Compass Designs .net

Tomorrow, on July 19, Joomla 1.7 will be released. You're probably wondering how you can come up to speed quickly on another new version of Joomla, including what documentation and training videos are available.

First of all, don't panic! Joomla 1.7 is about 98% the same as Joomla 1.6 from the perspective of a site builder.

The major difference in Joomla 1.7 is that Joomla's programming framework has been separated from Joomla's content management system. (Read more in this Joomla Magazine article.) This separation is a big deal for programmers, engineers, and third party extension developers. However, for people building websites with Joomla, this change has no immediate impact on the way you work with Joomla.

There are minor new features in Joomla 1.7, small things you'll notice as you work through the CMS. This includes the ability to add a background image to custom HTML modules, the ability to put the site name before or after the page name in the HTML title tag, and the new site offline core permission in Joomla's ACL.

You won't see a new administrator template, though, nor will you see new menu items. This means that nearly all Joomla 1.6 training resources will work just fine with Joomla 1.7.

Here's some great ways to come up to speed quickly with Joomla 1.6 and Joomla 1.7.

• Barrie released the 3rd edition of the most popular Joomla book of all time, "Joomla 1.6: A User's Guide".
• Jen created some of the most popular Joomla training videos on the web at lynda.com, including "Joomla 1.6 Essential Training" and "Joomla 1.6 Creating and Editing Custom Templates". These videos consistently receive high marks from viewers.
• Hagen Graf is assembling an online e-book on Joomla 1.7. Jen wrote one of the chapters, called "A Joomla 1.7 Website From Scratch."