Need to launch a feature-rich website quickly where you have one or more people authoring the content? Want to use a powerful, robust, and scalable Content Management System (CMS) you can trust? This Short Cut will get you up and running with Joomla 1.5, a freely available open source CMS. Learn how to install, configure, customize, and extend your Joomla installation. Also learn the tricks of the trade in how to set up and manage both your content and your users. Joomla can be a challenge to understand at first, so drastically cut your "get up to speed" time by taking the Short Cut!

In 1997, eBay was barely two years old and Google was primarily a research project for a couple of college students. How times have changed! Today's Internet boasts online applications, services, and a plethora of tools, assets, and information that can help anyone do pretty much anything. One area that has seen lots of attention is the creation of websites.

It would be easy to recount the history of how initial website creation tools were created, how they forked and evolved into development and Content Management System (CMS) platforms, but not today. In this Short Cut, we want to talk about a platform called Joomla that can be used to power very sophisticate websites quickly. If you have used a commercial or homegrown CMS before, such as those by Vignette, then Joomla will come as a welcome alternative.

The first section has you install the prerequisites and Joomla and then perform the initial setup and configuration. With Joomla up and running you can begin setting up your Sections and Categories, which will be used to classify your content. You’re exposed to templates and extensions, as these two features help lay the foundation for what is possible in terms of site functionality