Got a question? With more than 140,000 members, the online forums at forum.joomla.org are a great resource for both new and experienced users. Go ahead, ask your toughest questions, the community is waiting to see what you're going to do with your Joomla! site.

Do you want to show off your new Joomla! Web site? Go ahead, we have a section dedicated to that on our forum.

Do you want to join in?

If you think working with Joomla! is fun, wait until you start working on it. We're passionate about helping Joomla! Users make the jump to becoming contributing members of the community, so there are many ways you can help Joomla!'s development:

• Submit news about Joomla!. We syndicate all Joomla! related news on our news portal. If you have some Joomla! news that you would like to share with the community, please submit your short story, article, announcement or review here.
• Report bugs and request features in our trackers. Please read Reporting Bugs, for details on how we like our bug reports served up
• Submit patches for new and/or fixed behaviour. Please read Submitting Patches, for details on how to submit a patch.
• Join the developer forums and share your ideas for how to improve Joomla!. We're always open to suggestions, although we're likely to be sceptical of large-scale suggestions without some code to back it up.
• Join any of the Joomla! Working Groups and bring your personal expertise to the Joomla! community. More info about the different working groups can be found on the Working Group Roll Call.

That's all you need to know if you'd like to join the Joomla! development community.

Begonnen hatten wir dieses Projekt als regionale Plattform mit Informationen aus den deutschen Bundesländern. Mittlerweile hat sich das Projekt fast von selbst zu einem Portal mit Informationen aus den verschiedensten nationalen und internationalen Themen entwickelt. Dieser Entwicklung haben wir in den letzten Monaten Rechnung getragen und einige neue Features hinzugefügt.

Out of the box, Joomla! does a great job of managing the content needed to make your Web site sing. But for many people, the true power of Joomla! lies in the application framework that makes it possible for developers all around the world to create powerful add-ons that are called Extensions. An Extension is used to add capabilities to Joomla! that do not exist in the base core code. Here are just some examples of the hundreds of available Extensions:

• Dynamic form builders
• Business or organisational directories
• Document management
• Image and multimedia galleries
• E-commerce and shopping cart engines
• Forums and chat software
• Calendars
• E-mail newsletters
• Data collection and reporting tools
• Banner advertising systems
• Paid subscription services
• and many, many, more

You can find more examples over at our ever growing Joomla! Extensions Directory. Prepare to be amazed at the amount of exciting work produced by our active developer community!

A useful guide to the Extension site can be found at:
http://extensions.joomla.org/content/view/15/63/

Types of Extensions

There are five types of extensions:

• Components
• Modules
• Templates
• Plugins
• Languages

You can read more about the specifics of these using the links in the Article Index - a Table of Contents (yet another useful feature of Joomla!) - at the top right or by clicking on the Next link below.

Components

A Component is the largest and most complex of the Extension types. Components are like mini-applications that render the main body of the page. An analogy that might make the relationship easier to understand would be that Joomla! is a book and all the Components are chapters in the book. The core Article Component (com_content), for example, is the mini-application that handles all core Article rendering just as the core registration Component (com_user) is the mini-application that handles User registration.

Many of Joomla!'s core features are provided by the use of default Components such as:

• Contacts
• Front Page
• News Feeds
• Banners
• Mass Mail
• Polls

A Component will manage data, set displays, provide functions, and in general can perform any operation that does not fall under the general functions of the core code.

Components work hand in hand with Modules and Plugins to provide a rich variety of content display and functionality aside from the standard Article and content display. They make it possible to completely transform Joomla! and greatly expand its capabilities.

Modules

A more lightweight and flexible Extension used for page rendering is a Module. Modules are used for small bits of the page that are generally less complex and able to be seen across different Components. To continue in our book analogy, a Module can be looked at as a footnote or header block, or perhaps an image/caption block that can be rendered on a particular page. Obviously you can have a footnote on any page but not all pages will have them. Footnotes also might appear regardless of which chapter you are reading. Simlarly Modules can be rendered regardless of which Component you have loaded.

Modules are like little mini-applets that can be placed anywhere on your site. They work in conjunction with Components in some cases and in others are complete stand alone snippets of code used to display some data from the database such as Articles (Newsflash) Modules are usually used to output data but they can also be interactive form items to input data for example the Login Module or Polls.

Modules can be assigned to Module positions which are defined in your Template and in the back-end using the Module Manager and editing the Module Position settings. For example, "left" and "right" are common for a 3 column layout.

Displaying Modules

Each Module is assigned to a Module position on your site. If you wish it to display in two different locations you must copy the Module and assign the copy to display at the new location. You can also set which Menu Items (and thus pages) a Module will display on, you can select all Menu Items or you can pick and choose by holding down the control key and selecting multiple locations one by one in the Modules [Edit] screen

Note: Your Main Menu is a Module! When you create a new Menu in the Menu Manager you are actually copying the Main Menu Module (mod_mainmenu) code and giving it the name of your new Menu. When you copy a Module you do not copy all of its parameters, you simply allow Joomla! to use the same code with two separate settings.

Newsflash Example

Newsflash is a Module which will display Articles from your site in an assignable Module position. It can be used and configured to display one Category, all Categories, or to randomly choose Articles to highlight to Users. It will display as much of an Article as you set, and will show a Read more... link to take the User to the full Article.

The Newsflash Component is particularly useful for things like Site News or to show the latest Article added to your Web site.

