Joomla! workday 2016
Saturday, the 1st of October JUG-CPH hosted the first Joomla! workday. We were excited to see whether or not the concept would work - and fortunately we can conclude that it did. The purpose of Joomla! workday is to spend an entire day rather than only 2 1/2 hours on an ordinary work evening. On the Joomla! workday we have 8 hours to immerse ourselves in different subjects. The concept also provides the opportunity to work with hands-on with the items on dedicated work sites - we set up special sites where each participant could just enjoy themselves.
We started the day with coffee and rolls and danish pastries that Søren had brought from Fynen - and then dived straight in.
J2Store
In the first section Bibbi gave us a tour of a small shop extension called J2Store. We had been told that it was mostly for smaller shops but that it was easy to install. However, we were all blown away because it turned out to be a really good shop and very simple to set up. So if you would like to have a shop that is easy to work with, and if you do not have too complex products - then can only be reccomended to use this shop extension. It has to be mentioned, athe it is worth paying a little money for the pro version of the shop - that provides you with more options. Prices start at $ 39 - so it's very reasonable.
Custom module + CSS styling
After a short break we began the next topic which took us to the slightly more geeky department. Jens explaned how to work with modules in Joomla! and how to style them with CSS. In fact it is reasonably easy. But it can seem confusing because it requires some knowledge of CSS and because you have to write some code in files that are placed behind the scenes where we are not used to work. It was all about making a login module in a way that looks a little better than the standard. In general CSS can change elements on your site - so it looks exactly like you want it, by using only a few lines of code.
The over time
It's not easy to follow the agenda on a Joomla! workday! We let ourselves get carried away and answer all questions in the end it poses some problems with keeping the schedule. To catch up, we took a short lunch break and continued directly to the next topic which was Speed up Joomla! Bibbi presented the topic and talked about how we can get an idea about how fast the page is loaded. It is important that our pages are loaded quickly to the user's browser or phone. Otherwise the user looses interest ... and we only have a few seconds to make an impression. There are many areas to address in order to increase the speed at which our page is sent to the users' media. We were shown where we need to look and how to use Google's Page Speed tool. For example, you optimize on how many different templates to download, how many js files to be downloaded, how well compressed, your photos are, and so on. One thing is certain! And it is, that we all need to remember to get our pages checked through this tool - because we can get speed from it.
Bootstrap
Is perhaps a very geeky topic to bring up on such a day. But it is actually reasonably important to know more about how our sites react to the ever-growing number of devices we see in the media. Bootstrap, which originally formed the basis for Twitter, has become hugely popular among developers - and gradually implemented in thousands of websites - if not billions. People were very quiet around the tables as Jens told about 'breakpoins' <div> s and class'es ... not because it was late in the afternoon - but probably more because it is, and will be a topic where you have to get up early to follow. However, it is, thankfully, so that with just a small part of Bootstrap you can make big different on your site. Take a trip into getbootstrap.com and see for your self how easy it is to make a link in an article into a super cool and I-must-click-on-you button.
So in a nutshell
We in JUG-CPH have realized that next year we would like to make sure there we have two Joomla! workdays. One in spring and one in autumn. We have already talked a little to JUG-SORØ and hope that it could be a task that we share between our two groups. So that each of the groups could be responsible for one of the work days. But it is quite sure that we will return with more information about the Joomla! workday concept and how we spread it further into 2017.
If you would like to, you can take a look at the Joomla! workday site right here (in Danish) you will find more information about the workday and you can download the presentations.
Bibbi and Jens sends a huge THANK YOU for your interest and because you chose to spend an autumn Saturday with us and Joomla!
