2008.04.26 1 A

From Missoula Bar Camp

The Joolma Hacking session had three attendees, Jamie Robertson, Tim Greiser, and Harold Shinsato.

Joomla and Drupal are similar Content Management Systems, and in some ways Drupal is superior. Some say it has fewer bugs and better architecture, but Joomla has more functionality. Joomla has a gallery [1] plugin, whereas Drupal does not. Drupal requires minimal set up and very few security fixes are required. Everything is modules that hook into the system.

Joomla as CMS installs easily but customization can be some work. One of the attendees stripped out all the css for a theme to create a custom theme. There are themes that can be purchased or downloaded for free that offer considerable customization.

There is CiviCRM, which is a nice plugin which offers quite a bit of functionality as a form of customer relationship management, except for non-profits. [2]

There are a few calendar plugins that can offer event publication for a Joomla site. JCal was mentioned.

There are more basic alternatives that may be alternatives for Joomla (if you aren't afraid of programming). The Savant PHP templating engine [3] or Smarty [4]. One of the attendees confessed it would be nice if Joomla had a "minimal" installation, stripped down to the bare essentials.

Tim Greiser demonstrated the Joomla calendar system he created for University events.