Joomla terminology - is this a joke?!?

Been trying to wrap my head around Joomla the past few days and it's like having to re-learn English all over again. What I'd like to know is how did it become the most popular open-source CMS in the world???

Is there an unwritten law somewhere that says that the more popular a CMS is the more complicated it should be? The 'front page manager' has nothing to do with the front page. Heck, Joomla doesn't even believe in pages! And why is it that all of the Joomla terminology means the exact opposite of what it *should* mean?

I was initially attracted to Joomla because of the size of the community (support) and the numer of plug-ins (or mambots or components or addons or applications or modules or green elephant turds or whatever you want to call 'em). But I'm just not sure if it's worth all the extra stress trying to learn something so unecessarily complicated.

Sorry I just have to vent a little...

 

i had the same problem
i dropped the crap, and decided to make all of my sites from scratch, or at least useful scripts

 

Problem with Joomla is that on a techincal level it is excellent but on a ease of use and user friendly it is not.

For techies, it is great because they can tweak it. But, if you have a simple content rich site, then it can be too complicated to set up and manage.

For me, it strikes me as something created for techies and by techies. It needs to set up some focus groups aimed at non-techies to improve its interface and how it works.

 

i would guess that i thought i was a techie
but that stuff was not even technically correct.

 

Your post was funny.

 

Try something else may be e107 / drupal or the easiest WP

 

Yeah I like E107 alot better. The overall layout is waaaaaaay more logical than Joomla. Heck, I'd go so far as to say that it actually makes sense! (unlike the other 99% of the CMS's out there). Only thing is it's not the most search engine friendly CMS in the world. But that's supposed to change with the next version. Will be the real deal when that happens...

 

drupal in easy try it ,yea joomla is too complicated for simple site

 

I don't think Joomla is too hard to learn, you might need more time to spend a little bit. Once you get the idea it's all fun though

 

Jumping into Joomla is not easy for anyone really - it's like the transition for many from WordPerfect to Microsoft Word years ago. What you will notice however, in that same way as in my example, nobody goes back after they've got the hang of it. It's just the getting the hang of it that takes the time. Now I know what parts go where on the site and the definitions used throughout, i find it simple to use and everything is really where I expect to find it. Just my 2 cents worth.

 

Hey!.. i just started to use Joomla!
even though I agreed it takes a long time to get use to it..
the first time i encounter it was actually Mambo... long time ago!
and it took me more than a year before I decide to learn to use it!

Joomla just celebrated 1 year anni...

 

Joomla took me a site or two to wrap my head around. But now I understand it fairly well, and it's almost second-nature

 

Joomla can be a beginners nightmare in getting to know what everything means. But once you know that, it take about 20-40 mins to make a site, with even ecommerce.
Drupal holds an edge over joomla, its simple as well as flexible. For instance I cannot put a html form directly into the content area and make it work in Joomla, also the the wysiwyg in drupal is not shipped with the core that make it more lighter. Less problematic for people with no untar feature.

 

There is a plugin for e107 that makes pages seo. but it's still in the beta phase

 

Joomla is easy and user friendly but it takes bit time to be familiar with it.

 

Its made me scratch my head a few times. and I am still scratching it after about a month. Heck I just learned on this post that the frontpage manager has nothing to do with the front page!!

 

Lol don't scratch your head . Frontpage maanger has a lot to do with frontpage

 

Most people get confused by the terms used for the content sections in Joomla.

I wrote an article on how to reference to a book when building a Joomla site.

This means in short:
The book = the website
Sections = Bookparts
Categories = Chapters
Content Items = Pages

With this in mind its easy to create a good site with just the standard Joomla installation.

From there on, you can look at templates = layout and the extra functions lke components, modules and plugins

Once you worked with it for a while, you know why it works!

Ps. I work with Joomla, Typo3 and Wordpress now and have used Drupal, e107 and Mambo...