Joomla development resources/help

Jazajay

Active Member
Hay peeps,
Been mega busy recently but hopefully now things have eased off a little I will be a round a bit more.
Anyhoo I have just accepted a new job as a web development project manager. Part of the job is that I am required to know how to use Joomla. My new bosses know at the moment I know more about the migratory movement of North African ducks, not much okay anything, than Joomla but are still happy to take me on as long as I am willing to learn it.

Now as some of you may know this to me means that in 2 months not only do I want to learn Joomla but also live, breathe and drink it and I was wondering what resources are good for
1) Beginners,
2) Advanced users,
3) Customizing and extending the modules, components, and plugins of Joomla myself.

3 is something my new bosses don't require but if I'm going to do a job I might as well do the job to 200% of my ability and still be able to offer it if the need arises.

I know PHP, setting up a server yarda, yarda, yarda so it is just Joomla resources I need opinions on.

Now I reckon I am going with all 3 of these:
~ Beginning Joomla! 2nd Edition: From Novice to Professional Expert's Voice in Open Source: Amazon.co.uk: Dan Rahmel: Books
~ Professional Joomla! (Programmer to Programmer): Amazon.co.uk: Dan Rahmel: Books

Then for personalized extension development:
~ Learning Joomla! 1.5 Extension Development: Creating Modules, Components, and Plugins with PHP: Amazon.co.uk: Joseph LeBlanc: Books

So any one like to recommend any others?
If you do please tell me the pluses and negatives of it and ideally why you found it helpful.

Cheers ,
Arrogant Jaz :)
 
I don't know much about Joomla other than I've dabbled with it and know my clients can get on with wordpress where as joomla they may as well learn to build the site themselves. (from my limited experience).

So first off... if you know better (as I'm pretty sure you do) put your views forward and see if you can offer a better solution your more suited to and highly experienced for.

Second, I'm not saying don't buy books but the internet moves fast and there's probably more resources on blogs etc that may be more upto date (although unhelpfully I don't know of any for joomla as its not my bag, sorry)..

I'm sure to a man of your expertise it won't be a tough task, I'll keep my potatoes peeled and let you know if I come across anything!
 
Cheers people. :)
@Levi
Nope but I sure will cheers fella. :)

@Tbwcf
Cheers dude the company I work for/will be is a web design company and they are moving from ASP to PHP based on Joomla. Their developers have spent time learning Joomla. Now I imagine you know my thoughts on free CMS's, personally I would prefer to create my own, but due to the clients taking their time to get back to them they want to steam line the process with a CMS and they have chosen Joomla which their devs. have spent time getting to know.
They have chosen Joomla and that's my bag really. I don't have a problem learning it I welcome the small challenge TBH.

But I find books to be more useful I suppose, I know it can get out dated but once I have the main jist of it keeping upto date allows me to keep my skills fresh.

But cheers dude. If you do hear of anyone who dabbles in it ask them how they tought themselves. I will appreciate it. :)
 
If anyone is going to learn Joomla under no circumstances get professional Joomla the red one from wrox.

Dear lord for your sanity don't. The book starts off by painting a doomsday picture of the world/internet with no light at the end of the tunnel, but wait then came Joomla and all the dangerous PHP sites suddenly became safe. I mean I have bought the book I don't care if you are in love with it get on with the code you don't need to sell it any more. That is not that far off either if you think I am exaggerating. :mad:

He then spends so much time on stupid things, like 3/4's of a page explaining to you examples of images, or 3/4's or page on how to take a page shot, not how to crop it though which is surely the harder bit of the 2.

But when you want to edit your password his explanation is find it and thats the md5 hash version. Next get the md5 hash of your password and place it in there.

Now I had no issues with this but what information is better 3/4's of a page telling you how to capture a screen shot or 3 lines showing you how to use a Md5 hash function on your password?

Other examples are just long winded, or requires you to all ready know how to find sections of Joomla,bare in mind this teaches you the basics and apparently some of the advanced stuff, and I'm currently spending more time going huh?
Rereading what he has put several times and going o you mean an include then, or this part goes there. It is so flaming patronizing it is unreal.

O and correcting his CSS, really long winded on that one. But honestly save your time and money, I have never said this about a book but once I have finished it it is honestly getting shredded and I'm getting another one as a reference. Not even going to sell it as I'm not that cruel.

Think that is my rant over for the day. :mad:
 
Haha, not bought a book I hated that much yet. Finding myself not having the time to 'churn' through hefty text books lately though. Which I need to sort out as so much I want to learn haha
 
O I hope not all this is teaching me is CMS's should be done yourself, in fact hell I could have designed one faster than I'm learning this one. In fact total hours spent on this book so far 12, total hours building CMS from scratch 3-4. O well only 400 pages left of book 1 then on to book 2 and 3. What a massive waste of time. I'm hoping it's just this book that is written this badly I really am. :(

Normally the wrox ones rock tbh, looks like a bad one got through though. :cry:
 
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