension types. Components are like mini-applications. An analogy that might make the relationship easier to understand would be that Joomla! is a book and all the Components are chapters in the book. The core Article Component (com_content), for example, is the mini-application that handles all core Article rendering just as the core registration Component (com_user) is the mini-application that handles User registration.

Many of Joomla!'s core features are provided by the use of default Components such as:

Contacts
Front Page
News Feeds
Banners
Mass Mail
Polls

A Component will manage data, set displays, provide functions, and in general can perform any operation that does not fall under the general functions of the core code. Components do a lot of behind-the-scene work and usually contain data.

Components work hand in hand with Modules and Plugins to provide a rich variety of content display and functionality aside from the standard Article and content display. They make it possible to completely transform Joomla! and greatly expand its capabilities.

In addition, when designing a website with specific requirements, designers can use 3rd party components to enable the required functionalities. Many open-source Joomla components are of remarkable quality and very mature (VirtueMart, for example). There are hundreds of commercial components that can be used to create amazingly complex websites. Integration of 3rd party components with Joomla core components is the main development challenge for Joomla web designers.

Modules

A more lightweight and flexible Extension used for page rendering is a Module. Modules are used for small bits of the page that are generally less complex and able to be seen across different Components. To continue in our book analogy, a Module can be looked at as a footnote or header block, or perhaps an image/caption block that can be rendered on a particular page. Obviously you can have a footnote on any page but not all pages will have them. Footnotes also might appear regardless of which chapter you are reading. Similarly, Modules can be rendered regardless of which Component you have loaded.

Modules are like little mini-applets that can be placed anywhere on your site. They work in conjunction with Components in some cases and in others are complete stand alone snippets of code used to display some data from the database such as Articles (Newsflash) Modules are usually used to output data but they can also be interactive form items to input data for example the Login Module or Polls.

Modules can be assigned to Module positions which are defined in your Template and in the back-end using the Module Manager and editing the Module Position settings. For example, "left" and "right" are common for a 3 column layout.

Displaying Modules

Each Module is assigned to a Module position on your site. If you wish it to display in two different locations you must copy the Module and assign the copy to display at the new location. You can also set which Menu Items (and thus pages) a Module will display on, you can select all Menu Items or you can pick and choose by holding down the control key and selecting multiple locations one by one in the Modules [Edit] screen

Note: Your Main Menu is a Module! When you create a new Menu in the Menu Manager you are actually copying the Main Menu Module (mod_mainmenu) code and giving it the name of your new Menu. When you copy a Module you do not copy all of its parameters, you simply allow Joomla! to use the same code with two separate settings.

Newsflash Example

Newsflash is a Module which will display Articles from your site in an assignable Module position. It can be used and configured to display one Category, all Categories, or to randomly choose Articles to highlight to Users. It will display as much of an Article as you set, and will show a Read more... link to take the User to the full Article.

The Newsflash Component is particularly useful for things like Site News or to show the latest Article added to your Web site.

Plugins

One of the more advanced Extensions for Joomla! is the Plugin. In previous versions of Joomla! Plugins were known as Mambots. Aside from changing their name their functionality has been expanded. A Plugin is a section of code that runs when a pre-defined event happens within Joomla!. Editors are Plugins, for example, that execute when the Joomla! event onGetEditorArea occurs. Using a Plugin allows a developer to change the way their code behaves depending upon which Plugins are installed to react to an event.

Languages

One of the most basic and critical extensions is a Language support. Joomla is released with multiple Installation Languages but the base Site and Administrator are packaged in just the one Language en-GB - being English with GB spelling for example. To include all the translations currently available would bloat the core package and make it unmanageable for uploading purposes. The Language files enable all the User interfaces both Front-end and Back-end to be presented in the local preferred language. Note these packs do not have any impact on the actual content such as Articles.

More information on languages is available from the Joomla Translation Community.

Details: Parent Category: About Joomla!

Joomla! provides plenty of flexibility when displaying your Web content. Whether you are using Joomla! for a blog site, news or a Web site for a company, you'll find one or more content styles to showcase your information. You can also change the style of content dynamically depending on your preferences. Joomla! calls how a page is laid out a layout. Use the guide below to understand which layouts are available and how you might use them.

Joomla! features:

Completely database driven site engines
News, products, or services sections fully editable and manageable
Topics sections can be added to by contributing Authors
Fully customisable layouts including left, center, and right Menu boxes
Browser upload of images to your own library for use anywhere in the site
Dynamic Forum/Poll/Voting booth for on-the-spot results
Runs on Linux, FreeBSD, MacOSX server, Solaris, and AIX
Read more: Joomla! Features

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