Sandbox

Hi everyone!

I'm pretty new to Joomla!, but not new to web development in general. Starting out on a new web site for a customer, I choosed Mambo as a CMS for the site. After having huge problems with basic tasks such as simple page editing (read more on http://forum.mamboserver.com/showthread.php?t=71972), I threw Mambo out, and installed Joomla! instead.

It works great! I think. I don't know yet, 'cause I haven't been able to do very much of what I expected. With the popularity of Mambo and Joomla!, I can't believe how poor the documentation is! Maybe I'm looking at the wrong places, but I've been searching joomla.org and googling the net to find answers to simple questions without success. So I'm starting to believe there is something seriously wrong with the documentation. If any developer of the Joomla! team reads this, please look at http://www.joomla.org with fresh eyes and tell me how a newcomer should get started:

First, you downloads Joomla! 1.0.8. The installation is also fairly simple. But then you want to learn how to use Joomla!, and set up your own site with your looks, functionality and content. So you probably click on the Help menu link on joomla.org. or click the FAQ in the left column. What do you get? Info on migrating from Mambo... come on! That's not what a newcomer wants!

Ok, so you take at look at the Official Manuals. First off - their only available as HTML pages - no downloadble PDF to print out and carry around. Annoying, since I do most of my reading away from the computer. And what are these manuals? Installation, Administratrator, Developer, Joomla! Glossary and Editorial Style Guide. The last one is really funny - there are guidelines on how to write documentation properly, but almost no documentation! Which is more important?

The installation guide was helpful during installation, and the Administrator manual gives you some clues on fundamental basics of Joomla!, but it really doesn't say how you should start creating a site the way you want it to be. There are no how-tos, only explanation of different words used by Joomla!.

So you start to look at the Developer manual, desperate to find a clue on where to start. And it starts out fine whit topis like "Basic Template and Page Design". But when you start to read you notice that a lot of topics are missing, like the Style sheet section. A fat "TODO" is all you get. And then the Developer manual moves on with basic explanation on how to create your own modules, mambots and components. Not a single word on how to create your own template from scratch to the ending -tag.

The newcomer is now getting a bit frustrating. With so many users, there must be more to read on the net! So he finds 3rd party companies that have written some nice tutorials, and from the Net Shine Software you could download the Joomla! Quick Start Guide (why isn't this document on the top of the Help section???), which gives you a .

But still, I found no information explaining all functions of Joomla!. For instance, my page titles are in  light blue with very small font size. How do I change such a basic thing? I know, changing the .contentheading class in the template_css.css does the trick - but I found this out reverse engineering Joomla (looking at the source code that is) - but reverse engineering all of Joomla! is a bit too time consuming for me.

I'm this close [holding up my thumb and index finger very close] to drop Joomla! and find something else, so please tell me there are more documentation hidden out there somewhere. I need info on all aspects on Joomla! - how core components work, how I change the layout of what mosMainBody outputs, how modules and mambots can be used and changed to suit my needs. I'm tired of searching the net finding other people asking the same questions that I do, but without getting any proper answers.

sun,
thanks for your feedback.
Just so you are aware, the core team is aware of the issue you bring up, and plans are in place to release much better documentation with the release of 1.1

i am moving this to the feedback forum.

Thanks again for your input. It is input like yours that makes community-driven open source software thrive.

Your comments are unfortunately well founded and I say this as the Co-Leader of the Documentation Group.

We are very aware of the shortcoming and there is currently a lot of behind the scenes work being carried out to try and rectify the situation. In and effort to catch up with development both the General and Developer Documentation teams have ceased work on any further 1.0.x documentation, instead we are committed to full documentation for 1.1 upon its release.

I know this will not help you short term, but the volume that needs to be written and the lack of human resources meant that we needed to take this action so as to catch up, rather than continually chasing the current releases which has been our major problem for a long time (even when we were all Mambo).

The up side is that I predict that the release of Joomla! 1.1 will have the best set of both Developer and Administrator documents that have every accompanied Joomla! or Mambo.

