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The Art of Joomla February 2009 Review

Written by Andrew Eddie Friday, 27 February 2009 23:18

February has been a big month for The Art of Joomla with more blogs, releasing of new Understanding the Structure of Joomla diagrams and the opening of The Art of Joomla Developer Reference.

Joomla Blogs

This month I've produced a couple of popular blog posts.

Layout Overrides: Popup Login Box describes how you can create a popup login box out-of-the-box with Joomla. Don't buy fancy modules for this - you can do it yourself for free.

Template Tip: Hiding Modules when a User Logs In looks at a few, simple lines of code that allow you to hide modules when a user logs into your site. This is really useful if you want to hide page elements from people that are teasers to entice people to register (and you don't want them in the face of your registered users).

Understanding the Structure of Joomla

If you monitor the Joomla CMS traffic on Twitter, there are lot of questions about how Joomla can do this or that, and a lot of misconceptions as well. In an effort to try to remedy the confusion I've produced a free PDF with diagrams describing various aspects of Joomla. The Joomla Structure PDF is a living document and I'll updating it with new slides as I get the time and inspiration. If you have any ideas for new diagrams please don't hesitate to post suggestions in the comments.

The Art of Joomla Developer Reference

I've been looking at writing a real book for some time but have been frustrated by the fact that it is out of date by the time you get your hands on it (and none of the books available are written by people who write the code for Joomla). I've also been accumulating course notes from my training courses. To attempt to bridge the gap, I've opened up a subscription section on The Art of Joomla: The Art of Joomla Developer Reference. This will be, I think, the world's best living, online reference for developers and site designers to explore the art of developing web sites and extensions for Joomla.

There are a couple of free sample chapters so you can get a feel for how the reference is written:

• Logging to files
• Starting a component

It's not finished yet. Actually it will never be finished which is why I've released it online. The reference will also include a lot of the key changes for version 1.6 as it get closer to release. The subscription is AU$49.50 for a year - that's cheaper than buying a printed version, friendlier to the environment and more up to date.

Next Month

Next month's feature blog is one of my best layout override topics yet. I'll be explaining how you can turn a Joomla Section Blog layout into something that looks like the table of contents for a book - specifically I'll be showing you how I created The Art of Joomla Developer Reference page. This will be a really useful example for many sites I'm sure.

The Art of Joomla Developer Reference will also expand on it's sections for writing components and look at template overrides as I prepare for more training courses in conjunction with the Joomla Day in Brisbane, Australia in May 20009.

Until next time, I hope you enjoy learning the art of Joomla at www.theartofjoomla.com.

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