Off I go with Joomla

So - I started messing around with Joomla!, a pretty swell CMS ( Content Management System ) for my latest and greatest site - Media Hype Cre8tive. When I first started doing video and graphics back in 1991 - we called ourselves Media Hype, so it was only fitting.

I decided to go with Joomla! this time over Drupal for several reasons. I was able to set up Joomla! pretty easy on my new host. You have to keep in mind I am not an admin,...well usually not willingly. This was the first time I set up Joomla! on my Apache server and set up the Database. It was a little a little clunky at first, but the documents were pretty helpful as was the book "Building Websites with JOOMLA!" by Hagen Graf.

Like the Drupal book I reviewed here, Matt Raible gave me this book as well to review.

I figured I'd go a step further and tell you how things go as I set up Media Hype Cre8tive as well as how helpful the book is/was.

First off - out of the gate - Hagen's book was a life saver getting started. It cater's to chuckleheads like me who think they know what they are doing, just enough to be dangerous... well the book helped me not be dangerous and actually get things rolling. I started out just doing it, setting up and installing Joomla! on a whim,... but soon found myself in the land of "what the hell?" Having realized I bit off more than I like to chew - I first went thru what Joomla! had to offer and it is extensive and useful - however, in my opinion it does seem to be geared towards a tech-head or at least someone with admin experience.... even tho they say its not.

When I felt that squished up facial expression starting to harden into my new look I remembered that Raible hooked me up with the Joomla! book and was quickly flipping thru it and found it a nice go between. What Joomla! assumes you know, the book explains. It does have alot of PC references and examples but I was able to work thru that. The main thing is that the Joomla! book got me where I needed to be quickly - and nobody was more surprised than me when I went to the URL and there was my login for admin, working!

Before I would just call my friends at Contegix and say, could you please give me a DEV folder with { INSERT CMS NAME HERE } and they would make it happen. So it was quite an accomplishment for me. Altho, looking back at what I did - with Joomla! and Mr. Graf's book I can see that apes could do it,.... I still feel like I accomplished something. So YAY ME!

Now - going forward, as I develop stuff for this site I will post my accomplishments as well as my failures and frustrations.... if any. So please do play along and watch. If I know you, or you at least seem trustworthy - I'll give you a limited username and password so you can come inside the Media Hype Cre8tive site and look around. Let Me Know!

That's it for now. Let's see how this turns out aye?

-maxi