I mentioned in a previous post am working with Joomla web site publishing tool. I have been using Macromedia Dreamweaver, now Adobe Dreamweaver CS5 for many years. Before that I used Canadian HTML software called HoT MetaL Pro, now out of business.
The Blogs, BBS and Ecommerce sites I run all use a high level authoring, called a Content Management System (CMS). HTML programming is not required but it certainly helps. Most of the development work is fill-in-the-blank modules but I have found intimate knowledge of all the web formats and tools exceedingly helpful such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), Extensible Markup Language (XML), Structured Query Language (SQL), PHP, Java, and the list goes on. Otherwise the developer is limited to out-of-the-box (yuck) look and feel.
All the modules are built with the above programming tools and certainly some other object oriented developer languages such as C++, Pearl, TCL and a complete host of other Linux GNU/GPL or UNIX based languages. Alphabet soup isn’t it?
At my place of real work I have been using MS SharePoint for many years. It too is a CMS. Complete web browser UI’s (User Interfaces) in SharePoint are built from modules and all information in this case is stored in a Sequel SQL database. Complete SharePoint site development could be a career in itself but I am mostly a department level guru hacker.
I am the prime support for another CMS used at work called Spitfire which is a commercial construction Project Management System (PMS) used for financial, document and communication management. Before that I managed Prolog, a similar PMS.
All these new systems use a database as a background information storage system. Databases are another new world to explore if a programmer wants to have total knowledge of the environment in which the CMS system operates.
My personal databases (free) have all been a flavor called MySQL. My purpose here is not to explain databases. It is important to understand there are two individual server “machines” real or virtual, required running any CMS web site, one for the browser interface and the other for the data storage.
HTML programming creates “static” or fixed pages, while CMS is producing mostly dynamic pages that exist only when someone views them, a truly interesting concept. Because viewing pages are built on the fly, viewing response is usually slower than static pages. So some static pages are used (the reason HTML and PHP knowledge is helpful) and various caching schemes are employed. PHP (originally meaning, Personal Home Page) is like a wrapper language to package HTML to be used in Dynamic web sites.
That all brings me back to my latest CMS called Joomla. There seems to be a propensity to use African words these days (10 years!) for GNU/GPL (free) software including the hottest new flavor of Linux called Ubuntu. Perhaps a good move away from all the cryptic three letter acronyms mentioned above including CMS.
In any case Joomla roots go back to about the year 2000, so it is not exactly a new kid on the block. Today, since it is claimed to be the most popular CMS software, it’s time for me to do a serious look and see.
I have two works in progress (WIPs), got to love those acronyms. One is located on a server at home I mentioned several posts back and now another one I started out in my world space. Out there I am doing a rebuild of my original HTML personal web pages. I had a big learning hump to get over before my Joomla work started to click, but now it is rolling along.
The URL is my basic tedatum.com and the link is up. Visitors will have to REGISTER to see anything but the home page. Yeah, I am having geek fun…