The Joomla! ® Community Magazine

Download

Demo

Issue 2012 March > Designers

No Programming? No Worries!

Written by Graeme King | Thursday, 01 March 2012 00:00 | Published in 2012 March
In the age of ‘always on’ connections, having a web presence is more important than ever. In response, there are a proliferation of web page design programs that promise good web pages with little or no web programming experience. Joomla does not necessarily play in this space, but how feasible is it to construct web sites using Joomla with little or no programming experience? After all, on first inspection, the number of extensions available to the Joomla community should make this a piece of cake, right? This article is a first hand experience of a non programming newbie to Joomla constructing a Portal for multi-national usage.
No Programming? No Worries!

Picture the scene –

You are a consultant who has managed development teams previously, and you are asked to be part of a bid team. You know the lingo, you know what websites (and talented web designers) can do, and you put together a fabulous architecture for a multi-national portal, using purely open-source products. All good so far. You win the bid, things are looking good, even better, the project manager wants you on board as part of a very exciting project.

The bad news – because of all the good words, you are now viewed as the expert, and there are no developers assigned to the project. Essentially, you are being relied on to develop the portal you specified, yet you have no direct programming experience. Do you a) run away b) assign a developer and miss out on the project of a lifetime or c) bluff your way through, relying on the excellence of the products you specified?

Ok, this isn’t quite how it happened, but it is a rough translation of how I found myself designing a Portal for a multi-national project with next to no programming (or Joomla!) experience. In short, it works. Yes, there is a limit to what you can do, but the good news is that if you are prepared to research, consult the community and make use of the extensions directory, you can achieve great things without writing complex code.

The Portal that was (and continues to be) developed encompasses communication, collaboration, database retrieval, surveys, project information and reporting. All of these areas are available as extensions, to a greater or lesser degree. One of the things I learnt quickly was Joomla versioning! Some of the extensions that looked perfect were only Joomla 1.5, and we were using 1.7. However, with more research other extensions were used to great success.

So, if extensions cater for what is required, where does the programming come in?

Well, to be fair, the only programming that has been required so far was for Chronoforms to enable dropdowns populated by the database table (this is in no way a negative reflection on Chronoforms! Rather, the ease of which this was written and deployed is credit to the extension).

However, how much further can a non-programmer get? To be honest, one of the downsides of this situation is that because of the ease of development and deployment, there is an expectation of delivering better and better websites, and this is where things get tricky. Yes, it is perfectly possible to develop a good website using Joomla, Joomla extensions and little or no programming. Once the client see this, however, they want more! So, the honest answer is, I’m not sure, I’ll tell you when I get there!

However, be assured that if you are starting out on web design, Joomla is the place to be. The ease of use, as well as the support offered by the forums, are a great place to begin. It makes you want to learn more, as you get to the point of thinking that it would be even cooler to do x, y and z. So, you research, and before you know it, you are writing your first piece of working code.

And that, Ladies and Gentlemen, is how programmers are born....

Read 25741 times
Tagged under Designers
Graeme King

Graeme King

Graeme is a Business Consultant with Logica, currently working on a Sub Saharan Africa project with Joomla being used as a central collaboration portal.

Leave a comment

Make sure you enter the (*) required information where indicated.

[b] [i] [u] [s] [url] [quote] [code] [img]   

Comments (7)

  • avatar
    • 0
    • 0
    Igor
    2012-03-02 13:45:24

    I agree maybe 50% to 80% on what you said here. However, if you need specific custom design and template, module position, typography and not to mention tailoring components and modules or joomla core to meet customer requirements; then you really need good coders.
    There are not many customers in my opinion that will change all their routines because the system requires so.

    So I agree on general basis, where you are in charge to design a solution that customer will 100% comply to :-)

    ReplyQuote
  • avatar
    • 0
    • 1
    Paul Orwig
    2012-03-03 03:26:13

    Thank you Graeme for writing this article! I think the the type of experience you described is probably a pretty common one.

    I think that many people just getting introduced to Joomla and maybe struggling with the same issues you pointed out will be encouraged to read how your experience had a happy ending, and that will give them more confidence that their experience will end the same way too.

    Well done, thank you for your contribution here to the Joomla community, and welcome to the JCM team!

    ReplyQuote
  • avatar
    • 0
    • 0
    Cédric Lambert
    2012-03-03 10:40:14

    I'm also agree with you about the difficulties to develop new applications for Joomla! and the the fact that Joomla is still developping new version that doesn't works with plugin and composant used with Joomla 1.5. We always need to test our new versions of Joomla before using it for clients. It's very hard want we haven't always the time to do it seriously. When clients need a specific application that doesn't exist in Joomla, I'm used to reject the project. Even if the application realy necessary or superfluous. But client will always more...

    ReplyQuote
  • avatar
    • 0
    • 0
    Scott Greenwald
    2012-03-05 12:47:11

    Great article Graeme. And this is why I love Joomla. With some basic Joomla training, and motivation, anyone can call themselves a website developer, or rather, web solutions developer. I created JoomaDirect.com exactly for that purpose - a resource of free, basic tutorials for absolute beginners.

    ReplyQuote
  • avatar
    • 0
    • 0
    Firman
    2012-03-06 13:08:58

    I think I know exactly what you mean. I am in that kind of position, my friend ( a programmer) got sick when I entrusted him with a website project, and now I forced to build the website myself (I use joomla because I have no/little programming skill). and like you mentioned above, I read and read, do some research, doing some trial and error, asking in facebook joomla-page, using various module and or extension, etc.

    Now I have a 'beta' website and my boss kinda like it. just some work left to update the content and hunting few modules, and its done. And I think it will not stop there, its gonna be exciting to explore the world of joomla. :D

    ReplyQuote
  • avatar
    • 0
    • 0
    Website Design Tenerife
    2012-03-12 13:07:02

    I've been developing websites for a number of years, since 1995 actually and hand coded fro a great part of that. However, about 5 years ago I was introduced to Joomla and needless to say I was reluctant.

    However, now all my websites are delivered through Joomla and I love the fact that when I need to I can roll my sleeves up and hand code using PHP & MySQL.

    I've used this to deliver customised auction websites that are purely hand coded but delivered through Joomla, online application forms and customised contact forms with hand coded captcha.

    That's flexible...! What's more... They all rank well in Google...!

    ReplyQuote
  • avatar
    • 0
    • 0
    Rita Lewis
    2012-03-29 15:31:19

    Graeme, terrific article! I think what is developing within the Joomla! community are two types of website development projects: "off the shelf" based projects where the content is the most important portion and the features are pretty standard, such as a newsletter, commenting, download, photo gallery, video gallery, contacts, forms, editor, etc. and then there are function-rich custom applications that require coding to integrate disparate parts or where there aren't yet extensions available to do what the client wants. I've been involved in both types of projects. For the first one, I find that I can customize the look and feel of off the shelf extensions and template and concentrate on user experience and content strategy, for example a site that provides resources and information on a topic or markets a product. I'm a writer and graphics person who fell into Joomla! because I could get by on my knowledge of HTML and CSS and some javascript and learn the PHP and MySQL For the custom feature site, I act as project manager and creative director and sub-contract the developers after doing the requirements analysis and then ensure that everything works together and looks right according to what the client wants.

    I think both types of Joomla! sites exist and one of the nice things about Joomla! is that it is flexible enough to fit both scenarios.

    Good luck on your website!

    ReplyQuote
back to top
Support Joomla!