In regards to PDF's etc... the development of the documentation will initially be in a wiki but we are committed to incorporating the resulting API references and tutorials into Docbook format for integration into the phpDocumentor derived output. This will provide not only PDF's but also CHM's and HTML output which will be available to all.

For now,  the best I can do is acknowledge your comments and again re-iterate that documentation is very high on the agenda.

I hope you can stick with us till 1.1.

Cheers
Shayne

PS... once your familiar with Joomla! feel free to come join our band of writers 

Templlate tut': http://www.mambosolutions.com/dw_tutorial/
There's ome others around.
I'm starting to write some too.. starting with basic stuff.

manuman wrote:I hope you can stick with us till 1.1.

Yeah, I probably will. For two reasons:

1) I've already gone through several CMS, and I don't have time to evaluate more for the time being. I need to start develop the real web site at once (or last month actually...)

2) I've read a few notes on what you're up to with the future releases, and I'm excited. I hope this will be a CMS that is easy to use not for editors and administrators, but also for people like me, who have to develop unique functionality for my clients web sites.

manuman wrote:PS... once your familiar with Joomla! feel free to come join our band of writers 

First things first. I need to find how to get familiar before I can start to contribute. There must be more to it than what I have found so far. How has everyone else gone from being a newcomer to a contributor? Not by reverse engineering other templates and core components I hope?

eyezberg wrote:Templlate tut': http://www.mambosolutions.com/dw_tutorial/
There's ome others around.
I'm starting to write some too.. starting with basic stuff.

The Dreamweaver tutorial was great since I use Dreamweaver for all development. It also thaught me about Mambo/Joomla!-extensions and the MSAS/JSAS. But now I need to go on to the next step. And everywhere I look, there are template tutorials covering "basic stuff". Too bad you're about to join that club instead of writing a tutorial for the intermediate section...

What would you consider not basic, but intermediate?

Here's some links for you (can by en, fr and de languages, haven't checked..):
http://www.churchministriesonline.com/Tutorials.html
http://www.jlleblanc.com/blogcategory/Tutorials/
http://www.joomlaos.de/CSS_Guide.html
http://www.joomlafacile.com/content/view/72/65/

http://www.churchministriesonline.com/Tutorials.html
Have been there before. That site is actually one of my favourites. But it ends too soon. I have actually managed to create a template of my own. It puts the content where I want it. But has extra features (like displaying author name, having headlines in blue etc) that I don't want, and I still don't know if its ok to edit core css-files, or if I should make custom files in my own template.

http://www.jlleblanc.com/blogcategory/Tutorials/
Seems to be too specific about this Daily Message Module/Component? Don't seem to find any general info about adjusting the look and feel of core Joomla! components/modules/mambots/content.

http://www.joomlaos.de/CSS_Guide.html
Ich sprechen nicht Deutsch. But this one looks great. Is there possibly a similar page in English somewhere?

http://www.joomlafacile.com/content/view/72/65/
Je ne parle français pas très bien. But this one looks great. Is there possibly a similar page in English somewhere?

What I'm really looking for is - par example -

• explanation on how to change the look on core functions such as back links (I don't wan't it to be "[Back]" in bold. What if want it to be "< Back" in italics?)
• explanation on how to modify module output to suit my needs, for instance - I want to display the date, headline and link to my top three latest news on the front page. On the news archive page I want to show all news articles grouped by year. Can I modify the existing news component, or do I have to create my own? If the latter - where can I find info on how to start such a task?
• a guide that shows what can be altered through the admin panel, what can be done by changing pure css (and which css-files I should look in), and what has to be changed on PHP-level.

.sun wrote:2) I've read a few notes on what you're up to with the future releases, and I'm excited. I hope this will be a CMS that is easy to use not for editors and administrators, but also for people like me, who have to develop unique functionality for my clients web sites.

You're actually going to find development much easier with 1.1

There has been a large amount of work done refactoring the basic structure of Joomla! with a primary goal being a better development environment. This work will be continued through the 1.x.x series.

