I'm a beginner web designer that's working on an experts project. I face some problems like any beginner & I get them solved by searching analyzing or asking questions here or on other forums. Although, the problems get solved but I waste much much time on some simple issues. A friend suggested me using Joomla. I was wondering is it worth learning installing etc... will it be useful to me ? I will tell you more about my project. I use html, css, javascript, php, & mysql. As the user do any action of clicking, changing fields etc... that should affect or change much data in the database & change also the look position & colors of some other data on the site itself. It contains some animations that should highly interact with the user. I read about Joomla but I'm not sure if it would save me much time & be suitable for me or not. What do you think ?
When I tried Joomla once I thought it was horrible. I just don't like the constraints put on you using a cms. If your having problems with your lack of coding experience then you would be much much better off just coding stuff in your free time and reading some books or tutorials, but most importantly experiment with coding, try things you haven't tried to expand your understanding. All those times when you correct an error make for good experience and after a while you'll see a potential problem before you've even tried testing your code.
Joomla is an excellent CMS, if a Content Management System is what you are after then you should consider it. However your project sounds more like you are constructing the front end for a database with some very specific requirements. Your time may be better spent improving your PHP and JavaScript skills, you may also want to learn a bit about AJAX as this will allow you to provide a good experience for your end-users and you can leverage several existing code libraries to make your job easier.
There are no constraints. Nothings to stop you from sifting through the code and making modifications. Not to mention all the plugins/components available... Joomla is great, and those who fail to realize that must not like CMS's in general, which is perfectly respectable. It might not be for everyone, as there are different CMS's available out there, but before someone starts up coding for themselves, it usually easier to work with existing code, to learn how things are put together.
hey, i would liket to say that if you are new at CMS and other stuff, you should not use Joomla or Mambo, since they;re the same thing almost, and they are some what hard to use, so then thing i suggest to use for a cms for you is geeklog, since its much easier, or plan on using a blog, but not Joomla, you will have some problems with it.