Week 2 Completion Checklist

Videos

I’m going to give you some basic information in these videos. You should refer to lynda.com (more info on this below) for additional information. I will try to keep these videos focused on information you won’t get in the lynda.com videos.

  • The first video will introduce a bunch of CMS terminology and explain the differences between a CMS site and a static HTML site.  (If you took Susan Buck’s course last term, this may be a bit basic.)
  • The second video will show you how to download and install Joomla on your SiteGround web hosting. Please DO NOT USE Softaculous or the Joomla auto installer!!!
  • The third video will talk about creating content in the CMS via the CAM. In this case, it will just be the CA: Categories and Articles. I’ll also look at how to get your content into the system, coming from Word or coming from HTML. We will cover menus and blogging next week.
  • The fourth video will throw in some additional information to help make life easier in Joomla. I’ll introduce JCE, the Joomla Content Editor, and we’ll look at adding images and video to our content.
  • In the fifth video, I'll introduce Akeeba Backup for backups.

CAUTION

As stated in the videos, DO NOT SPEND TIME ON MAKING YOUR WEBSITE LOOK PRETTY. CMS building has a different order than building sites in static HTML. In static HTML, we make it look pretty (and spend a ton of time doing it), then use that one page to build a zillion others. In a CMS, we get the content in the system FIRST. This is because we can't style the site if we can't see the content.

When I get to the theming/templating lecture in a few weeks, THEN you can worry about how things look. There are a zillion options for toggling bits of information in Joomla (does it really need to say Author: Super User?), and you don't want to insert a bunch of inline styles now that lead to CSS management issues later.

So! Your site will be horribly ugly. I can't cover everything all at once, so let it go! Become one with the ugliness. Rest assured we'll make it look pretty, eventually... but first, you must suffer for a little while. :-)

Optional homework

As described in the syllabus, each week you’ll have ungraded homework. Erin and I will not be grading these, nor will we be looking at your work (unless you specifically have a question that you ask in the forum). This ungraded homework will become “chained” together to form your final project. Therefore, it’s strongly suggested that you work through this material each week! This will keep you up with the class, learning the material, and you will have your projects done well ahead of the due date!

  1. Get Joomla installed at SiteGround.
  2. Once Joomla is installed, create categories and articles that seem appropriate based on the website planning you did this past week. You will not be able to see the articles on your website just yet, because you have not created menu items! However, this will get the information into Joomla.
  3. Think about images, video, tagging, etc, as enhancements you might wish to make to content.
  4. MAKE A BACKUP. In fact, you may wish to make several backups along the way! I guarantee that at least one of you (and perhaps more like 5-10 of you) will destroy your Joomla sites before they are due. You want to be VERY sure to have up-to-date backups, so when you do something stupid (and we all do stupid things, so plan on this happening!), you will be able to roll back to your backup and keep going.

It's likely that you'll want to watch the JCE videos and get that installed before starting to work extensively on entering content into your website. The lynda.com videos can be followed with JCE, or you can use TinyMCE (as I do in the videos). Those choices are all up to you and what you like!

Post any questions in the discussion forum. Starting next week, I'll provide a way to show your site as you work through building it out. However, since there won't be much to show this week without menus, I won't add that discussion this week.