Your quite correct to be excited 

Cheers

Have you looked at the FAQ forums here? Some of it may be too basic but I know many other users have attempted to share what they know in the form of a FAQ. I rarely look at the official documentation and instead just search here.

manuman wrote:
I know this will not help you short term, but the volume that needs to be written and the lack of human resources meant that we needed to take this action so as to catch up, rather than continually chasing the current releases which has been our major problem for a long time (even when we were all Mambo).

I think the doc team are doing a terrific job, well done. But if human resources is lacking then why not ask for permission from other Joomla sites that have written fantastic free tutorials to be published on this site so newbies don't need to jump from place to place trying to locate useful info. I know there are many great links in the FAQ forum but would it not be better just to have some of these tutorials in the help section since often it would be the first thing anyone new to Joomla will click on before entering the forum.

Anyway, keep up the great work.

Great comments .sun

Documentation to programs is not as easy a task as you propose.  First off, one of the most difficult things in making 'help files' or tutorials is gearing this towards a target audience.  Joomla and Mambo did this absoutely well - I don't say that they covered the whole 'web-users demographic', but they have done an great job to the date.  Most of their short-comings have been picked up by third-party tutorials as are included in previous posts.

From the sound of it (and also your confession), you are a newbie.  Do not feel discouraged, but when you "threw out Mambo" and "took on Joomla!", did you not know that these CMS's are 'nearly' the same thing? same people, same CONCEPT but looking towards greater development and greater horizons, maybe in-turn even encompassing many 'newbies'.

I am utterly dissappointed that you would criticize Joomla for 'not having .css tutorials'.  What tha?  Why not blame them too for lack of any random user's knowledge of basic .html?  How can you know a term such as CMS, but not know simple tags?  Before you resulted to Mambo & Joomla, I'm sure you must have researched other CMS's or did you not? 

I have spent a lot of months researching CMS's for small business, non-profit and large-capacity organizations and Joomla has turned out to be one of the best (my top 3).  Numerous of other solutions out there are super costly as is the support that comes with it.  Several other open source solutions are terribly hard to get started without the basic knowlege of database tables and XML coding.  So, in my opinion, although your opinions are well-founded, I think you place too much ones on Joomla for their product, in terms of support documentation.  If you say you used google, better get back to the engine again and open your eyes as you google! you will be very surprised how much help is available out there, from the greater joomla community, for beautiful Joomla.

.sun has not posted much since these posts but I think his comment about the css was what other users have asked for which is a css file with only the styles in it that are used by the default install of Joomla. Some templates have some styles which others don't and it's hard to know which are necessary or which are old styles no longer used that are just taking up space. Some community members have created what they have found to be a "blank css" file but there is nothing official.

Focal guy, that makes a lot of sense.  Thanks for the clarification

As someone who is new to Joomla!, I have gone from very excited with the CMS and it's ease of installation to extremely frustrated with it's lack of relevant information. I've read the beginner FAQ's, searched hopelessly through the forums and posted asking questions but haven't gotten the support or information I require. Even the components and modules I've downloaded sadly have very little in the way of documentation, the whole process makes it difficult if not impossible for a newbie like myself to get anywhere with this system.

In the end, due to time constraints it looks like I'm going to be forced to ditch the 30 hours I've put into this project (mostly spent searching) and switch back to another CMS. Please, please help us out here with some relevant, intermediate level documentation!

Pentarix wrote:As someone who is new to Joomla!, I have gone from very excited with the CMS and it's ease of installation to extremely frustrated with it's lack of relevant information. I've read the beginner FAQ's, searched hopelessly through the forums and posted asking questions but haven't gotten the support or information I require. Even the components and modules I've downloaded sadly have very little in the way of documentation, the whole process makes it difficult if not impossible for a newbie like myself to get anywhere with this system.

In the end, due to time constraints it looks like I'm going to be forced to ditch the 30 hours I've put into this project (mostly spent searching) and switch back to another CMS. Please, please help us out here with some relevant, intermediate level documentation!

