Two Days in Joomlaland

two rolls and a bee: literary bakery

I used Joomla to create a website (https://ljjoseymlis.demojoomla.com/) for Two Rolls and a Bee, a literary bakery (which does not really exist, although the menu items sound scrumptious and do have real recipes out there somewhere). The idea was to create a bakery that used local ingredients and also functioned as a coffee house venue for poetry readings and hosted author events. All of the sketches were created using http://www.onemotion.com, and credit for the stunning photography goes to my talented sister, Scout.

Process

I began the assignment with a very positive attitude about learning something new and getting to be creative in the process, yet I soon grew anxious about completing the assignment on time, as I experienced a road block early on when trying to open the extensions manager. Apparently, other people had the same issue, and for me it was resolved by installing the extensions from a different device and then accessing them on my laptop. I then created five menus, with two (Menu Items and Literary Events) linked to categories. This turned out to be the most time-consuming part of the project, simply because gaining familiarity with how the administrator site functions takes a bit of trial-and-error. I added the search bar module and the Google Maps module without difficulty. And for the fun part, I changed the template and background color to match my artwork and experimented with different fonts and headings until I found/created ones that fit the tone of the website (warm, charming, homemade, friendly).

Challenges

I only encountered a couple more minor problems along the way: It took some outside research to learn how to change the header, as that information was not in the tutorial videos, and even after double checking that all of my paragraph text was set to the same font and size, some still appears larger or smaller to me.

Summary of Experience

Overall, I’m pleased with the result- a professional-quality website that allows me control to go in, add, and edit content on my own anytime. My advice to anyone considering using Joomla is to be patient, use all of the resources and help available, enjoy the creative aspects, and don’t be afraid to ditch the tutorials at a certain point and explore on your own without worrying about ruining things! Because of the time constrains of this course, I sat down and created a fully-functional, aesthetically pleasing website in about two days; however Joomla offers many more useful features, and I hope to experience using these in a future class or on my own.