Mediart Solutions Detailed Descriptions For Joomla CMS Website Development
As of 28/11/2008
Table of Contents ........................................................................................................................................................................ 1 What is Joomla?..................................................................................................................................................3 Templates...........................................................................................................................................................4 Forms.................................................................................................................................................................. 4 Locations/maps..................................................................................................................................................5 Search Engine Submission & Optimisation.........................................................................................................5 Virtuemart..........................................................................................................................................................6 Simple Image Gallery..........................................................................................................................................8 Advanced Image Gallery.....................................................................................................................................8 Community Builder.............................................................................................................................................9 Forums................................................................................................................................................................9 Newsletters......................................................................................................................................................10 Document/File Management............................................................................................................................10 Calendar ...........................................................................................................................................................11 Content Editor..................................................................................................................................................11 Shadow Box......................................................................................................................................................12
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What is Joomla?
Joomla is a very powerful open source content management system. Open source means that it is developed under a GPL license therefore it does not incur a fee for each single purchase as would an 'off the shelf' product. This also means that it is developed by website programmers all around the world making it very a leading edge and versatile product. Joomla CMS is now commonly known as one of the biggest or most used CMS systems in the world. Developed using PHP language and MySQL databases it would be supported my most of the hosting systems in the world. One of the big advantages of using the Joomla CMS is that you can have different levels of access the website depending on what level of permission the person has been assigned. You can allow people to become "registered" members of the website and then you can assign certain aspects of the website to only be viewable to registered users rather than general public. There is a lot more to this userlevel system but I will not go into too much detail here. Included in a Mediart/Joomla package: •
Installation and configuration of the current Joomla base system on our Sydney based data server. This environment has been built specifically to suite the sites we develop therefore making the process much more streamlined.
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Creation of the menu systems in accordance with the required content and category requirements.
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Up to 10 content pages with up to 3 images per page. Information and images supplied in electronic format.
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Company logo, colours and template visual creation to suit your corporate image requirements.
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Training session of up to 2 hours for 1-3 of your staff. This session is conducted in the Mediart office and will teach you how to manage the content pages yourself. I understand that this might not be needed but I would still like to ensure we have given your company the necessary information to Page 3 of 12
decide if there is some administration roll your staff could be involved in. I think you will find that this system is quite user friendly. •
Creation of email systems and any anti-spam requirements (if necessary).
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As a standard we include systems like contact forms, links pages and even Google maps integration.
Templates Joomla CMS is a very versatile system. It allows us to use a template system to create the visual aspects of the site. This will allow us to modify the entire website visual layout simply by modifying the template files. This is very useful for clients who might like to give the site a bit of a facelift every now and again. We purchase our base templates from leading developers that specialise in the development of visual templates for the Joomla CMS. With monthly releases we able to stay visually up to date with leading edge technology.
Forms Custom built form and contact details page. You can have any information you like on these forms. It is very useful to acquire additional information from the viewer. It may have things like a dropdown of options with the question “How did you find our website” with options like “I searched on the Internet” or “web address on your business card” or “Yellow Pages”. You can also ask questions like “Preferred contact time and method of reply”.
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Locations/maps A locations page is a very good way to show people where you are located. It can have many different features and is usually located close to or linked from the contact page. Google Embedded Script on a standard content page. This will allow the site to have an active Google map displayed on the website. It will allow for 1 address location. More maps can be added to the page at the same repeat cost. Advanced Google maps component. This is an add-on that will be installed to the website and allows for the tracking and management of multiple addresses. This can then be maintained by the client from the administration section of the site.
Search Engine Submission & Optimisation We will submit the site to Google via integration into our Google webmaster tools. This will allow Google to find your website right away and start to analyse it. We will also configure the “Meta Data” setup for “keywords” and “description”. This will allow you to focus on specific words that you expect people might use in a search engine to find you.
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Virtuemart Virtuemart is the e-commerce solution to Joomla, it allows the easy management of as many products as you wish to have on your website. It takes care of the payment systems (gateways) as well. This is the main product management application and will be installed to the current version available. Price includes creation of a store, geographic location, GST tax settings, customisation for colour schemes used in Joomla site. VirtueMart can be configured to allow for payment methods such as Cheque, Direct Deposit or COD. Each of these methods needs to be configured manually
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Simple Image Gallery Simple galleries consist of basic category and image management. The gallery can be managed from within the administration section of the site. This can be a very simple option for including larger volumes of images in a website without the need to make content pages with many images on them. These galleries have the ability to create resized versions of the image to display as thumbnails and medium sized presentations.
