It seems straightforward, you find a template that has a design that you like and would very well fit into what you have in mind for your site.  You download the template and then install it into your Joomla site.  You then go to add modules and then you realise, you don't know what module positions you have available.  Ok, this is an extreme example as most template demo's will show you what module positions are in the template you are about to download.  However, not all do, and many of my clients admit they don't have a clue how to find out what module positions they have available to them.

The Joomla Chick to the rescue!

In a few simple steps you will know what positions you have available to you, for any template you have installed.

1.  Go to Extensions - Template Manager

2.  Click the radial button (the round button beside your template name on the left hand side) and then press edit template.  Don't worry we are not going to actually edit the template.

3.  Click on preview.  This isn't the preview button at the top of the screen where you can preview the template in the browser.  There is a preview button further down the page which has a huge magnifying glass next to it.  Click it.

4.  You will then see your template with it's available module positions showing.  This will show up every module position whether there is content in there at the moment or not.

It is a good idea just to draft where the module positions are and keep this close at hand as you develop your site.  For me, it's more important what module positions are available to you than the actual design of the template and in the past I've had to change templates half way through as I found there wasn't template positions where I needed them to be.  Yes you can add module positions but that's another article and not under Joomla Basics!

Joomla 1.5 has it's own build in search engine friendly (SEF) component that is relatively easy to turn on.  It is best to try using this first before installing another component or module to do the same thing.  I've used Joomla SEF very successfully and it is so simple to turn on.

Firstly you need to go to your File Manager in your CPanel, or ftp program to find a file called "htaccess.txt" that comes as a default file after the installation of Joomla 1.5.  All you need to do is either, click on the name and rename it, or click on edit name and rename this file to .htaccess and then we are ready to prepare Joomla SEF.

Once you are back in the Joomla control panel, click on "Site" then "Global Configuration" and you will see on the right hand side the Joomla SEO Setting parameters which are automatically all set to "no".   Click them all to "yes" and that's all there is to it.  Joomla SEF is now set up.

There are some things to note however, Joomla SEF works through the menu's so if you change your menu's around, attaching, reattaching and swapping between menu's then this will muck up your Joomla SEF settings and your visitors, if they come across your site through the search engines may end up clicking on a dead link because you have moved things around.  Just be aware of this.

When you first install Joomla 1.5 and view your page source of your newly installed site you will notice that the default settings are:

You can easily amend the keywords meta tags and the description meta tags in global configuration but there is no where in the Joomla control panel to change the Generator meta tags, meta name="generator" content="Joomla! 1.5 - Open Source Content Management"> to whatever you wish.

This is important as you don't want search engines picking up your site with Joomla meta tags especially if your site doesn't have anything to do with Joomla!

To change this you need to have access to your cpanel, go into your template folder and find the "index.php" file.  If the file has "555" permissions then you need to change this to "755" so that you can actually edit the code.  Once you have changed the permissions you can click on the file, or tick the file and press edit to edit the file.

All you need to do is put a little bit of code in between the <head> and </head> tags.  That code is:

<?php $this->setGenerator(' '); ?>

Where you can put anything you wish between the ' ' marks.  I usually just put it before the </head> tag like below.

all you need to do now is save the file and check that it's changed properly.  Very easy but very annoying when you don't know where to look to change it!

Joomla is an open source content management system.

Open source means that the software is usually free to install, use and amend in any way you wish other than to end up selling it.  There are lots of open source software, you have probably heard of Wordpress, this is another open source software that benefits thousands of users each day.

The big question is, if it's so useful, why give it away free?  There are groups of techie's who love coding software and seeing their work being put to good use and believe that the software they provide should be free.  Free, however, does not mean that they will not take donations to help cover the costs of developing Joomla further.  Part of my mission as The Joomla Chick is to donate a percentage of the profits from this site to the Joomla development team, as well as those components, modules etc that I just can't live without!

Next question has to be, what is a content management system?

Joomla's content management system means that instead of going into core code and having to deal with html, php and other coding issues and seeing the "raw" data, a content management system makes it easy for you to create and manage content within your system.  You can upload graphics easily (up to 2mb), add articles, move modules about, display different things on your front page, infact you can do 1001 things with Joomla from your content management control panel.

Joomla can be, and is, used in a huge variety of ways, from setting up community sites, online magazines, basic website, online store, articles directory, business directory, online reservations, event co-ordination, the list is endless.

It is definitely worth taking the time to learn how to get the best out of Joomla.  I've been using Joomla for a few years now and find Joomla now is easier to learn than ever and it's popularity is definitely growing.

You may have to pay for some components, modules and/or plugins but usually these add-ons are well worth the expense and if you are creating a commercial website, you can usually recoup your investment in no time.