A different Joomla Framework
A thing I found particularly hard to do when I began my career as a website developer was work with CMS (content management systems). After researching extensively which of the three major platforms to learn—Joomla, WordPress, or Drupal—I opted for Joomla. Why Joomla? Well, at the time, it seemed like the easiest one to deal with and it met my clients’ needs.
Since PHP wasn’t exactly my strong suit, I went to their site to learn the basics and decided, “I think I can do this.” But though installing the CMS on my server was indeed pretty simple, I soon realized I was way over my head. I knew I had to keep trying, though, since knowing about CMS was essential for my business.
Now, five years later, I’m a Joomla Expert. I can tell you pretty much everything there is to know about it. I even share my experience with others in the forums.
Because of my Joomla proficiency, most of the sites I’ve developed use this platform and have similar layouts. To save time and cut down on the repetition, I created this basic starter template, and now I want to share it with you. The template is based on the Twitter Bootstrap frame, so any site you create with it will be responsive. There are well over twenty different modules and it has a simple user guide. Some of its great features include an easy-to-manage slideshow, a calendar, pretty select boxes, responsive layouts, and collapsible modules.
When I was searching for slideshow plug-ins, I found that they either failed to offer individual links per image or lacked the ability to add captions. I wondered why you couldn’t do both of these things simultaneously. This slideshow is easy to manage from the back end. You can enable or disable it and upload the images you want. Each image has options for a link, headline, and caption. The calendar is an already built plug-in from Stefan Petre over at www.eyecon.ro, and I only integrated it into my framework. The select box is a plug-in as well, and it was created by Greg Franko. I have to give credit to these guys for their hard work.
Twitter Bootstrap is the heart of this template and the reason why it’s responsive. I’ve been using Bootstrap for well over two years on all of my projects, and I must tell you I love it! These days, every client wants their site to look good on mobile devices and this framework just makes it easy. The collapsible module feature is awesome, and if you’ve ever dealt with Joomla, you know this is a must.
There are other features that I think are worth mentioning. From the template manager end, you can include your Google analytics code. You can also override CSS, set your max-width, and determine whether your layout is fluid or fixed. The template is light—only about 85 kB—and currently, works on Joomla 2.5 and 3.0. We will make some updates as Joomla 2.5 hits the end of life, so stay tuned.
In conclusion, I think you’ll find this starter template to be quite useful and easy to manage. All you really have to do is write your style sheet. I hope this template will be a time saver for you as it is for me. Feel free to contact me with questions, concerns, or any bugs you might find.
See you soon!
Download Note: Unzip First
