Joomla! a User's Guide: Building a Successful Joomla! Powered Website

I am a professional web developer (mainly J2EE and PHP/MySQL); this book really helped me to take a decision: switch to Joomla! The book starts with an introduction to Joomla! (and CMS in general) and then helps you to start your own site from scratch (fresh installation with NO sample content). Then you'll learn how to develop a pure CSS template and after that there are three chapters devoted to the development of three different kind of sites: school, restaurant and blog. Along with a dedicated site and forum (where Barrie replies to ALL our "stupid questions" ;) )... what else should I say? Highly recommended!

This was a very good guide for getting your Joomla! site not only up and running, but running effectively. Barrie goes through a lot of information on how to get people to your site and hopefully have them come back. There are several examples throughout the book on how to organize a site and why you would want to organize it that way. I had created several Joomla! sites before getting this book, I wish that had happened the other way around. I'm much more efficient now and I was able to use the information in the book to sell 2 websites within a week of reading it. The only chapter I had any trouble with was the Templating chapter. Since that's a subject that could (and should) have its own book, I wasn't expecting to be able to go design my own templates after reading it. I did read another book on CSS/XHTML afterwards and I'm going to go back and re-read the template chapter as I think it will make much more sense to me now. I'd definitely recommend this book. It has a lot of information that will make you much more efficient and effective at designing your Joomla! sites.

Very good book. Especially if you want to learn how to manage YOUR site (with your layout, design, style etc). This book learns you how to create your own template (including css) and what tricks are needed for common problems: browser compatibility, scaling of fonts, seach engine optimization (seo), tableless design etc. It's also good for beginners as it tells you all basics in the first chapters. There are many links to other reference material which saves you a lot of time! Definitely recommended!

I recommend to every Joomla user who is less than "expert level" -- read this book! I have been working with Joomla 1.0 for about 5 months, so already had a basic understanding of many of the terms: component, module, etc. I purchased this book just before Christmas and took it with me to read on the holiday roadtrip. You know you are reading a great computer-related book when you can read and understand and make copious notes in the book margins...without sitting in front of a computer! Not only did it "fill in the blanks" about much of my understanding re: Joomla (any version), but I felt excited, and much more confident, about using Joomla 1.5. Great overview of Joomla, great details, great tips! A well-written user's guide. Thank you!

Barrie has hit a home run with this book. If you are new to Joomla or making the transition to Joomla 1.5 this is the book you need to have on your shelf. While the online documentation for Joomla is detailed and available for all it lacks the overview and practical application knowledge that Barrie's book provides. The book is well thought out and provides a wealth of information that only someone that has spent countless hours under the hood of the application can provide. Everyone that is working or struggling to get a Joomla website live or modify an existing site, including customization of templates needs to have this book.