Joomla

More work on the ByrneGaunt website. This uses the content management system Joomla with an e-commerce plugin called ECJC.

The idea of using a CMS is to avoid having to code pages oneself and to supply a framework of services and functionality around which a website can be built. You might need to be able to organise subscriptions to your site and send out newsletters. Getting that sort of stuff out of the box is a boon. A further aspiration may be to set up a site for an organisation such that the non-technical can edit it themselves although I'm not entirely convinced that leaves the realms of theory that often.

I like to write as little code as possible so have taken one of many free templates that are available and adapted it. It's in this area though that one needs to dive in and alter the code on occasions. For instance, the template I've chosen for the front page likes to organise news items in long columns as in a magazine. I've yet to find out how the template works together with the rendering system to do this. So far, detailed documentation on how this comes about I've found hard to find. There are usability annoyances: having to click on Apply and on Save when editing image placement in text: finding it so difficult to use the WYSIWYG html editor because the text was invisible with the template I'm using that I had to turn WYSYWYG off. Nonetheless I'd recommend Joomla.