Joomla! is a free, open source content management system (CMS) for publishing content on internet and intranets. It is a full featured management system that contains the ability to manage RSS feeds, blogs, polls, printable versions of pages, news flashes, and has language internationalization. It came about in 2005 as a fork in the development of a CMS named Mambo.

Beginning Joomla! is aimed at guiding you through nearly every aspect of the Joomla! system from basic deployment to writing your own extensions. The goal of this book is to get up and running and to allow you to do almost anything a manually designed website can do in a fraction of the time. Beginning Joomla! is 496 pages divided into 13 chapters.

Chapter 1, "Introduction to Joomla!," begins with an overview of Joomla! and what a content management system is, and about how they are becoming more popular because of their ease of use. Also discussed is what are the benefits of using Joomla!, its features, and how it works. Chapter 2, "Quickstart: Setting Up a Joomla! Site in 20 Minutes," will show you where to get Joomla!, how to extract the files, and get everything set up. It will also guide you on how to modify the installation, add articles, changing graphics, and create a poll. This chapter is meant to show you how easy everything is.

Chapter 3, "Installation and Configuration," goes into a more detailed installation and configuration setup. Here you will learn how to install with XAMPP, install individual the servers, install the Joomla! files, and trouble shoot the system if you have any problems. Chapter 4, "Adding Content," describes how to plan your content, set up your sections and categories, and add articles. You will also see how to add menus to point to your content, install a new template, and collaborate with outside contributors.

Chapter 5, "Administering Joomla!," will guide you on the ins and outs of Joomla! administration. In this section you will learn about content administration which includes articles, sections, categories, front-page, media, and trash management. You will learn about System administration which includes configuration, user, module, and other system management, as well as back up management. Chapter 6, "Creating Your Own Templates," will show you how to create new templates, modify existing templates as well as how to validate the template code.