For something that would take me a few mins to find in the Wordpress Codex, it takes me an hour of googling and going through the myriad form posts and it just gets very frustrating. Maybe I'm a noob.
Does anyone have similar experience with Joomla?
Posted Mar 11, 2012, 11:14 PM UTC
I think Joomla suffers because it tries to be all things to all people. It tries to be as non-developer friendly as WP and it also tries to be more 'platform'-like, like drupal.
The problem manifests itself as documentation that caters to both and yet none at the same time. It's frustrating for non-technical users and developers alike because they can't get the information they need.
It's pretty bad when my own blog post on my own crappy site gets in the top 5 hits on google for 'joomla 1.6 menu name'.
Technically, I think the project is going in a great direction for both camps - but the documentation could certainly be better. I know it needs people to donate time and write the stuff in the first place, but I'd appreciate more examples of plugin creation and api hooks, instead of having to disect other peoples plugins or the core itself. The api documentation is fine as a reference, but sorely lacks examples.
The problem manifests itself as documentation that caters to both and yet none at the same time. It's frustrating for non-technical users and developers alike because they can't get the information they need.
I agree, but in a lot of cases it's not even that - many articles to me feel like stubs as they don't even explain how and why a functionality operates. I had a hard time finding a way to get Wordpress' simple isHome functionality for example... frustrating.
The api documentation is fine as a reference, but sorely lacks examples.
Definitely, missing examples rendered a lot of the articles almost unusable to me. To use it I have to dig pretty deep to wrap my head around the inner workings of the system. OTOH, Wordpress Codex explains everything to the smallest details and it makes it a lot easier to just copy the given code and modify to your needs.
But I agree, Joomla has improved a lot since 1.5, and I'd love it to be my main go-to CMS, but Wordpress just makes a lot of stuff that much easier to do.
the only way I was able to master joomla was by getting the lynda.com videos - a vast and thorough explanation of everything you need to know about joomla. I wouldn't have been able to learn it without it.
Lynda's usually a good resource, I'll give that a try as well, thanks.
There's much to be desired with the Joomla documentation, but OTOH I've learned to do stuff that I'd normally never touch (like hacking the core Joomla files) and as a result my overall skill set has greatly improved.
That's definitely a good way to go, but it's also pretty time consuming. If I am working on a project I don't have the time to learn everything about Joomla's core, but am looking for quick answers to solve my problems.
What can I help you with?
Thank you for the offer! I managed to solve most of the problems I had, but I do have one which I can't find an answer for:
How do I display a contact's details in a module without a plugin?
A quick search on the JED would have revealed this module
I'm leaning towards agreement.
There is sufficient entry level documentation. I find, even as major releases are being pushed out, it's getting more difficult to find sufficient developer documentation for those of us working on extensions in addition to Joomla administration in general.
Agreed. I've been on more epic chicken chases with Joomla than any other system I've ever used. It's powerful but very confusing, and the community is frankly a bit of a dog's breakfast. Most of the documentation is still on 1.5, but the community is rallying around 2.5 nicely (unlike 1.6/7 which were essentially ignored).
Big lesson is to minimize the number of extensions you have installed; this can create so many conflicts that become very difficult to resolve. I'd rather hack Joomla than install an extension to do the same thing.
I'd rather hack Joomla than install an extension to do the same thing.
Sure but isn't hacking the core not really recommended as eventually the updates will overwrite the hacks?
I agree. Joomla is supposed to be easy but I find it very difficult and convoluted. And this coming from someone with a lot of experience with computers and programming.
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Yeah, Wordpress wins by a long shot, so that is true in a sense but shouldn't the developers of a CMS also be responsible for writing its documentation? I mean, we're getting this stuff for free, so bitching too much about it is being little too entitled, but still...