Joomla! is one of the best known Open Source content management systems with many hundreds of thousands of applications in the most varied areas of use. It offers the best possible conditions for implementing a comprehensive and accessible Web presence. Thousands of extensions for almost any purpose are freely available. The developer and user community is huge. On the Internet you can find many different platforms for exchanging information with other users and developers. That’s an advantage you should not underestimate! But a Web site without individual design is inconceivable. After all, it’s not just the content that makes a Web site truly unique; above all, it’s the individual design. This design is the job of the Joomla! templates. In addition to the design aspect, they are also responsible for structuring the content. They create the framework and are basically a template for the content. So they control not only what something looks like but also where the content is located within the document. Joomla! template designers are responsible not only for the design but also for the architecture of the information. When designing a Web site, you need to take into account all requirements of the client as well as the expectations of the visitors.

A small, but important part of these requirements is accessibility. With Joomla!, it’s really easy to create accessible Web pages.

To develop Joomla! templates, you need some knowledge of different areas of Web technology, much of which has little to do with Joomla! itself. In our time of increasingly manifold technical possibilities, it is difficult to be an expert in all available Web technologies, so we tend to specialize in certain areas. For instance, you have the frontend developer who knows all there is to know about HTML and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), the designer who can use Photoshop with all its functions, the PHP specialist, and the JavaScript expert. To develop Joomla! templates, you need some of all this specialized knowledge.

Master All Facets of Joomla! Site Customization with Templates

Now, for the first time, there’s a complete, authorized guide to template design, development, and customization with Joomla!. Packed with examples, this clear, concise, practical text covers everything from beginning-level skills to power techniques–even creating new HTML5-native mobile views, today’s most exciting new Joomla! capability.

Joomla!^® Templates will be invaluable for every professional web designer and developer who uses Joomla!, for advanced nonprofessional users, and for less experienced users who want to customize their own sites instead of paying others to do it. This title’s concise, easy-to-use coverage includes

• Using Joomla! templates to customize any website to your exact requirements
• Learning how Joomla! templates are structured and how they behave
• Quickly changing a Joomla! site’s look and feel
• Making sure your templates fully support accessibility and standards
• Getting your basic template structure into shape with CSS and HTML
• Designing responsive Joomla! templates and sites
• Supercharging your templates with JavaScript
• Analyzing HTML, CSS, and accessibility
• Integrating template components, including index.php, the XML file, template parameters, and language files
• Adapting and modifying output via the system template
• Mastering advanced template customization