A student asked me, "Why would someone use Joomla instead of just building a website with XHTML and CSS?" Great question!

Of course, there is no such thing as a PERFECT technology solution. You always make tradeoffs. However, I think this one lands pretty solidly in the Joomla camp... there just isn't a lot of reason to build Dreamweaver sites in 2009.

Got an email from someone looking for this information. I covered this in the Lynda.com Joomla! Advanced CSS videos but I'll write out the instructions here as well.

The basic instructions are:

• Make sure the Load Module plugin is enabled and configured correctly
• Make sure the module you want to display in the content is turned on for that page and that position
• Insert the Magic Code in the article.
• Voila. Magic happens.  (Some styling may need to happen at this point, too.)

1. Make sure the plugin is enabled and configured correctly

Earlier today I was working on a site with a single menu in the Menu Manager. That menu was split into a top navigation (the top level items) which would be image-based navigation (don't ask) and the left navigation would show the secondary and tertiary levels of nav, in the standard text format.

There were two templates on the site: a home page and an inside page.

There was one module running the primary nav everywhere, and the secondary nav modules changed with the section of the site.

So I was really surprised to see the main nav working on the home page -- you could see the images just fine -- but on most inside pages, the main nav bar wasn't visible because the images weren't displaying. Taking a peek at the source code, the images weren't even being written to the page!

Join us for Joomla! Day New England on May 30, 2009, 9 AM to 4 PM, in Brattleboro, Vermont. The event will be held at the Marlboro College Graduate Center. Registration is $45 and includes breakfast and lunch.

Our speakers include:

• Mitch Pirtle, KickApps and Joomla co-founder
• Elin Waring, Open Source Matters president
• Rob Schley, Open Source Matters vice-president and Joomla core team developer
• Barrie North, JoomlaShack, SimplWeb, and Compass Designs, and Marlboro College Graduate Center instructor
• Barb Ackemann, Iris Lines LLC and Marlboro College Graduate Center instructor
• Jen Kramer McKibben, 4Web, Inc. and director of the Master's of Science in Information Technology at the Marlboro College Graduate Center

Topics include beginning and advanced template development, extension development, search engine marketing and social networking tools and techniques, and more information about what's happening with Joomla 1.6.

To migrate from Joomla 1.0 to Joomla 1.5: That is the question

One of the big questions we get asked these days is whether it's worthwhile to upgrade from Joomla 1.0 to Joomla 1.5. As with all web design and development questions, the correct answer is: It Depends.

There are generally two schools of thought on this.

The "If It Ain't Broke Don't Fix It" school says that if you're site is working in Joomla 1.0, then why bother to migrate? It's doing what you want, so you don't need to change it. This certainly has some validity, in that you save money in the short term by not migrating.

Now that we've discussed section and category blogs, let's look at front page blog layouts.

Functionally, they're very similar to the section and category blog layouts. The major difference here is that instead of choosing a section or section/category to display on the front page (home page), you assign individual articles to appear on the front page.

In the Article Manager (column labeled "front page"), or within an individual article, you can choose to display an item on the front page. By default, the choice is no.

Category and section blog layouts are essentially the same thing. For a given section, or for a given section/category, all content items will show up on the page in "blog" format.

Obviously, the blog format can be used for... well, blogging. But think bigger than that when applying this to your website. Blog, in this case, is a functionality, not a technology. We routinely use the blog format for press releases, for example. The format works for anything where a client needs to post items regularly, in some pre-defined order. It's also handy if the client is making new pages, because the client doesn't need to make a menu link to the item. It will simply publish on the page.

To make category/section blog layouts, go to the Menu manger and find the menu on which you want this link to live. Click New, then Articles, then select either section or category blog layout.

Today we launched the New England Vegetable Management Guide website.

This site was a challenge because we were tasked with putting a whole book on the web.

The Vegetable Guide is published bi-annually. It is composed by some of the most respected experts from all over New England. 

Sections, categories, articles, menu items. See how it's a SCAM? Remember you do need to create them in this order, as menu items for articles can't exist without the article, the article can't exist without section/category, the category can't exist without section.

Then there's this thing called "uncategorized" associated with an article. So you CAN have an article that exists without section and category! Well, sort of. Think of "uncategorized" as the default section and "uncategorized" as the default category.

So, Frequently Asked Questions about the SCAM:

1. Can an article be assigned more than one section/category?
Nope. One section/category per article.

Webology e-Business Solutions is doing a survey on the positives and negatives of Joomla and Drupal.

Read about the survey.

Take the survey.