Joomla! Explained: Your StepbyStep Guide

by Stephen Burge

Master Joomla hands-on, step-by-step, through easy, practical examples Joomla now powers tens of millions of websites of every size and type. But many beginners find it confusing, and most Joomla books are too complex to help. "Joomla Explained" is the solution. Top Joomla trainer Stephen Burge teaches everything beginners need to know--and nothing they don't need to know "Joomla Explained"requires absolutely no experience with Joomla content management, website construction, programming, scripting, or even HTML. Stephen Burge has taught thousands of beginners--and thousands more who've experimented with Joomla but haven't mastered it yet. Nobody knows more about guiding Joomla users up the learning curve--from confusion to results You'll master Joomla one easy step at a time, through a complete hands-on case study. Burge presents crystal-clear visuals, explanations, and analogies--all extensively tested with real Joomla beginners.

430 pages, Paperback

First published June 27, 2011

About the author

Steve Burge is from Portsmouth in southern England and now lives in Atlanta in the US.

Between leaving England and arriving in the US, there were a few stops in between, including Wales, Mexico, Japan and Australia. Steve paid for his travels by working as a teacher and a web designer.

Steve now combines teaching and web design by running OSTraining.com which teaches people how to build websites. OSTraining clients include Apple, Pfizer and the U.S. Departments of Energy, Education and Commerce.

Steve has published two books: Joomla Explained and Drupal 7 Explained. More are coming including Joomla 3 Explained, Drupal 8 Explained and WordPress Explained.

Reviews

[Angelina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Easy to follow along! Clear steps for building a Joomla site.

[Erwin · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you need a background in administering a Joomla site, it's OK, but pretty dry even as far as technology books go. Even the best IT related book could only be about 3.5 stars in my mind, but this was a little bit below average.

Main principle of this read is the "CASh" workflow.

Categorize.

Add.

Show.

The book also reviews the difference between Components, Modules and Plugins - though even after reading through and several years of experience as a developer, the description seems a bit arbitrary. Perhaps it's a plugin, perhaps it's a module, perhaps it's a component. There are differences, but it's difficult to clarify 100%.

Looking at my previous notes, my previous notes, my favorite technology related book thus far was Applied Cryptography: Protocols, Algorithms, and Source Code in C by Bruce Schnier. There are dozens of other tech books I've read over the years, but most of them were hardly memorable, much like this one ;-)

I'm really looking forward to reading Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software, which should be about as exciting as a technology related book can be.

### Score adjusted in recognition of the author's hard work.

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Burge sets out to write a truly basic, truly introductory text for those with minimal familiarity with Content Management System technology ... and he succeeds! The book dovetails with on-line files available to the purchaser which allow the reader to work along with the book. This is an excellent educational strategy. The reader cannot claim expertise with Joomla! CMS by the time the book is completed but has sufficient knowledge to design, erect and publish a basic website.

[Marcia · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent tutorial.

[James · Rating 2 out of 5]

Covers up to 1.7, making it a loser in the red queen's race. A problem for all tech books.