Plugins

One of the more advanced Extensions for Joomla! is the Plugin. In previous versions of Joomla! Plugins were known as Mambots. Aside from changing their name their functionality has been expanded. A Plugin is a section of code that runs when a pre-defined event happens within Joomla!. Editors are Plugins, for example, that execute when the Joomla! event onGetEditorArea occurs. Using a Plugin allows a developer to change the way their code behaves depending upon which Plugins are installed to react to an event.

Languages

New to Joomla! 1.5 and perhaps the most basic and critical Extension is a Language. Joomla! is released with multiple Installation Languages but the base Site and Administrator are packaged in just the one Language en-GB - being English with GB spelling for example. To include all the translations currently available would bloat the core package and make it unmanageable for uploading purposes. The Language files enable all the User interfaces both Front-end and Back-end to be presented in the local preferred language. Note these packs do not have any impact on the actual content such as Articles.

More information on languages is available from the Joomla! help site: Language Packs and Localised Releases
http://help.joomla.org/content/view/1651/243/

Joomla! runs on any platform including Windows, most flavours of Linux, several Unix versions, and the Apple OS/X platform. Joomla! depends on PHP and the MySQL database to deliver dynamic content.

The minimum requirements are:

• Apache 1.x, 2.x and higher
• PHP 4.3 and higher
• MySQL 3.23 and higher

It will also run on alternative server platforms such as Windows IIS - provided they support PHP and MySQL - but these require additional configuration in order for the Joomla! core package to be successful installed and operated.

Here are some interesting facts about Joomla!

• Over 140,000 active registered Users on the Official Joomla! community forum and more on the many international community sites.
  • over 1,000,000 posts in over 200,000 topics
  • over 1,200 posts per day
  • growing at 150 new participants each day!
• 1168 Projects on the JoomlaCode (joomlacode.org ). All for open source addons by third party developers.
  • Nearly 1,900,000 downloads of Joomla! since the migration to JoomlaCode in March 2007.
    
• 2200+ Extensions for Joomla! have been registered on the Joomla! Extension Directory
• Joomla.org exceeds 2 TB of traffic per month!
• Alexa report [November 2007]: Joomla.org at #690 of the busiest Web sites in the world.

Support

Support for the Joomla! CMS can be found on several places. The best place to start would be the official Help Site. Here you can help yourself to the information that is regularly published and updated as Joomla! develops. There is much more to come too!

Of course you should not forget the Help System of the CMS itself. On the topmenu in the Back-end Control panel you find the Help button which will provide you with lots of explanation on features.

Another great place would of course be the Forum . On the Joomla! Forum you can find help and support from Community members as well as from Joomla! Core members and Working Group members. The forum contains a lot of information, FAQ's, just about anything you are looking for in terms of support.

Two other resources for Support are the Joomla! Developer Network (JDN) and the Joomla! Extensions Directory (JED). The Developer Network for example provides lots of technical information for the experienced Developer as well as those new to Joomla! and development work in general. The JED whilst not a support site in the strictest sense has many of the Extensions that you will need as you develop your own Web site.

The Joomla! Core members are regularly posting their blog reports about several topics such as programming techniques used in Joomla!, Security, Events and more. You can even subscribe to get notified by e-mail when a new blog post is made!

Documentation

Joomla! Documentation can of course be found on the Help Site. You can find information such as an Installation Guide, User and Administrator manuals, Frequently Asked Questions and a lot more. The User Documentation Team are the guardians of the documentation relating to the practical use of Joomla!. The Developer Documentation Team are the stalwarts behind detailing how Joomla! works from the ground up and how you can develop your own Extensions and Templates and much more.

Other than the documentation provided by the Joomla! Documentation Work Groups there are also books written about Joomla! You can find a listing of these books in the Joomla! Bookshelf.

Want to help?

If you want to help in the documentation project for Joomla! then please post your details on the User Documentation Forum or the Developer Documentation Forum

If you're new to Web publishing systems, you'll find that Joomla! delivers sophisticated solutions to your online needs. It can deliver a robust enterprise-level Web site, empowered by endless extensibility for your bespoke publishing needs. Moreover, it is often the system of choice for small business or home users who want a professional looking site that's simple to deploy and use. We do content right.

So what's the catch? How much does this system cost?

Well, there's good news ... and more good news! Joomla! 1.5 is free, it is released under an Open Source license - the GNU/General Public License v 2.0. Had you invested in a mainstream, commercial alternative, there'd be nothing but moths left in your wallet and to add new functionality would probably mean taking out a second mortgage each time you wanted something adding!

Joomla! changes all that ...
Joomla! is different from the normal models for content management software. For a start, it's not complicated. Joomla! has been developed for everybody, and anybody can develop it further. It is designed to work (primarily) with other Open Source, free, software such as PHP, MySQL, and Apache.

It is easy to install and administer, and is reliable.

Joomla! doesn't even require the user or administrator of the system to know HTML to operate it once it's up and running.

To get the perfect Web site with all the functionality that you require for your particular application may take additional time and effort, but with the Joomla! Community support that is available and the many Third Party Developers actively creating and releasing new Extensions for the 1.5 platform on an almost daily basis, there is likely to be something out there to meet your needs. Or you could develop your own Extensions and make these available to the rest of the community.

Joomla! features:

• Completely database driven site engines
• News, products, or services sections fully editable and manageable
• Topics sections can be added to by contributing Authors
• Fully customisable layouts including left, center, and right Menu boxes
• Browser upload of images to your own library for use anywhere in the site
• Dynamic Forum/Poll/Voting booth for on-the-spot results
• Runs on Linux, FreeBSD, MacOSX server, Solaris, and AIX