Joomla

Joomla Day Malaysia 2008

Last Saturday was the second time Joomla Day was held in Malaysia. The venue was at Cititel, Mid Valley Mall. This is the first time I attended Joomla Day and I was told there were about 200 participants this year. The first one had about 50-60 people.

The venue was a good choice and the room spacious. It was well organized as the programme went smoothly. The speakers finished on time but I think they could have put in more content. The main speaker was Toby Patterson who operates from Bangkok. He is a well-experienced coder and involved in certain portions of Joomla. He gave a good introduction to Joomla, told us that version 1.5.5 was just released 2 days before and spoke briefly on Joomla 1.6.

He gave a broad overview about the differences between version 1.0.x and version 1.5.x, which was an eye-opener for me. The former is procedural whereas the latter is object-oriented. After that, Mark from azrul.com gave a short introduction on installation and another speaker covered SEF URLs.

Then there was a showcase of websites created using Joomla. An open invitation was emailed days before and during the sessions, the audience was invited to come forward to showcase their sites. One Joshua Tan (that’s me) from FocusAsia Enterprise showcase 2 sites which he created for his clients. The first one was a photographer’s showcase website complete with a photo gallery. The landing page itself was a mini slide show. The second one was a local mixed cuisine restaurant. On it, there are full menus of the dishes which visitors can order either through a phone call or by faxing in a downloadable order form.

The rest of the audience didn’t take the opportunity to showcase their sites. It would have been more interesting if they did!

Next, Shaiffulnizam from joomla-my.org gave a good foundation on Joomla performance optimization and also security measures. The tips are quite comprehensive and added to my knowledge of security issues. Thumbs up to Shaifful!

The lunch was a sumptuous buffet! The morning and afternoon tea breaks were pretty good as well! Kudos to the organizers for selecting a great venue with great food!

After lunch, CY Lee from mosets.com gave an overview on the Joomla components, modules and mambots system. He spoke about the Mosets Tree, which his company had created. It is also used by the JED, Joomla Extension Directory. If you frequent the JED, you will see how robust Moset is!

Next, Toby Patterson spoke on developing our own Joomla components. Toby was careful not to get too technical on this subject as I think he sensed the audience were mainly non-techies. Instead, he gave an overview of the Joomla 1.5 architecture and framework. I must say it was a teaser and I think the few techies in the room probably would have found it a good introduction.

Finally, Azrul from azrul.com spoke briefly about the template system. He showed a few steps in getting up a template. One of the reasons why Joomla has been successful is the fact that it separates the content from the interface. You can change and modify the template anytime without affecting the content a single bit!

All in all, Joomla Day was a good event to add more knowledge to my repertoire of Joomla skills. The audience was participative with a few frequent “questioners” going to the mic to ask questions. There was one Colin Charles from MySQL, who clarified some issues on MySQL. I’d observed there were a few very advanced developers and designers in the audience. Other than that, I sensed that there were many newbies who came hoping to learn something and also a small group of ‘curious ones’ to see what Joomla Day is all about.

I love the Joomla Day T-Shirt! And thanks to azrul.com for Jom Comments and MyBlog (although I haven’t tried them yet!). You guys are very generous! And there are some templates on the live CD as well!

Cheers to the lads and lasses at gmitc.biz, azrul.com, joomla-my.org and mosets.com for organizing the Joomla Day Malaysia 2008! You all did a great job!

Yep... Buy me a drink and encourage me to write more great articles! Cheers!

© 2008 The TechnoStrategist.