Joomla! How-To's

Chris Davenport, the documentation team leader for Joomla!, just announced the release of the Joomla! Installation Manual. Thank you to Andy Wallace for developing this manual. Great work!

• Read the manual online, or
• download the PDF version.

We've all done it. There's nothing to be ashamed of. Have you ever installed Joomla!, only to realize that you've forgotten your administrator password? When that happens, there is nothing you can do but re-install Joomla, right? Wrong. Here is a website with a great explanation of how to reset your super administrator password, even if you can't log in to the administrator control panel.

Don't thank me. Thank them.

Update (February 9, 2009): A new article has been written that tells how to change your favicon in Joomla! 1.5.

The word "favicon" is short for "favorites icon", and it is the 16x16-pixel icon that is associated with your website and appears in the browser address bar and favorites menu (and in Firefox and Internet Explorer 7, it also appears on the browser tab). For this website, I am using the default Joomla! favicon because this site is a site about Joomla! The image below shows what your browser's address bar should look like when visiting this site.

All Joomla! installations come with that favicon installed, and a common mistake by many webmasters is to ignore the favicon, thereby keeping the default Joomla! icon for their site. Unless your site is about Joomla, you should not be using the default favicon. A good habit to get into when developing sites with Joomla! is to change the favaicon and use something more fitting for your site, like your logo. This article will explain how to create a favicon and then how to replace the default icon with your icon.

Packt Publishing has released an updated version of its popular Building Websites with Joomla! book series written by Hagen Graf to cover the release of Joomla! 1.5 Beta 1.

This book starts with the basics of what the term "content management" means, the structure of a content management system and features of Joomla!. Then it thoroughly covers topics such as installation, front-end and back-end tours, administration and configuration, and customizing extensions and components. It even has a chapter on creating your own template.

If you follow Joomla! development, you probably already noticed a problem with this book, though. Joomla! 1.5 Beta 1 was released back in October, and the development since that time has resulted in a many changes that could make the information in the book obsolete. Well, the people at Packt have already thought of that, and they are offering the opportunity to buy the book now and receive free e-books covering all future updates to Joomla! 1.5. Great idea!

I recommend this book for anyone looking to learn more about building their own website with Joomla!. Thanks to Hagen Graf and Packt Publishing for producing another one of the many valuable resources available for learning how to use Joomla!.

Click here for more information on Building Websites with Joomla! 1.5 Beta 1. Cost: $40.49 for the book or $29.99 for the ebook.

I just got a copy of the new Joomla! Search Engine Optimization (SEO) book at Alledia.com. In his book, Steve Burge does a great job of breaking down the concept of SEO and providing simple, easy-to-follow steps for implementing SEO techniques in your Joomla! website. The book costs $37, so if you care about SEO for your website (and you should care about it), then I recommend heading over to Alledia.com to buy Steve's book.