Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com

Packed with expert advice on all aspects of programming with Joomla!, this book is an invaluable reference guide you will turn to again and again in your Joomla! development tasks.

Joomla! is the world's hottest open-source content management system, and the winner of the 2006 Open Source CMS Prize. Out of the box, Joomla! does a great job of managing the content needed to make your website sing. But for many people, the true power of Joomla! lies in its application framework that makes it possible for thousands of developers around the world to create powerful add-ons and extensions. Many companies or organizations have requirements that go beyond what is available in the basic Joomla! package or in a freely available extension. Thankfully, Joomla! offers a powerful application framework that makes it easy for developers to create sophisticated add-ons that extend the power of Joomla! into virtually unlimited directions.

If you use PHP programming to extend or customize Joomla!, this book is essential reading. If you feel that you've mastered the basics of creating Joomla! extensions, then this book will take you to the next level. Packed with expert advice on all aspects of development with Joomla!, you will learn about best-practice design and coding for Joomla! components, modules, plugins and other extensions.

You will also learn about customizing the page output, using JavaScript effects, making use of Web Services from within Joomla! and ensuring that your code is secure and error-free.

A unique and comprehensive reference to the main areas of interest within the Joomla! framework is also included in the book.

• In-depth guide to programming Joomla!
• Design and build secure and robust components, modules and plugins
• Includes a comprehensive reference to the major areas of the Joomla! framework

Packed with expert advice and tips, this book is an invaluable reference guide that you will turn to again and again as you work with Joomla!

PHP developers who want to understand how Joomla! works with a view to advanced customization or extension development, and want to learn how to work with the Joomla! framework.

Average Customer Rating:

Not the best for a beginner.

Customer Rating:

It's a good book. But it's got some short-comings that makes it not a complete reference for Joomla 1.5. The organization is a little bit fragmented. All the examples are snippets and are never complete listings. This makes it a difficult book to use for a brand new learning Joomla developer. If it was a complete reference tutorial, it being the only book that you would ever need, that newbies and experts alike could pick it up and gleam from it I would have given it a 5 stars. I would have given it a 4 if the Appendix that has a quick look up was clearer on what section your in and the section titles were more distinguishable. But it has produced a decent amount of answers to my periodic questions. It's a nice book to have but far from the only book you'll ever need on Joomla. So I gave it 3 stars.

Fair but let down by poor index

Customer Rating:

This is a reasonable introductory text and it gave me what I needed when I read it after Learning Joomla! 1.5 Extension Development: Creating Modules, Components, and Plugins with PHP in the same series. However, it is let down by a poor index and the fact that the coverage is too much 'type this' and 'do this' rather than helping the reader understand why things need to be done in a certain way and how to find the necessary resources to address new problems.

Good reference for new Joomla developers

Customer Rating:

The book was a good resource for me to get to grips with the Joomla 1.5 API, having had very little experience of Joomla and PHP development in general, however having a good background in programming. I feel the book has been written with developer's like me in mind, i.e. people who have knowledge of general web application programming but little or no knowledge of Joomla. The way the book has been sectioned progresses nicely, starting with a brief intro to Joomla (for completeness' sake), a Joomla programming Getting Started chapter and then delves into the API per se. It introduces the general classes Joomla uses, and how they relate to each other. Each chapter then introduces and describes more enhanced functionality, such as accessing the database, developing components, the MVC model, and keeps on building, with each chapter building and adding to the knowledge learned in the previous chapters. Overall I think this book is a good start for anyone delving into the Joomla Development world. It introduces the concepts, explains, and with that knowledge you can go ahead and dive into your development.

For Developers Only

Customer Rating:

If I didn't already know MVC, Joomla 1.5 and had made components before I think this book would be useless. If you have dabbled in developer code however and Joomla 1.5 this is a great resource. This book lacks examples of building finished components. If it combined the style of other books like learn joomla 1.5 as well as having this great resource of information it would be worth solid gold. Without it and without a good index It takes time to find what you are after. Once you find it however it always provides great, accurate information.

Somewhat frustrating

Customer Rating:

The really frustrating thing about this book is the style and lack of indexing. When I buy a technical reference, the most important thing is being able to look up any relevant term or function name and immediately find the place to read about that. This book has the terms subcategorized under other terms that only make sense if you already know Joomla programming! I seriously almost never find the term I'm looking for in the index. This really drives me crazy. When I have found the area I'm looking for, however, I've been pretty happy with the quality of explanation provided. Indexing is all important.