Cornwall's first Joomla! Training day

Well its quite late and I should be preparing, but I thought it would be worth blogging that the we are holding the first Joomla! Training day in Cornwall tomorrow.

15 hardy souls have signed their day away to learn how to make the most of this - should we call it phenomenon?  It (Joomla) has certainly come a long way in a few short years, and provides a platform for millions of web sites world wide.

And apart from providing the framework for some of the biggest sites in the world - well its free, and that's a good price!

So enough of my rant, the point of tomorrow is to help these people really make the most of their web sites.  As with many types of software much of what you can do with Joomla is very simple.  However it also has a large number of features that it can take a beginner a long time to discover, let alone master.  Then there is the community - some 5000 extensions to the product also being available, so neither I nor probably anyone else has ever tried or used them all.

Also tomorrow we'll be looking at some of the comparisons with other similar systems.  Not in the absurd tribal way that some like to adopt "i.e. Drupal is rubbish - I only use Joomla" or vice versa, but taking a short but dispassionate look at the the pros and cons, at least of the three most popular current CMS systems - Joomla, Drupal and Wordpress.

(What is most amazing to me still is that we get to use and choose from each of these amazing CMS systems - each of them completely free - created and shared by a worldwide community of developers.  Now that really is something!)

We'll also be taking a quick sneaky view at Joomla 1.6, which is now at Beta 13 level, and fast maturing towards an even more powerful tool set than Joomla 1.5.  Frankly we're not very good with Joomla 1.6 yet, as we always stick with proven systems while delivering our own sites.  Also there will be very few extensions available for 1.6 for quite some while - and it is after all only a development project for now.  However it is on its way, looking very exciting (for a techie like me) and we can have a play around with it tomorrow.

So wish me luck, it looks like we have a good crew in tomorrow, and our developer Andy Graham is along to give me a hand, and give out a few words of wisdom at the back of the room while I am helping those at the front.  Again I hope to report back afterwards and let you know how we got on.