Joomla Template Blog

Calling all you Joomla experts! I have just set up my first Joomla site for single people in Liverpool at www.liverpoolsinglesnights.co.uk. I don’t know where to begin on the main page of the site in relation to making it as good a community site as Myspace or Facebook. I mean should I start replacing the logo with my own, or tackle the articles first?

So if anybody can me some good advice on where to start customising the templates (I want a red themed site, logo etc.), I would be eternally grateful.

Cheers
liverpoo

http://www.liverpoolsinglesnights.co.uk

You have a lot to do! You site is nothing but Joomla!
You must replace EVERYTHING…
(And to do that, you have to learn how to program…)

So I am a webdesigner… I primarily do actionscripting with flash. I do play with html too, and am now going to try and start freelancing and am looking to learn how to customize an open source CMS. I really like wordpress, but I feel it’s a bit limiting, and I really like concept of Drupal and Joomla, but feel that perhaps these are a bit overwhelming too. I don’t want to learn a whole new language (php), but I do want to use a CMS. What are your thoughts? Is it ok to customize open source themes for clients? Thanks in advance!

Hi,

It seems as though you already know the main differences, though wordpress can be customised heavily it is basically blog software, we’ve created a knowledgebase ourselves using wordpress though which works well and I’m sure there are many other good uses.

Drupal and Joomla are both great CMS and both have a roughly equal share of the market. You can achieve a lot of the same things between them, but it makes sense to choose one and focus your efforts upon it fully to gain a deep knowledge of it instead of spreading yourself and being average at both.

I would suggest you spend a day or two using both, and decide which you prefer then stick with it. You will be able to develop in either fine, and both are fully skinnable, you should read the license of open source themes but most will be fine to customise yourself even for commercial use.

Regards,

Darryl

Hey there. This is my first time setting up my own Joomla website. Any help is apprieciated!

My Questions are:

- How do you actually buy a Template. I know theres plenty of sites selling them, but how does it work. Can I just do a one off payment and then download the Template to host via FTP?

- How much can you alter a template? Like this for example: http://joomla.siteground.com/index.php?mos_change_template=siteground58

Could I make ‘Easy customization’ and ‘Free themes’ appear in the one column so all the news is visable without it being cut off.
Could I change the Green font and lines to a different color?
Could I add a subnavigation? So when I hover/click something in the top right navigation, there is pages WITHIN those pages. So if you had multimedia, you could have Music and Videos as pages within.

Sorry for all the ‘could i’, but basically I want to know how much I can alter and customise the templates.

- Thanks, any other useful bits of information are welcome

You can alter VERY much of the joomla template. The best way to learn how to do all this is to get a PAID membership at either one of these 2 template sites – www.joomlart.com or www.rockettheme.com

Both these sites have a VERY VERY live and strong userbase. The community there will be happy to help do simple things like changing the logo, colors, or re-sizing and adding boxes and stuff. Don’t bother with the free stuff. Stick to either one of those 2 sites and get tons of free help from the forums. That’s the best place for a joomla newb to start.

I tried playing around with Joomla not long ago, and although I could manage a couple of things, I could never get past removing the "Joomla" sign, thus not being able to make it appear like my own site.

I was always able to get shallow advice like "switch themes," which was pretty unhelpful.

Please don’t tell me to go to that Joomla support site that’s on the Joomla page. It’s pretty bad, as well. I don’t want something where I’ll feel lucky if I get an answer. I need the real, best way to learn it and best way to get my problems handled, if possible.

Is there a Joomla for dummies?

Where, please – thanks!
None of the advice I got about removing the Joomla sign was the least bit helpful.

I tried to get into Joomla myself and I agree that the online documentation is pretty useless. The guide I downloaded had entirely blank sections waiting to be updated by the community. So I gave up.

I always recommend buying a book if at all possible when it comes to learning a complicated piece of software or programming. It’s all there without endless searching on the web. Luckily, there are quite a few books on Joomla available at Amazon.

Joomla Template Kit 3.X 04

Duration : 0:4:5

I am wondering if anyone can either explain or find an in-depth tutorial about how to change a full Photoshop template (like this: http://psdtuts.s3.amazonaws.com/137_Dark_Theme/final.jpg) into a usable template that would work with a CMS? (Joomla!)

Could someone please explain me the process? (I have basic/intermediate knowledge of web design)

I assume I would have to cut it up in Imageready (or Fireworks), and export it as an HTML document, but I don’t know what to do from this point on.

Thanks to any/all who can help.

Not that easy a process. Most of the freelancers that I’ve seen do it get it to look ok in joomla but they are not skilled enough in template design to take into account all the cross browser compatibility issues.
Your best bet is to let the experts do it and know it is being done right. Check out Shape5 . They make commercial Joomla templates and have a custom service to turn psd’s into joomla templates. Just my 2 cents…

Regards,
glenn
www.webjutsu.com

Norm Douglas shows you step by step how to build a Joomla Template from scratch.

Duration : 0:9:55

How to delete joomla template the correct way… Some newbie find it cannot be done due to the mistake they have done on the joomla setting

Duration : 0:1:14

I was wondering, how do you create custom themes for CMS such as Joomla, WordPress, Magento, etc? I know that I need a graphics program, but what else do I need? Also, how do I integrate it with the CMS?

Each CMS will have its own quirks, so it’ll probably be best to start with an existing template for that cms. It’s mostly just going to take some working with it to learn all the ins and outs.

I am starting a college website which will be maintained by students
And I need to decide between these 2.
Also any good theme you like for Joomla?
For those of you saying WordPress, I need a website and not just a blog
For those of you saying WordPress, I need a website and not just a blog also I need themes for it.

Joomla ALL THE WAY.

Go to www.quietactioninc.com

It is a website I own and manage. It is built using ONLY Joomla and its extensions.

You can torrent down all of the templates & use them.
Good templates from yootools & youjoomla, rockettheme too.

You can install a lot of templates and switch when you want.
Also, its the EASIEST to use, especially if you want students to maintain it, (they will not need to know anything about programming, etc).

Once again, I use Joomla, I love it, It makes for a better site, and lastly Drupal comes with THOUSANDS of less templates and extensions, if they even have 1000.

Get extensions easily, don’t need to program them, Joomla.