5 Tips to Learning Joomla

As one of the most exciting web content management systems, you would obviously be eager to learn Joomla. But where can you learn it? That’s the subject of this article as we take a look at the learning environment for Joomla.

The Joomla Learning System:

This is the traditional way. It involves getting manuals, attending training classes, conferences and workshops that help you learn Joomla.  The other way is to simply get a package and start learning Joomla. At the end of the day, you need to be comfortable with Joomla. That’s it.

Apply What You Learn:

The easiest way to learn Joomla is to start creating a website as you learn the CMS. This way you would make mistakes and continue to learn. Unless you create a website, you would never know the nitty gritties of Joomla.

Joomla Resource Websites:

Another very good to learn Joomla is to frequent websites, discussion forums and follow threads that have a lot of useful information on how you can create and manage Joomla websites. There are Joomla videos, FAQs and learning sessions for beginners and professionals alike.

Joomla User Groups:

Just about every big city or metropolis would have a Joomla user group and yours must be having one too. The JUG typically has enthusiastic, ready to interact and knowledgeable Joomla webmasters teaching you the intricacies of the CMS. A JUG typically meets monthly, but this may vary according to the needs and time availability of the membership of the Joomla group. At these meetings, in addition to meeting fellow Joomla webmasters, you can also get the latest information on what's going on in the Joomlasphere, along with new useful tools and extensions.

Continued Practice:

As we already saw, that to learn Joomla quickly, you need to have hands-on practice during the early stages. However, the Joomla CMS is so dynamic that if you don't constantly practice and explore it, you may either lose track of where it is going or even forget some of the skills. However, if you are regularly engaged in tweaking your Joomla website and keeping up to date with what's going on, you will find out that learning how to design Joomla websites becomes much more easier and creative for you as you discover new tools, tricks and creative ways to make it do your will and design virtually any type of website using Joomla.

8 Reasons to Upgrade Your Website from Joomla 1.5 to 2.5

Created in 2005 with robust and advanced features, Joomla’s functional operation is based on the multiple quantity of extensions that provides the website owners with the reliable protection system, site optimization, and other up to date options. In this article, we look at why you need to upgrade from Joomla 1.5 to 2.5 in order to gain those additional functionalities that 2.5 has to offer you.

1. Better Security

With Joomla 1.5 reaching its end of life cycle, you will not get any more security updates. It also means that the relative odds of your site being hacked, causing irreparable damage to your reputation, loss of data and many other problems, is relatively high.

2. Extensions Support

Now that Joomla 1.5 has reached its end of life, third-party developers are mainly concentrating their programming efforts on the latest version, Joomla 2.5. Additionally, almost all of Joomla extensions have been converted to be compatible with Joomla 2.5.

3. Ease of Management and Productivity Improvements

Some of the better improvements in Joomla 2.5: One-click extensions package installer, limitless levels of hierarchy in the category tree (which is used to classify content), improved reliability and minimum unexpected errors during editing.

4. Always Be Up-To-Date With the New Features

Joomla 2.5 brings you some extraordinary features which improve Joomla performance such as CAPTCHA Plugin, Smart search, Multilanguage support or User Notes.

5. Enhanced Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

A faster, natural language search engine has been added to Joomla 2.5 core with improved features. This provides a more ‘Google’ experience when searching a large Joomla website.

6. Get a Long Term Support

Since Joomla 2.5 is a long-term support release, it will be officially supported until 2014.

7. Avoid Technology Obsolescence

Even though PHP and MySQL are continually upgraded and new versions are released, Joomla 1.5 will not be updated accordingly to be compatible.

8. ‘One-click’ Updates with Update Notification

The control panel provides an early indication whenever new updates are available. In order to access the newest update, all that is required is one click on the corresponding button.