Preface

With the widespread empowering of website owners being able to manage their own website's content, there are a huge number of content management systems available. Joomla! is one of the most popular of these content management systems with a large user base and active community who are constantly working to improve Joomla! for new and future users.

With the popularity of Joomla! and the relative lack of customized templates, there is much that can be done to change the appearance of your Joomla! website—from customizing the administration panel to creating print-friendly views of your website content and integrating popular applications such as Twitter and Facebook into your Joomla! website.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Joomla! Theming Basics, covers changing the basics of your Joomla! templates, from the color scheme using template variations to your site's logo, and using the administration panel to edit your template's HTML and CSS.

Chapter 2, Custom Joomla! Templates, goes through more detailed templating tasks, from using CSS resets with your template to providing a guide to jdoc statements in your Joomla! templates.

Chapter 3, Theming the Details, covers styling search forms at both module and component view to pagination and beyond.

Chapter 4, Custom Page Templates, contains guides on creating custom error and site offline pages, and a walkthrough to module chrome.

Chapter 5, Styling Joomla! for Print, covers everything to do with print stylesheets, from typography to layout and troubleshooting common bugs in print CSS.

Chapter 6, Joomla! Admin Templates, contains guides to customizing Joomla!'s administration panel, from installing a new admin template to changing the admin panel's colors.

Chapter 7, Social Media and Joomla!, covers guides to integrating social media content such as videos from YouTube and content from Twitter into your Joomla! templates.

Chapter 8, Styling Joomla! for Mobiles, provides guides to styling your Joomla! website for mobile devices such as the iPhone, from creating handheld devices stylesheets in CSS to adding iPhone icons for your website.

Chapter 9, Joomla! and JavaScript, includes tips on minimizing page load time when using JavaScript in your Joomla! template and integrating Lightbox and other JavaScript features into your template.

Chapter 10, Miscellaneous Joomla! Templating, includes a miscellany of content for Joomla! template designers, from using conditional comments only for Internet Explorer CSS fixes to fixing Firefox/Mozilla bugs and more.

Appendix, Joomla! Output Overrides, covers the use of template overrides in Joomla!.

What you need for this book

You'll need Joomla! 1.5 installed either locally or on a server you have access to. For more information on Joomla!'s requirements, visit http://www.joomla.org/technical-requirements.html.

Who this book is for

This book is written for Joomla! developers who want to improve the look and feel of their Joomla! sites. Readers are expected to have knowledge of CSS and (X)HTML. And although knowledge of Joomla! theming will be helpful, it is not required.

Conventions

In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text are shown as follows: "Access your Joomla! website via FTP and navigate to the templates directory."

A block of code is set as follows:

#search input[type='text']:focus {
border-color: #09C /* blue */
}

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

<span class="pagination">
<span>&laquo;</span>
<span>Start</span>
<span>Prev</span><strong>
<span>1</span></strong>

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "Select the file from your computer and then click on the Upload File & Install button."

Note

Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.

Note

Tips and tricks appear like this.

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