Seamus Bellamy - Joomla! For Dummies

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Joomla! For Dummies, 2nd Edition

by Seamus Bellamy

Joomla! For Dummies, 2nd Edition

Published by
Wiley Publishing, Inc.
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Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774
www.wiley.com

Copyright 2011 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Published simultaneously in Canada

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2010943060

ISBN: 978-0-470-59902-0

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

About the Author

Seamus Bellamy is a writer, web designer, and scofflaw educated at the University of Kings College in Halifax. His diverse resume includes time spent working in the intelligence community, private sector security, and as a journalist. His work is published on a regular basis both domestically and internationally, most notably in Mac|Life Magazine and Irish Music Magazine. Seamus is a proud Gaelic speaker, a technology enthusiast, and has been known to play a mean bodhran and bouzouki although not at the same time.

Dedication

Many thanks to Lynn Beighley for the moral and technical support, and of course, to my family thank you for enduring over three decades of fountain pens, skullduggery, and laptops.

Authors Acknowledgments

Id like to thank Kathy Simpson, Beth Taylor, Eric vanBok, and Kyle Looper of Wiley for their tireless efforts on this book, as well as the Joomla community for its invaluable assistance in filling in many of the details.

Publishers Acknowledgments

Were proud of this book; please send us your comments at http://dummies.custhelp.com. For other comments, please contact our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 877-762-2974, outside the U.S. at 317-572-3993, or fax 317-572-4002.

Some of the people who helped bring this book to market include the following:

Acquisitions, Editorial, and Media Development

Project Editor: Beth Taylor

Acquisitions Editor: Kyle Looper

Copy Editor: Beth Taylor

Technical Editor: Eric vanBok

Editorial Manager: Jodi Jensen

Editorial Assistant: Amanda Graham

Sr. Editorial Assistant: Cherie Case

Cartoons: Rich Tennant (www.the5thwave.com)

Composition Services

Project Coordinator: Sheree Montgomery

Layout and Graphics: Thomas Borah, Carl Byers, Vida Noffsinger

Proofreaders: Jessica Kramer, The Well-Chosen Word

Indexer: Christine Karpeles

Publishing and Editorial for Technology Dummies

Richard Swadley , Vice President and Executive Group Publisher

Andy Cummings , Vice President and Publisher

Mary Bednarek , Executive Acquisitions Director

Mary C. Corder , Editorial Director

Publishing for Consumer Dummies

Diane Graves Steele , Vice President and Publisher

Composition Services

Debbie Stailey , Director of Composition Services

Introduction

J oomla (the exclamation point Joomla! wont be used in the text of this book, for the sake of making it more readable,) gives you total control of your Web site the layout, the navigation menus, the text, everything. In turn, this book gives you total control of Joomla.

Today, users are demanding more from Web sites. Its not enough to have static text on your Web site not if you want a steady stream of visitors. Youve got to update your pages continually, making your site fresh and keeping it new. Youve got to have an attractively, professionally formatted site. Youve got to have tons of extras: polls and e-mail signups and newsflashes and menus, and more.

Who can afford the time to maintain a site like that and write the content too?

Now you can. Content Management Systems (CMSes) like Joomla allow people put together spectacular sites with very little work.

Want to publish a new article on your site? No problem. Want to let users rate your articles with a clickable bar of stars? Also no problem. Want to link your articles with a cool system of drop-down menus? Joomlas got you covered. Interested in allowing people to log into your site to gain special privileges? You can do that too. Have you wanted to let users search every page on your site? Yep no problem at all.