Joomla! 1.5x Customization: Make Your Site Adapt to Your Needs

This is an excellent book for the newbies that would like to start a web site with Joomla!. It provides overview of tools and Joomla! setting that you should know to build up a site.



Chapters:

1. The Skills Required to Customize Joomla! - list of technologies and programming languages used by Joomla! That's only a list with short explanation to remind you about particular technology. If you want to study it more you'll have to deep dive into a different books
   


2. Setting Up Our Environment - this is very practical chapter for those who aren't webmasters or don't know what tools to use for file transfer, code management, DB management, digging into html/css code, etc. If you don't know the best practices then you can learn them. For me the Firebug overview was useful as it describes powerful tool for customizing a website (not only based on Joomla!) that I missed.
   
   
3. Planning Our Site - planning, planning, planning. This is chapter for those who mean it seriously. I'd wish to my wife to read it. It would save me a lot of time. I'd need to make some thing twice or even three times.
   In this chapter you'll find also short overview of the most used Joomla extensions.
   
   
4. Installing and Configuring Extensions - have you started to play with the Joomla! yet? If not then you'll be guided to create a new website "Buy new house in Japan". It's useful exercise before you'll create your own site.
   
   
5. Installing and Modifying Templates - this is one of the best things about Joomla! You can easily change the look of your website. How it's possible? The "data" of your website are stored in database. By the template you define how they are displayed to the visitors of your website.
   
6. Customizing Modules - there is a plenty of modules to download at the internet. But sometimes they don't fit exactly to your needs. Then you have to customize them a little bit (of course, only if the license allows it).
   
   
7. Customizing Plugins - the same as in previous chapter but now for plugins.
   
   
8. Customizing Components - the same as in previous chapters however you'll learn about the difference between the old components of Joomla 1.0 and Joomla 1.5. MVC rules.
   
   
9. Finding and Fixing Problems - what are the most common problems? Errors in PHP, server settings, conflict in libraries etc. When this information isn't enough then you can ask the Joomla! community.
   
   
10. Promoting and Tracking
    
    
11. Monetizing Our Site
    

I read this book quickly. Mainly because I've already created a website with Joomla! However it describes useful techniques and solutions. I wouldn't hack so many things and I'd save lot of time if I'd read it.


The most useful for me was the introduction to FireBug -as I'm not a web developer- and the tips and trick for the common mistakes. Enjoy the reading.

Joomla books to review

I started to create website stestiazdravi.cz in my spare time for my wife as I already reported in a previous post. And after the review of the LWUIT (j2me) book I took the chance to review other books. This time about Joomla as I use it at the web site.


Today the books arrived to my mailbox. On the first look it will be very interesting reading that I'd like to share with you. And it will hopefuly help to make the my wife's web site even better.


What's on my table?

	Joomla! 1.5x Customization: Make Your Site Adapt to Your Needs - I wish to read this book before I started to design the web site. It seems to be full of nice tricks and same basics descriptions that will help newbies and probably even more experienced Joomla users to start with Joomla.
	Joomla 1.5 template design - this is book for more experienced user that want to create their own template for Joomla. I've already hacked the ja_purity template a bi however I'd like to have it done correctly rather then hacked ;) Will this book help me. We'll see.

I wanted one more book to complete the whole story but it's still in production - Joomla! 1.5 SEO. OTOH, I have enough reading for now.

[Review] LWUIT 1.1 for Java ME Developers

I was asked by the Packt Publishing to review new book about Lightweight Toolkit for MIDP 2.0 and CLDC 1.1. During those long nights when I reviewed the book I learned a lot about the LWUIT and had a lot of fun. For those who don't have any experience with LWUIT or would like to start an UI in Java ME it's recommended reading. The LWUIT gives you APIs that allows you to create nice UI. And with the Themes it is easy to change the look and feel of your application.



Table of Contents:

• Chapter 1: Introduction to LWUIT
  
• Chapter 2: Components
  
• Chapter 3: The Container Family
  
• Chapter 4: The Label Family
  
• Chapter 5: List and ComboBox
  
• Chapter 6: TextArea and TextField
  
• Chapter 7: Arranging Widgets with Layout Managers
  
• Chapter 8: Creating a Custom Component
  
• Chapter 9: Resources Class, Resource File and LWUIT Designer
  
• Chapter 10: Using Themes
  
• Chapter 11: Adding Animations and Transitions
  
• Chapter 12: Painters
  
• Chapter 13: Effects and Logging—Useful Utilities
  

Links:

• LWUIT 1.1 for Java ME Developers from Packt Publishing
  
• LWUIT project website
  
• LWUIT features video
  
• LWUIT at general session at JavaOne 2008