In the middle of 2012 I was invited to speak at the Joomladay in Melbourne Australia in January 2013. I've tried the virtual presenter thing before and I really didn't enjoy the experience. A Joomladay is not just about the sessions that you attend but also the people that you meet. You just can't do that properly in a virtual world, at the very least no one can really buy me a beer (cold or not) over skype.
So on January 14 I will be boarding a flight for the rediculously long flight to Melbourne. At a little over 21,500 miles (34,700 km) it will take my air miles for the preceding 12 months over the 100,000 miles (160,000 km) barrier. It is truly amazing how many bad movies you can watch on a tiny screen when you are trapped insode a flying tin can.
For me this will be the second time I have visited Melbourne. The first time was in May 2005 when I travelled to meet Andrew Eddie and the Miro team to set the groundwork for the Mambo Foundation. And we all know how that turned out so I am hopeful that this won't be an omen for this trip.
Unlike other Joomladays that I have attended across the world the Australian events have created a tradition of holding half and full day training classes before and after the event itself.
This event in Melbourne is no different and I will be teaching 4 different classes while I am there as well as two presentaions at the Joomladay itself.
Joomla 2.5 for beginners
This session is for people who have never used Joomla before or who have perhaps learned the hard way by trial and error. Even if you have used joomla or other cms before this is essential to ensure that you are doing things the "correct way".)
We will cover the basics of joomla to ensure that you understand the terminology and principles of joomla. (How a joomla site is structured, content and menu creation, backups and security etc. By the end of the session we will have gone through the entire process of building a Joomla web site.
Introduction to Joomla 3
Joomla 3 is the new kid on the block. This session, while intended for users already familiar with Joomla 2.5 will also be suitable for those who are barnd new to the Joomla world.
We will concentrate at looking at the new features in Joomla 3 and how to really take advantage of them on your web site including some of the funky new features available using the Bootstrap framework that "help" to make your web site responsive out of the box.
Joomla Website Security
"- prevention is better for a cure but we can heal the sick as well" Keeping a web site secure and ensuring that it is a hacker free zone is not rocket science if you take some simple easy to follow steps. We will cover all these steps from selecting the correct web host through to password management and update and maintenance procedures.
But just in case you haven't followed this before we will also look at some of the available tools that will help you diagnose and resolve any issues. Many web sites are hacked yesterday and exploited today - can you be sure your site is really safe?
Building a Joomla Multi-Lingual Web Site
The 2001 census indicated 2.8 million people in Australia (16% of the population) spoke a language other than English at home. Are you satisfying their needs with your english language only web site?
Joomla 2.5 introduced the ability, at last, to easily build multilingual web sites. But there is a 10 step process that you need to go through first. During this session we will take an existing mono-lingual web site and convert it to a multilingual site without using any additional software.
Share a beer?
Even if you don't come to the training sessions I hope that you will join me for a beer or two during my week in Melbourne even if the beer is served ice cold
