Oh, Joomla, thou art frustrating. I watched the tutorial but ended up having to play it again almost step-by-step as I worked on the site. I really wish I had just started building the site while watching the first time around. I'm sure that Joomla is one of those things that gets easier the more you use it; I'm sure the more pages I created with it, the more I would like it. However, I didn't find it to be very intuitive or user-friendly.
I created a relatively simple site for this project for a fake institution, which I've dubbed "Sunnyville Public Library." Of course, a real library would require more than 2 pages to be very helpful to its patrons. On the Home page, you can find very general info, such as the mission statement and hours. The other page I created consists of information for the library's 3 book clubs, which are three articles I ended up featuring as was demonstrated in the webinar.
I found it a little frustrating that the software does not allow me to edit a whole page in one place. If I want to remove tags or change the location of items on a page, I have to utilize several different areas of the site. To get everything exactly the way I want it, I almost would've rather coded it myself, but coding does take more time.
The thing I really liked about Joomla (and that I personally do not know how to do when coding) is that it offers templates with responsive layouts. When building a site, the aesthetic appeal and ease with which the user can view the content is highly important when it comes to usability, and this feature allows the user to see the content relatively well without having to enlarge or scroll left to right on any size screen or device.
To view Sunnyville's library site, click here.
Great job with the site Lauren. I had the same feeling after I watched the video the first time. The responsive layouts are a blessing, they manage to keep the aesthetics simple. Though I think that most web layouts will eventually go this way. I did just look at this blogger site and a wordpress site, and they were not responsive.
ReplyDeleteHello Lauren! I had the same frustration and ended up watching the tutorial as I worked as well. Google search was very helpful as well. If there was one thing I needed to change, instead of watching the video again, I went to Google. I have to say Joomla did have nice support pages and a forum. It also helped me feel less frustrated to know other people encountered the same issues I did.
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