Reprinted with permission from Compass Design: Valid W3C joomla template designs for your website

So we are about to begin design the site for real, but first we need a few tools. Now, everyone probably has their own favorites, but here is a list I have been working on of all the tools you will need to design a site. The good part? They are all free for the downloading.

Important Note: Where a download link is shown I have give a direct link for the download to make the download as easy as possible. Where mirrors have been linked to I have chosen US ones. More experienced users should examine the link and truncate it to go to the actual site.

Components are Joomla's content elements or applications that usually appear in the center of a three column Joomla layout, or on the right of a two column Joomla layout. Components are core elements of Joomla functionality. Joomla core components include: Banners, Contact, News Feeds, Polls and Weblinks. Members of the Joomla Community are producing third party Joomla components on a continuous basis. Let's try in this tutorial to install one component.

Joomla Modules extend the capabilities of Joomla giving the software new functionality. Joomla Modules are small content items that can be displayed anywhere that your template allows it to be displayed. Joomla Modules are very easy to install in the Admin Section. Joomla modules may include: Main Menu, Top menu, Template Chooser, Polls, Newsflash, Hit Counter, etc. Members of the Joomla Community are producing third party Joomla modules on a continuous basis. Let's try in this tutorial to install one module.

Joomla have an option to create static content on your website. You can use this option to create pages like "about us", "terms and conditions", even product pages. The static content is a simple web page linked to your menu. In this tutorial we will show how to create static content and how to create a link in main menu for it.

In this joomla tutorial, we will look at a 3 column theme for your joomla website. Most joomla websites use 3 columns and having the theme start with that is a good foundation. Then later we can hide side columns if there is no content in them for that page.

Let's face it, making a joomla theme with tables is easy. That's why we all did it (may we hang our heads in shame). Achieving the same using CSS is much harder. The learning curve is steep and there are lots of issues with how browsers interpret the CSS.

Reprinted with permission from Compass Design: Valid W3C joomla template designs for your website

In an earlier section, we discussed a slightly different design process. Instead of creating the design and then doing the CSS layout, we will be doing it the other way round, the Joomla CSS first. We are doing this because we want to make an blank CSS template file that can be reused by anyone.

Let's startout with a basic blank template, no layout, just all the font typography styling. This is a blank Joomla template to help speed production of a site. Its not a production template CSS file , all styles shouldn't be filled in, ones that don't get used should be deleted before using. This blank CSS file has several features:

Templates define the lay-out of your Joomla Web site. You can assign different templates to various pages of your Web site.  Templates can be created for the Frontend of your site called Site TemplateAdministrator Templates. This is a small tutorial where you will learn about how to install templates in Joomla.

It seems that a lot of new Joomla users want to know how to install Joomla. It's obviously very easy and when I started writing tutorials for Jooma I skiped that step. Of, course that must be the first tutorial but...

I will start as you are used to with a step-by-step tutorial. Before we proceed you need Joomla package. The Joomla package can be found on Joomla Forge and can be downloaded from here . It is better to download the latest version because it has the latest bug fixes and new patches. You will find at the bottom of the Forge page the latest full package. Start download it and let's prepare to install.