September 2008
2008-09 Joomla! Community Magazine
Joomla! Community Magazine - Learning
Joomla! 1.5 and the Million Dollar Wedding
Joomla!, quick, rapid, fast, speedy and custom
Ring, ring,
Arno: Hello, this is Arno speaking.
Jessica: Hi Arno this is Jessica and you need to help me out!
Arno: Hi Jess what’s up, what can I help you with?
Jessica: Sander and me are selected to be one of the last 100 candidates for the Million Dollar Wedding TV show and we need a cool website fast to be able to promote ourselves …. and you are my man J
Arno: Ha, well thanks for the honor /Arno shakes head
Jessica: Can you get me a great website in the next couple of days? I know you are very busy but it’s me here, your lovely niece…
Arno: Yeah, yeah, ok, I can do that but you need to add and manage the content yourself trough the Joomla! Content Management System.
Jessica: Great, I can do that … I hope, I need a domain too so let me know when I can start, need to go now creating a flyer, catch you later, you’re the best I love you.
Sunday night, there I sat and my plate was full of work but what can you do in a situation like this. There is only one thing you can do … download Joomla! 1.5, fire up your localhost and get rocking.
The installer is running smoothly and within a few minutes I have the site without Joomla! default data up and running and ready for a new clean custom site and template. You could of course opt for a free template or a template from one of the many template clubs in a situation like this, but since building custom templates is my specialty and passion I always start my templates from scratch. I like things to be unique.
There are solid reasons for building a template from scratch to match the needs and goals a site or client has regarding branding or the markup. A site should be light weight, SEO effective and accessible. Free and template club templates are great but they are built to be used by many people and therefore in many cases include lots of functions, features and render lots of (x)HTML and CSS you may not even need for your website.
So, starting from scratch it is, and I will try to walk you through the process I take from start to finish in a fast and not too complicated way.
