RocketTheme Blog

• Book: Joomla 2.5 Beginners Guide
• Author: Eric Tiggeler
• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Published 2012
• Skill Level: Beginner
• Price: $25.49 (ebook), $44.99 (printed book)
• Website and Ordering

The Joomla 2.5 Beginners Guide is a well written and easy to understand guide to getting started with Joomla. The examples, tutorials and lessons are truly aimed at beginners. They assume that you have no experience with any of the concepts of Joomla or with websites in general. These concepts are clearly explained in a way that is friendly to the novice user and walks through all the necessary steps to get a Joomla website up and running in the easiest way possible. The first chapters cover everything from installation and basic concepts to building pages and putting together a simple website using a default installation of Joomla.

From there, the Joomla 2.5 Beginners Guide gets more in depth with many core features of Joomla and explains why these features are important and presents real life examples of how to use them. The progression of the book is well thought out and the examples are not only designed to show you what Joomla can do, but also the advantages and situations where you would find certain features useful.

Many beginners may appreciate this approach as technical explanations are kept as simple as possible and only mentioned when necessary to the task at hand. The focus here is more on using Joomla to build and organize content with the goal of creating a user-friendly website for your visitors.

The later chapters of the Joomla 2.5 Beginners Guide get into more advanced Joomla concepts, such as user accounts, backups and maintenance, templates, extensions, search engine optimization and security. All of these concepts are important in Joomla and they are discussed in a general, yet comprehensive fashion. The main goal of these chapters is to bring attention to these features in a way that gives beginners an idea of what is possible for the future of their Joomla website.

While Joomla 2.5 Beginners Guide is primarily aimed at beginners, even seasoned Joomla veterans may pick up a trick or two. Many of the new features of Joomla 2.5 are discussed in detail and the book is very comprehensive in bringing attention to many core features, some of which may have been overlooked if you've learned Joomla on your own. Joomla developers may find this book as a useful learning resource for clients that wish to learn how to update content on their own. However, if you're looking for information on advanced topics such as programming, developing custom extensions or building and customizing templates, you won't find much of that here. All of the concepts are general in nature and the examples are definitely designed with beginners in mind.

The Joomla 2.5 Beginners Guide is a comprehensive resource that should be considered by anyone wishing to use Joomla to build a website from scratch for the first time or just become more knowledgeable with the features of Joomla. It is well written and easy to understand. The examples and tutorials are useful and follow a logical progression through the steps of using Joomla to create a website. The fundamental knowledge presented in this guide can serve as a solid foundation for future of any Joomla user.

About the Reviewer:

Cliff Pfeifer

A Rocket Theme support team member and forum moderator. He is also a freelance web developer specializing in Joomla and Wordpress, website design and project management. He lives in Denver, Colorado and has a passion for coding, golf and helping others.