Pentarix - you have asked one question, bumped that one question, and complained in the other three posts that make up the total of your five posts at this time.  You registered three days ago, so I think you are being a little quick to judge, but I am sorry that you cannot seem to get your site working the way you want it to.

Your post regarding redirecting upon login is a complex question, and it may take some time for someone to answer.  I wish you luck with your site.

Pentarix wrote: Please, please help us out here with some relevant, intermediate level documentation!

I think I am going to rename this: Absolute Beginners Guide to Joomla! because many people are taking offense to be considered a beginner! I think I will call it the Absolute Guide to Joomla! instead.

Pentarix. If you read through this material, you will have what you need. There are PDF's which seem very important to people (I like them to because I can print and read.) I can't imagine what you need beyond this! These are thing items I read when I started six months ago and I was very able to work with Joomla!

< http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic ... #msg255726 >

If you have read all of that information and still need more -- please provide specifics on what is missing for you. Thanks. Amy

MMMedia wrote:Your post regarding redirecting upon login is a complex question, and it may take some time for someone to answer.  I wish you luck with your site.

I appreciate the criticism MMMedia but I'm just being honest. No one, yourself included, has take the time to answer my question. I did only register a short time ago however many people, myself included, lurk forums for awhile and only register when they need help, which is my case. Because someone only registered lately or doesn't have a high post count, doesn't mean they've never been here or read the FAQ's before.

I'm just trying to make the point that I do like the CMS very much but I have 12 main problems I need to deal with in order to finish this project and having read through the majority of the documentation, I'm still not finding the answers to those "complex questions". What makes it even more frustrating is when people reply "Your post regarding redirecting upon login is a complex question, and it may take some time for someone to answer" and yet don't take the time to answer it.

btw I'm not bashing anyone or the site but if this is a good support site then I think it's important that you show that by actually helping people instead of telling them to go look in documentation they've already read and found to be lacking. I've taken the time to ask because I require help finding the answer, not to be told to go look again. It's not that it's not there but I can't find it so an answer or a link is more helpful to me at this point.

Thanks for taking the time to reply to my concerned post, I appreciate hearing your thoughts!

I don't know the answer to your question as I have not had a need to redirect upon login..  That is why I have not responded to it.  It is not an issue of not taking the time to respond to it.

I answered the redirect question:
< http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic ... #msg297610>

Hackwar answered the newsflash module for users who are not logged on:
< http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic ... #msg297044 >

I PM'ed Pentarix and asked if there were more questions -- those were the only two I can find.

So, Pentarix if you have additional questions, please post them one at a time and feel free to PM me the URL. We can help you get answers. The reason that I offered the user's guides is that sometimes people can't find them. I am glad that you were able to find good material.

Thanks! Amy

Quasar wrote:Documentation to programs is not as easy a task as you propose.

I never said it was easy. My point was that the official documentation is very poor, with the heavy use of "TODO" everywhere you look. Telling end users to look for third party documentation is kinda like saying "I don't care about docs, I myself know how everything works".

Quasar wrote:From the sound of it (and also your confession), you are a newbie.

Newbie to Joomla yes. Newbie to HTML or web development in general no. I threw Mambo 4.5.3 out because it didn't work on my clients server. Especially the very important Save button didn't work. I spent hours figuring out why, but I failed. Joomla! 1.0.7 did not have this flaw. Obviously there is a difference in the core code between Mambo 4.5.3 and Joomla! 1.0.7. I'm not going to spend more time searching for the error in Mambo - I'm just happy Joomla worked out fine.

And I do know that Joomla is a spin off from Mambo - that's why I tried Joomla when Mambo failed. Otherwise I would have moved on to another CMS.

Quasar wrote:I am utterly dissappointed that you would criticize Joomla for 'not having .css tutorials'.  What tha?

