Said by Jen in class one day:  "Joomla is like an onion; it has many layers."

A student's reply: "And it makes you cry."

Logistics

Wednesday, December 3rd
1:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Price: $85 (must be registered for CMS Expo)
Instructors: 4Web Inc. (Samantha Bovat, Jen McKibben, Bill Tomczak)

Get up to speed on Joomla at this information-packed three-hour "Kick-start" Session, starting at the VERY BASICS of Joomla! During this three-hour primer session, you'll get hands-on help to install Joomla; the program will cover definition of terms; structure of Joomla, site maps and hierarchy, and pros and cons of Joomla; you'll get a primer on "must-have" extensions; many time-saving tricks of the trade, and much more.

(Limited to 100 Attendees - must be registered for General Admission to Expo)

See full schedule here | Sign up here

What To Bring

It is expected that you will bring your laptop computer with you to the training as this is a hands-on workshop.

Laptop requirements include:

• Ability to get wireless internet access.
• Install the most recent version of the Firefox web browser (version 3 as of this writing) on your laptop as appropriate for your operating system.  
• Once Firefox is installed, download and install the Firefox Web Developer Toolbar (WDT).

What to Expect

The Joomla Kickstart session is targeted at web designers and developers, preferably with some background in (X)HTML and CSS. This is a hands-on session, in which you will learn how to install and configure Joomla in a mere three hours time. Obviously, this means it's a tip-of-the-iceberg overview of what can be done with Joomla, but we hope to give you a taste of what can be done with Joomla, plus great resources for continued learning when the course is done.

You are welcome to come to the session and not bring a laptop and/or not participate in the hands-on portion of the training. 

All students will be given web hosting space to use for the training session at the start of the training session. All students will build the same website in this course. We strongly recommend that you use the provided hosting and build the course website for best results.

While we're tickled that you have a real client and a site you're dying to build with Joomla, this session is NOT the right environment to do that. Differences in hosting and Joomla configurations can make it very hard to follow along with our instructions. We strongly encourage you to follow along with the class, building the course website, and then apply your learning at a later time to the project you wish to build.

The first site you build in Joomla is always your hardest. So make that client site the second one you build instead!

Jen will be leading the class for the most part, while Sam and Bill will be available to help people individually. They are available to help with questions specifically pertaining to building the course website. They cannot help people with individual questions on their own websites during the course, because time will not allow for that.

Agenda

We will start promptly at 1 PM.

1 PM - 1:15 PM: Introductions, setting expectations

1:15 - 1:30 PM:  Technical Fluency: Definining Joomla, PHP, MySQL, web application, content management system, identifying the differences between a static site and a database-driven website.

1:30 - 2 PM: Installing Joomla. Web hosting space will be provided.

2 - 3 PM: The Joomla SCAM (sections, categories, articles, menu items), entering content, editing content from the front and back ends of the website, splitting up menu navigation to primary and secondary locations.

3 - 4 PM: Customization: Installing templates and extensions and getting them configured.

Web Hosting Details

You will receive 40 MB of disk space and an individual account in the 4Web hosting environment. You will be able to use this space through December 10. At that time, we will pull down all hosting accounts without any further warning. We strongly encourage you to save anything from these sites no later than December 9.

4Web offers hosting only to our clients, so we will not be able to host your site beyond December 10. We recommend you talk to eMark Hosting for great shared hosting, and to LiquidWeb for a virtual private server environment.

Course files and more information

We will be posting course files and more information on our website, www.joomla4web.com/expo as the time gets closer to the conference. This is also the same location we'll use in class for downloading templates, extensions, and content for our website.