Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Joomla Event Calendar Modules:

Joomla 1.6 does not have a built-in event calendar module so you have to find one to install. Joomla.org has a list of available event calendars. Since my group is working with version 1.6 and we are students, we are limited to choosing Non-Commercial modules that also have a 1.6 Native version of the module. There is really only one choice, GCalendar, But I will mention all four here.

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Joomla Contact Form Modules:

Every website needs a contact form and a Joomla CMS website is no exception. Joomla does have an existing built-in feature to create a contact form but there are other options as well. Associated Content has an informative article on how to work with contact forms in Joomla. The article is a descriptive tutorial on how to add, delete, edit, and unpublish a contact form. Joomla.org is the source to find as many as 39 contact form modules to choose from to plugin/addon to the Joomla website.

Since I am part of a group that is using Joomla version 1.6, the number of available choices is reduced to 13. Of those, 7 are commercial and 5 are free. Of those 5, 3 contact form modules are rated at 4.5 stars, 1 is rated at 4 stars and the last one has no stars. I have chosen to look at the three modules rated at 4.5 stars: Fox Contact Form, Rapid Contact, and Flexi Contact.

Monday, April 4, 2011

CMS Templates: Download or Design?

This paragraph is an addendum to this blog. After class, I have decided that it is necessary to learn to template whether you start from scratch or modify a template. You can't modify a structure if you don't understand how to operate in the CMS. It will most likely be easier to start from scratch because you can make the template the way you have designed it and not have to eliminate unnecessary aspects of a template that is already created.

Original Blog


On a continuing note from my last blog, I ultimately decided to join the group of students working with Joomla because it is considered friendlier for designers. Now the question is set before us as to whether we should download a fully designed template for our website redesign project or to design a template ourselves.

I am working in a group of four people and we will come to any final decisions as a group. For us, time is short and we are starting at the beginning of our learning curve. It is therefore my opinion that we should find a template that is closest to our wireframe design layout and then tweak that template to suit our needs.