Before you dive into this book, I would like to first extend my warm welcome to you as you enter the world of XOOPS. XOOPS is an acronym of eXtensible Object Oriented Portal System. It is an open-source application platform and Content Management System (CMS) written in PHP. It is built for developing a variety of solutions in a modular fashion, for both small and large interactive dynamic community websites, company portals, intranets, weblogs, and much more. By installing different modules, you can build quite different websites.

XOOPS is released under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) and is free to use and modify. It is also free to redistribute as long as you abide by the distribution terms of the GPL.

Learn how to customize websites with XOOPS, the open source CMS that helps non-developers build dynamic community websites, intranets, and other applications. This concise book shows you how to use XOOPS themes and modules to design everything from simple blogs to large database-driven CMS portals.

Web designers and current XOOPS users will learn how to create a site theme with CSS and jQuery libraries, including techniques for making additional modules conform to the site's look and feel. Although XOOPS uses the PHP-based Smarty templating system, all you need is a bit of XHTML and CSS experience to get started.

• Learn the workflow for turning an idea into a full-featured website
• Become familiar with XOOPS’ theme-building tools, and set up PHP and MySQL environments
• Port an existing XHTML template to XOOPS
• Create themes with the 960 Grid System to save time and reduce code
• Use jQuery-based UI libraries to achieve complex effects
• Blend new modules into your theme with the template override function
• Go beyond traditional block layouts to customize your homepage