My First Joomla Site
March 26th, 2008
Well, it’s been an interesting last couple of weeks — while in the midst of a full-on conference frenzy, I’ve also been designing, building and (finally) launching a brand-new advocacy site, the first I’ve tried to build using the Joomla content management system. It’s alive! The Sportsmen for Responsible Energy Development is a coalition site aimed at hunting and fishing groups in the Rocky Mountains, trying to get the groups signed on to good energy-development practices in the Mountain West. The site’s quite simple and a CMS like Joomla is almost overkill, but it makes the thing very easy to maintain, which I hope will help the campaign use it as an actual communications tool — over the years, I’ve seen too many of these things essentially sit on a shelf once built.
The process was definitely fun — in the few days between traveling for SXSW Interactive and Nonprofit Technology, I learned the essentials of both CSS page layout and Joomla templating, which I do not recommend doing at the same time unless you’re really into teeth-grinding frustration. But everything’s worked out fine and the client’s happy, so cha-ching! and we don’t have to eat the cat THIS month. BTW, Joomla and CSS purists will note that I cheated in a couple of places if they view source on the site (image map? what image map?), but what is a rule if it can’t be broken?
– cpd
4 Comments Add your own
1. Alan Septoff | March 27th, 2008 at 10:51 am
Your title (html tagged title) on the home page has a typo:
“SportsmenT” rather than
“Sportsmen”
2. cpd | March 27th, 2008 at 10:56 am
Oopsie! Thanks for catching that.
3. sean grant | March 28th, 2008 at 10:00 am
Well done, I like your site. You definitely do not need to underplay your skills. I doubt I produced anything close to this the first time I designed a site. Another resource which is to help you learn about further aspects of Joomla! is http://www.learnjoomla.org.za. Its free which always helps and it walks you through some of the stuff step by step. You really do exceptional work , keep it up!
4. heather gardner-madras | March 29th, 2008 at 11:53 am
Congrats Colin – nicely done.
Even if it seems like overkill, now that you have overcome the worst of the learning curve I think you’ll find Joomla a nice tool in your kit.
And bah on purists – what matters is a site that works for the organization and withstands the browsers we are stuck with. Especially in content areas, tables are often needed since admins at organizations don’t usually have HTML/CSS skills or the time to learn them.
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