Has anyone built a website using Joomla?

[ftpaddict]

I'm looking for a complete revamp of my website with better gallery support, and have been looking for alternatives to writing code in Notepad.

Has anyone used Joomla? Or Drupal? Which is easier to use? I admit my web-designing abilities extend only to some basic HTML and CSS.

Any advice for a willing DIY n00b?

[jezza323]

i did this site in joomla

JezzaSport Starlet

however i found the gallery support quite limited (for what i wanted). check out some of the gallery modules @ joomla.org and see if there is anything there that tickles your fancy

its REALLY easy to put a nice site together with joomla though, certainly give it a crack!

[ftpaddict]

Oh I know your website. Don't know how I've stumbled upon it, but I've seen it before. It looks good, but I wonder how much I can take OUT of it. I'm looking for a minimalist design with a hand-coded HTML front page, and the rest probably made in Joomla. I can't wait to experiment with it.

[ftpaddict]

Not to sound impatient, but bump.

[algisinfo]

There are a lot of extensions to manage a photo gallery.
You can find them here :
Photo Gallery - Joomla! Extensions Directory
You can find there some demos for each one.

You can find a lot of help on joomla official forum :
Joomla! • Index page

I'm using joomla since 2005 and I like it.

[virgilr]

I know it's a bit more complex to get started with, but I use a CMS called Modx. It's more of a CMS framework, but it's also fairly easy to get it to behave as you want once you understand how it works.

The great thing is, it's so extensible, you're not locked into a core installation, and templating is a breeze!

I write my templates in dreamweaver (mostly hand coded, but code hints are handy!), use dummy text, then use this html as the template directly in Modx. I then only have to drop in placeholders in the template that are used for the output of Modx, and everything behaves as I want it!


modx link

As far as image galleries, it uses a "snippet" (sortof like a plugin, but more extensible and open) called MaxiGallery, that is hyper-configurable and is pure javascript (using scriptaculous and mootools).

As I said, not for the faint of heart, you have to spend a bit of time getting your head around it, since it's quite open in it's structure, but a joy to use once you get the hang of it! It sounds like you're used to hand coding html, so I don't think it would be too scary for you..

[panoguy]

Originally Posted by ftpaddict

Has anyone used Joomla? Or Drupal? Which is easier to use?

Joomla, hands down, is easier to use. Version 1.5 is also very powerful with nice multi-language abilities (which used to be the only thing Drupal had over it). "Droopy" is nice if you are really technical or like to roll your own code for darn-near everything. Otherwise, they are very similar (templates, plug-ins, same system requirements, etc.) but the Joomla user experience is more refined.

For Joomla galleries, there are plenty of "plug-ins" available to allow for sharing, tagging, comments, buying, etc. But if it is just a personal gallery (no one else is posting images) you can use almost anything out there on a "static" page since you know HTML and CSS.

Here is a site I did with Joomla showing a very simple Flash gallery and just a few pages: Bending Light - Home

Browse the "joomlasphere" for good ideas and ways to slap something up on a Linux/ PHP/ MySQL-equipped host site.

-Mark