Joomla! is one of the most popular Content Management Systems all over the world and wins new admirers every day. Though Joomla! is not the easiest CMS among existent its appeal is under the great functionality it offers for webmasters. Joomla learning process becomes easy in the modern world due to huge amount of Joomla tutorials. One of such tutorials The Joomla Book - A Users Guide to Joomla 1.5 by Barrie M. North I want to review here.
The first thing that I found very significant is that author was very thorough to describe all the details of Joomla structure and made it easily understandable for even complete newbie in Joomla world.
The Manual starts from the introduction to what is Content Management System and Joomla history. You will also learn from this book all the nuances of Joomla installation process; Joomla! administration basics; Step by step description of the content organization on your website; Creating menus and navigation; What are Extensions and what potential they give you; How to expand your content and how to get traffic to your website. As addition you will learn how to create a pure CCS template and at last few chapters at the end are devoted to creating concrete sites (school site, restaurant site and blog site).
All the material is supplied with detailed screenshots, quick notes and summaries which you can come back periodically to consult.
In general book is written in easy understandable language with comprehensively explained terminology.
Appendixes at the end of the book will provide you with help sites and forums, Joomla case studies, SEO notes and how to install WAMP.
As a conclusion I want to add that book will be very helpful for novice and medium experienced Joomla users and definitely deserves consideration of those who plan to manage their website on one's own.