Advanced Image Gallery Advanced Galleries will contain much more customisation and enhanced presentation compared to a simple gallery. You can also have the ability to allow registered users of the site to have access to maintain their own galleries. This is usually a good thing when developing a social networking site. The website owner can customise the limits for registered users. For example they can be assigned 1 gallery allowance with up to 15 images in that gallery. The user is able to maintain their own gallery from the front of the website once they log in. The visual enhancements are the most impressive feature of an advanced gallery. Included will be such features as a slideshow display, rotating visual rendering and even full screen viewing.
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Community Builder The Community Builder suite extends the Joomla website user management systems and allows to manage those users. Key features include: extra fields in profile, enhanced registration workflows, user lists, connection paths between users, admin defined tabs and user profiles, image upload, front-end workflow management, integration with other components, like Newsletter, Forum, Galleries.
Forums Forums are very usefull for having an interactive support section of your site or just to allow your viewers to socialise with likeminded people. It is a good drawcard for a website that needs to maintain a high level of recurring visitors. Registered users of your site will be able to submit information to particular predefined forum topics which you can monitor and modify if you wish. This cost included the installation of the Fireboard Forum add-on and up to 2 main forums. All configuration options will be predefined for you. Fireboard is a forum system that has been completely written for Joomla. This means that you can integrate Joomla users and forum users as one login. It also has the ability to work with the Community Builder profile page which will show additional forum information in the user’s profile. An example of this can be seen on the demo site.
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Newsletters We use one main add-on to service this feature in a website. Simply, the newsletter manager allows you to have people to subscribe to one or more newsletter topics. You can then use the administration section of this system to send preformatted newsletters to all of your subscribers. There is no need to use your mail program to send the email as the program will do everything for you. This price includes the creation and formatting of one newsletter template.
This is a big addition to the new site. It will handle the management of multiple mailing lists and allow you to store newsletters in the correct manner. Newsletters can be delivered in a very professional looking HTML email format rather than having to attach PDF files to emails. It will also comply with antispam regulations where you HAVE to have an unsubscribe option on your mail outs. The unsubscribe function is automated so there is no need for manual removal of email addresses from a list. Previously dispatched newsletters can be viewed in the site from this component if you wish. This component can also tie into a compent called Community Builder. That system can allow users to manage their subscriptions to more than one newsletter from their own profile page. I do not see Community builder to be an essential requirement of your site at this time but is it worth a mention.
Document/File Management Docman is a very powerful document management system. It will allow you to manage all f of the files you would like people to have access to. You can even restrict access to categories or specific files so only registered users can see them. You could even use it to manage internal file storage for the network. Docman can even let you show a disclaimer or agreement page which the viewer has to agree to prior to downloading a file. This can be very useful if you have documents that could contain sensitive or potentially liable information. This component has been very widely used and is known as the most versatile file downloader used in the Joomla community.
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Calendar JcalPro is a very versatile calendar component for Joomla. It allows the administrator of the site to add unlimited events and even set recurring events. The information for each event can be as simple as a title or contain more information contact person, more info website link, multiple days event, and much more. This has been a very popular component for any organisation wanting to keep everyone updated of their own events or just industry related event.
Mini Cal module
Content Editor JCE is a more enhanced text editor than what comes standard with Joomla. In simple terms, it makes editing a content page very easy. Images can be added to your pages with ease. It also allows you to format the text into styles like a "Heading" or "Paragraph" or "Bullet Point Text". If you are familiar with Microsoft Word then you will find editing content pages a breeze. The JCE Editor Toolbar provides over 50 different commands and plugins, each represented by a button or drop-down list with which you can style and enhance your content. With JCE you can:
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Style test using familiar buttons and commands, like, bold, italic, underline etc. Insert and edit tables Copy text from Word or other text documents Insert images using an easy to use file browser popup interface Create links, including links to Joomla content items using a dynamic selection routine. Run a spell check on your finished article. Insert Media files, file links and create image captions (subscription required to access additional plugins JCE also includes an Administration Component, which assists in the installation of new JCE Plugins as well as allowing you to publish/unpublish each editor button, set an access level for each one and edit the layout of the editor interface.
Shadow Box
Shadowbox is a cross-browser, cross-platform, cleanly-coded and fully-documented media viewer application written entirely in JavaScript. Using Shadowbox, website authors can display a wide assortment of media in all major browsers without navigating away from the linking page. To put it simply, you can have images or links on a page that will use shadowbox to load into an elegant window within the site.
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