Joomla! 2.5 Beginner’s Guide – Book Review

Joomla! 2.5 Beginner's Guide book coverTechnical books tend to be notoriously dull and laden with jargon. Others, looking to appeal to novices, are usually incomplete, skipping over important details and omitting reasons and strategy. Eric Tiggeler’s Joomla! 2.5 Beginner’s Guide is neither of these. It accomplishes the difficult task of presenting an extensive and mature content management system in an organized, easy to read manner that moves along well.

The book has plenty of illustrations, but it is not a picture book. The illustrations orient the reader and bring familiarity in a way that eliminates long text descriptions. The wise choice of illustrations in this book make it easier to read. Considering the depth of the subject, that is important for this 400 plus page book.

There were a few instances where the author used jargon without clarification. In a book of this type, it is very hard not to – those few instances are understandable and forgivable. For the most part, concepts are explained and then light jargon is introduced so that the reader will be able to understand further reading on Joomla. A lot of effort was put into this book to deliver understanding in a very economical way.

Jooma 2.5 Beginner’s Guide does not have the glib humor of a dummies guide. It is as easy to read but more to the point than a dummy book, and covers important topics in more detail. But this book es not without humor – As an example project, the author takes the reader through the construction of a club web site for collectors of really bad art.

As a seasoned veteran of Joomla, I picked up a few techniques and concepts that I didn’t know. Joomla 2.5 is a new iteration of the system, and there were a few nooks and crannies that I was glad to learn about in this book. They’ll be time savers in the future.

This book covers the basic Joomla system and shows how to extend joomla with a few examples. It does not go into advanced extensions or coding. The author at times must touch on topics tangential to web development such as file transfers, html and css coding, and graphics manipulation. There, he gives brief explanation – enough to keep moving along with the topic at hand. Where reference is made to other topics outside the scope of the book, the author directs the reader toward other resources for further exploration. In addition to the basics, Teggeler covers important considerations in web development such as SEO and security.

I strongly recommend this book to novices wishing to learn Joomla. It makes a great manual. I just may start handing a copy over to clients at the completion of their web site.

29 comments on “Joomla! 2.5 Beginner’s Guide – Book ReviewAdd yours →

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