Step 1 - Joomla Web Site Development Plan

Sabtu, 19 September 2009

1. How to plan a Joomla Site?

You should create content that would be interesting to your visitors. Ask yourself who is your website for, who is going to use it, read it? What will they gain?
 
Take a blank piece of paper and put down everything that comes to your mind about your website. Write tags or titles you want to cover on your website.
 

2. How should I structure my website?

Joomla Web Site Development is an important part of building a Joomla Site.
Create a table in Word or Excel with 5 or more columns.

• 1. column represents sections
• 2. column represents categories
• 3. column represents content items
• 4. column is for marking content type (blog/list of items/single item/static content)
• 5. column is reserved for titles

Now take the paper you used earlier for brainstorming and start organizing content into sections and categories. Move them around until you are satisfied.
 
It should look something like this:
 

Sections	Categories	Content Items	Content type	Title
Products	For Men		List of items
		Product 1		Black Shoes
		Product 2		Brown Shoes
	For Women		List of items
		...
Services
About us			Static Content

 

3. Joomla Design and Navigation

Where should I place menus? How will the layout look? Think how you want your site to look.
Some options:

Layout Option 1
	I want a common website layout with navigation on left and content on right.
Layout Option 2
	I want to have navigation on top and content below with several columns that would look like a portal site.
Layout Option 3
	I would like a divided navigation on left and top, center for content, and a right column reserved for advertisements.

 
I am sure you are going to find a template that suits your needs. You can download some from our Webmaster Center for a start.

4. Interactivity

Joomla is a dynamic site Builder and has some integrated Components that can make your site Interactive. When developing a Joomla web site you can enhance your site with numerous add-ons and extensions available at Joomla Website.
Define what do you want to offer your visitors?

• Do you want your website to be publicly accessible or do you want to set some content private?
• Do you want your visitors to be a ble to comment your posts and do other things?
• Do you want your site to have calendar, Photo Gallery and other advanced Functions?

With lots of Extensions available almost anything is possible. And you can always add these things later.

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After this step you should have a clear vision what you want to do with your website, a detailed table with website structure and an idea of site layout.

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It`s now time to install Joomla and start things rolling.