As focalguy guessed, I'm not asking for a CSS manual. I'm looking for explanations to Joomlas classes and definitions. What is "contentpaneopen" and where is it used? Which class modifies the Read more-function (I know now that it is controlled by the readon-class, but I had to find it out myself 'cause there is no manual on joomla.org that explains such a simple thing).

Quasar wrote:I have spent a lot of months researching CMS's for small business, non-profit and large-capacity organizations and Joomla has turned out to be one of the best (my top 3).

What other CMS would you recommend? I've been working with Plone for another customer (they choosed it, I have nothing to say about it) and find that it is very well documented, but not as userfriendly as they claim to be. I also work a lot with EpiServer, but that's a commercial product and you can't get a developer license for free so it's not something I recommend to my clients.

Perhaps this book can help.. http://www.packtpub.com/joomla/book/mid ... vl4o&nbsp;

.sun -

It does not make sense to me that you would respond to this thread after six weeks! do you need help, really?

I answered a question for someone else on CSS resources here:
< http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic ... #msg342682 >

Hackwar and I answered each of the questions posed by Pentarix.

If you do, please email me at [email protected] and I will personally make certain that you get the assistance and information you need.

Otherwise, there is enough stress and turmoil to cover the world several times over -- let us not drag up arguments from that far back.

Thanks, Amy

AmyStephen wrote:.sun -

It does not make sense to me that you would respond to this thread after six weeks! do you need help, really?

Believe it or not, but I have a life outside Joomla. A life filled with other clients' web projects and social engagements with my family and friends too. The past six weeks (is it that long really?) have been hard work struggeling with my Joomlasite and other sites. One of these weeks I've been very ill and haven't worked at all. I simply haven't had the time to visit joomla.org until yesterday.

I have read almost all comments and messages by now, and I will get back to all of you who have tried to help me. I'm not ungrateful, I just lack the time to surf this forum. But Quasar seemed to have misunderstood my point, so I just had to comment on that.

Regarding my troubles with the site, most of them are solved. I posted a new problem yesterday regarding the use of two domains on one site, which doesn't fit in nicely with Joomlas heavy use of absolute links through mosConfig_live_site. But a nice little hack in the file /includes/sef.php solved that problem.

I'm going to present the Joomla version of the site for my client today, I'm just verifying the last parts right now.


In case it might take a while for me before I return to this forum: Thank you all who have either tried to solve my problems with tips and links to resources, or even if you just made a general comment on something I said!

I'm looking forward to the release of Joomla 1.5 - may it arrive soon!

.sun wrote:Believe it or not, but I have a life outside Joomla. A life filled with other clients' web projects and social engagements with my family and friends too. The past six weeks (is it that long really?) have been hard work struggeling with my Joomlasite and other sites. One of these weeks I've been very ill and haven't worked at all. I simply haven't had the time to visit joomla.org until yesterday.

It must also be remembered that this is the same pressures that exist for everybody who is invovled with Joomla!, either as a Core Team Member or as a Working Group Member 

Remember all those involved in Project Joomla! are unpaid volunteers.



Anyway there is now a consolidated User Manual available here:
http://help.joomla.org/images/User_manu ... mbined.pdf

.sun wrote:

AmyStephen wrote:.sun -

It does not make sense to me that you would respond to this thread after six weeks! do you need help, really?

Believe it or not, but I have a life outside Joomla.

Just trying to figure out if you still need help, or not.  This thread was a bit "heavy" and "negative" -- we tried very hard to find the real questions and answer them. If you have specific problems, I wanted to know what they were so that we could address them. 

.sun wrote:I'm going to present the Joomla version of the site for my client today, I'm just verifying the last parts right now.

WAY cool! Congratulations!

.sun wrote:In case it might take a while for me before I return to this forum: Thank you all who have either tried to solve my problems with tips and links to resources, or even if you just made a general comment on something I said!

That is nice, thanks!

.sun wrote:I'm looking forward to the release of Joomla 1.5 - may it arrive soon!

I am excited, too! May it arrive healthy and ready for use! That will be soon enough for me!

Good responses, .sun, thanks! Amy