Ross Bayer

My Advanced Topics project for the first quarter is to build an easy to update website for my TaeKwonDo studio using a CMS(Content Management System). Through this project I will expand my knowledge about CSS and HTML, learn a little PHP, and Teach myself to use a CMS.

My 10 goals for this project during the first quarter are as follows:

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1. Chose a CMS (Content Management System)

I decided on Joomla. Mainly because I Wordpress and ModX didn't fit my needs for a simple website meant for my TaeKwonDo studio. Things like Wordpress were mainly coded for creating blogs. I had no need for a blog. ModX would have been my first choice, but it wouldn't install properly and I soon gave up on using it. So lastly there was joomla, who as it so happened is very easy to create templates for.

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2. Install Xampp (to create a localhost)

Installed Xampp

I installed Xampp for linux by downloading it from here[1] and moving it to the suitable directory. Onece it was set up I had to tweak a few settings. At first I messed up and put security passwords on it and had to uninstall and then reinstall. Once everything was up and running I opened MySQL and made a database for my site. (this was used later for the Joomla Setup)

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3. Install Joomla

Installed Joomla

This was a bit of a challenge, After much trial and error and finally google, I found where to move the file with joomla in it. For me running Ubuntu 10.10 the directory was /opt/lampp/htdocs. All that was left was to start Xampp with the terminal command sudo /opt/lampp/lampp start and navigate to localhost/JOOMLAFILENAME and run through the install.

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4. Fix Error Messages in Joomla

When I had successfully installed Joomla I noticed that there were a bunch of error messages. The were mumbo jumbo, nothing made sense. Things were missing from the page and made it completely unusable. I decided to turn to my ever trustworthy friend, Google. Through a few minutes of searching I found that other people had encountered the same problem. From many different forums I found my answer. When I installed Joomla it required me to create a writeable file called configuration.php which in it had an error. It set the error messages as readable and I had to manually turn them off.

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5. Search for template

Joomla is a wonderful program that offers plenty of templates to add your content to, if you search hard enough. I spent about a week on this and found a template I liked, but was unsure of the licence. I didn't want to infringe on copyright so insteaed I began development on my own Template.

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6. Template Constuction

I began construction on my Joomla Template at this[2] page. They gave me all the basics I needed. Since I was already pretty familiar with HTML and CSS, I found the template framework to be comprehensible.

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7. Template Tweaking

Current Template

Because I had the basic frame of my website I began to make it look nice. I added some more divisions to group things together visualy. The CSS is constantly evolving along with my images. At the moment I have place-holders and preliminary images and have lots of work left to do. Things like the menu must still be added to the proper place. I want to add pictures to the front page. In the image on the left the big red box will eventually hold a frame and a set of images that randomly cycle through.