I found my experience with Joomla to be frustrating but also fun. It was not very user-friendly, and was also a bit counter-intuitive. I tried to use Joomla without watching the webinar first, and eventually gave in and went through the step-by-step process. I find it odd that someone has to watch a pretty long tutorial in order to learn how to even do the basics on the site. Even more peculiar is that the first step is to erase all the default data that was put in, which is a bit frustrating when trying to create a fresh, new page. It was also pretty humorous to me that the narrator of the video strongly advised against using the stock templates that were available with the trial, and that a downloadable template that had to be found through a search engine was the recommended format. Also, it was a bit irritating that the Cloudbase background patterns were simply listed by number, and could only be seen after saving them and going to a “front end” view. That being said, despite all these bumps in the road, I did enjoy making my site once I got the hang of it. I liked all of the options I had and how it was easy to insert images with text, and linking the menus to articles was not difficult at all. Nevertheless, I feel there may be other systems more user-friendly than Joomla, and would shop around before doing anything past the demo or recommending it to others.
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Joomla
This is a bit boring and pretty much like my discussion post, but...
I found my experience with Joomla to be frustrating but also fun. It was not very user-friendly, and was also a bit counter-intuitive. I tried to use Joomla without watching the webinar first, and eventually gave in and went through the step-by-step process. I find it odd that someone has to watch a pretty long tutorial in order to learn how to even do the basics on the site. Even more peculiar is that the first step is to erase all the default data that was put in, which is a bit frustrating when trying to create a fresh, new page. It was also pretty humorous to me that the narrator of the video strongly advised against using the stock templates that were available with the trial, and that a downloadable template that had to be found through a search engine was the recommended format. Also, it was a bit irritating that the Cloudbase background patterns were simply listed by number, and could only be seen after saving them and going to a “front end” view. That being said, despite all these bumps in the road, I did enjoy making my site once I got the hang of it. I liked all of the options I had and how it was easy to insert images with text, and linking the menus to articles was not difficult at all. Nevertheless, I feel there may be other systems more user-friendly than Joomla, and would shop around before doing anything past the demo or recommending it to others.
I found my experience with Joomla to be frustrating but also fun. It was not very user-friendly, and was also a bit counter-intuitive. I tried to use Joomla without watching the webinar first, and eventually gave in and went through the step-by-step process. I find it odd that someone has to watch a pretty long tutorial in order to learn how to even do the basics on the site. Even more peculiar is that the first step is to erase all the default data that was put in, which is a bit frustrating when trying to create a fresh, new page. It was also pretty humorous to me that the narrator of the video strongly advised against using the stock templates that were available with the trial, and that a downloadable template that had to be found through a search engine was the recommended format. Also, it was a bit irritating that the Cloudbase background patterns were simply listed by number, and could only be seen after saving them and going to a “front end” view. That being said, despite all these bumps in the road, I did enjoy making my site once I got the hang of it. I liked all of the options I had and how it was easy to insert images with text, and linking the menus to articles was not difficult at all. Nevertheless, I feel there may be other systems more user-friendly than Joomla, and would shop around before doing anything past the demo or recommending it to others.
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I am SO glad someone else found this counter-intuative. I just cringe when I see the word intuitive now. Especial when it comes attached to any software
ReplyDeleteAgreed, it just made absolutely no sense. I don't like working backwards!
DeleteI also found Joomla! to be sort of confusing, this past weekend. It would have nice to see a written tutorial, as an alternative to the video. I can be difficult to find and review a specific part of a video tutorial, unlike a written tutorial. Still, there is probably a written tutorial somewhere on the web that is similar to the video, even though I didn't immediately see it. Also, I too found myself making changes in one browser tab and then refreshing my page in another tab in order to see what happened. I wonder how you would view changes without applying them to the version of your website that the public sees. I think doing so would be important if you were designing a website for something other than a class or personal use.
ReplyDeleteYeah, it just didn't seem very practical. I also would have liked a written tutorial, perhaps a list of screen shots, so I could immediately reference the part I needed instead of having to wait for the video to get to that point and pausing it every few seconds to do the work.
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