5 thoughts on “Joomla! 1.5: A User’s Guide: Building a Successful Joomla! Powered Website”

1. Under this second review you will see how I responded in frustration to this book. It was an unfair review and I regret that I wrote it. But I will leave it there for readers to read so they don’t do the same mistake I did. That is, giving a review on apples when you actually bought oranges.
   
   This book is a very good start for people who have no experience with Joomla but want to be able to set up a good looking and workable web site in a hurry. The book is well written and with all the neat plug-ins out there, this book explains it all how to install them and make the site your own. The book is easy to read and it can be used either as a look up for a certain topic or you can follow it through from start to end.
   
   However, if you have some experience with Joomla! and you are looking for a book to teach you how to extend Joomla! with your own extensions, this is not the right book. It does not provide you with much PHP coding and how to take advantage of the Model-View-Controller style that Joomla! is based on. But don’t let that keep you from buying this book. I have found it usable on several topics and it is worth having your own copy of it.

   Old Review with an unfair one star.
   
   If you are looking for documentation on how to extend your Joomla 1.5 site with your own PHP code, DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK. This book would not explain anything of what you are looking for or what’s going on under the hood. They only refer to how to install and set up pre defined templates. Give the money to the republican party instead. You will get the same amount of information from them as you do from this book.
   
   As I want to develop extensions and also templates, I thought this book at least could explain something about this. It has none. The book is useless for that matter.
   
   It is beyond my understanding how this book has an average rating on four stars. Well, this book goes into the shelf and will probably never be opened again.

   Rating: 4 / 5

2. I read about half of the book. Lots of details that don’t have to be there. All I wanted to learn was how to edit joomla not how and why it works. I just signed up for a service that works for me and easy to edit. No if you like studying and reading, this is for you. I actually should read the rest just so I know how to use it.
   Rating: 3 / 5

3. I just wanted to say that there’s nothing wrong with people promoting affiliate links. However, Mr. North could put in a disclaimer if certain folks felt that his recommendations were more about profit than a useful resource. Overall, still an excellent book.
   Rating: 5 / 5

4. Barrie M. North’s book is an excellent introduction to using Joomla to create a website, that is driven by a Content Management System (CMS).

   The book is easy to read and uses a tutorial approach in later chapters of the book that walks you through creating various types of website. I was especially interested in the Pure CSS website, as I had installed previous versions of Joomla, but removed them because I didn’t want a website that uses HTML tables for layout.

   The other types of website that are covered in the book, or should I say tutorial are:

   A School Website.
   
   A Restaurant Website.
   
   A blog site.

   Components, modules and plugins are explained and covered in enough detail for those starting out on the Joomla path.

   WHY DIDN’T I GIVE THE BOOK 5 STARS?

   Now for the parts of the book that prevented me from awarding the 5 stars, that the content of the book deserves.

   Mr North has a section within his book about how to get traffic to your website. The information is a very worthwhile edition to the book and covers several Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Search Engine Rank Positioning (SERP) techniques. Link Building, Referals, Pay Per Click and other methods of getting traffic to your website are also covered.

   However, despite the quality of the information I can’t help thinking that this section was only created for Mr Barrie M. North to push his affiliate marketing links.

   For the uninitiated among you affiliate marketing is where companies will pay you a commission for any sales that are the result of people following your affiliate link and buying from their website.

   Even Amazon has an affiliate / associate program:

   http://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/join

   For example Wordtracker (one of the recommended keyword reseach tools) has an affiliate program that pays a 5% commission on all sales, resulting from an affiliates link. A yearly subscription at wordtracker is $329, therefore Mr North gets a nice $16.45 paid into his affiliate account if you buy from his affiliate link.

   This is just one of the affiliate links within this book, others are for PR Prowler and Perry Marshalls – Definitive Guide to Google Adwords website.

   The web addresses (URL) given in the book are not the actual URL of the websites.

   Lets take an example:

   I join the affiliate program of:

   1. http://www.xyz.com

   2. They give me an affiliate ID of http://www.xyz.com/something

   3. I register the domain name http://www.xyzisgreat.com

   4. I then use my registrar’s (person I registered my domain name with) Domain Control Panel to forward and links that go to http://www.xyzisgreat.com to my affiliate link

   5. You use my website address http://www.xyzisgreat.com visit the website my affiliate link point to and purchase a product.

   6. I rub my hands with glee as all the money comes rolling in.

   I expect to find affiliate links in ebooks that are given away free on a website, you get quality information and the author gets a bit of payback if you follow his affiliate links and purchase something he has recommended to you.

   I do not expect to have affiliate link within a book that I have paid good money for. I have the Perry Marshall book and have used Wordtracker in the past, so I know what good resources they are.

   However I have never heard of or used PR Prowler (A program that Mr North pushes heavily in his book, in fact he mentions how great the program is numerous times). How can an take this as an unbiased recommendation from a knowledgable Internet Marketing Guru, if I know that the link has only been put in the book for Mr North to get a commission if I buy?

   To summarize:

   Great book filled with excellent information about everything you need to know about creating your first website with Joomla. Just a shame that Mr North had to fill the SEO Chapter of the book with recommendations that he gets paid for if you buy. Do you feel a recommendation is unbiased if the person is getting paid for recommending it?
   Rating: 4 / 5

5. Don’t get this book if you are new to joomla. That would be a devastating mistake. You will pull all your hair out in frustration.

   I bought Barrie North’s book because of the reviews on this Amazon site. I suspect the positive reviews were written by the author’s friends or people who were already familiar with joomla. I felt obligated to correct the record.

   The author seem very knowledgeable and this book contains plenty of useful information, but it also has several flaws:

   Worst flaw is that, frequently, when walking the reader through a series of steps, he will overlook something important – I guess he assumes we already know stuff. This was tremendously frustrating. I spent hours trying to figure out missing links through the joomla forum and online tutorials.

   The organization, descriptions and language are badly flawed. The author tries to use a conversational tone, but it is very annoying and confusing to frequently read useless phrases like ‘as you can see’ – especially when you can’t. About half the narrative is filler like that. I had to re-read many paragraphs 3-4 times to understand them. (BTW, I have a PhD and read and write technical papers all the time.)

   After five frustrating, headache-filled days (I kept giving him the benefit of the doubt that it would get better – it never did), I bought ‘Beginning Joomla’ by Dan Rahmel and had joomla working properly in a few hours. (First, I cleared my mind and computer of everything I had attempted under this book’s guidance.)

   Let this be your second or third joomla book, but not your beginner.
   Rating: 1 / 5