Remember, this is a J! 1.5 starting point for your template, just as Paul’s boilerplate is a starting point.  There’s no fancy template framework, grid system, or anything that isn’t present in Paul’s template.  It’s the same thing with some Joomla! goodness attached.

For those that are interested, someone is working on HTML5 overrides for Joomla templates.  I briefly looked at it but didn’t implement them here as I have some questions on the semantic implementation of the ‘header’ and ‘section’ use in the overrides.  The overrides use them for the different J! articles, blogs, etc.  Everything I’ve read indicates ‘header’ and ‘sections’ elements should be used differently but I’m not 100% convinced either…so I’m going to make that your decision to implement.  For more information on the ‘section’ element, read here, information on the ‘header’ element read here.

I took an hour and converted my old test template “Usability” using the boilerplate.  It was easy, quick, and works flawlessly in IE (though I haven’t tested in IE6 yet).  I didn’t take the time to strip out the old CSS overrides from the Blueprint framework but the boilerplates’ are still used.

Download the Joomla 1.5 optimized version of Paul Irish’s Boilerplate here

Download the HTML5 version of Usability here.

Thanks to:

• Paul Irish’s HTML5 Boilerplate (of course)
• Brian Teeman (The first time I heard of the setGenerator() method was from his blog)

Surprisingly, it took just a few minutes to port the Usability template, found on this site, over to 1.6.  The biggest caveats that I ran in to were the template params being renamed “fields” and “fieldset”s and the template overrides changing.  I didn’t dig in to the template overrides yet but a quick glance told me they are the biggest change.  Below is a video with my findings, enjoy! (don’t forget to turn on HD to watch it in it’s best quality!)

Click here to view the embedded video.

It is a social event

Ironically, the last FOWA conference I attended was about all aspects of social web apps however no social interaction went on!  After the main speakers gave their lectures everyone went to the four corners of the auditorium and digressed to the great social past-time of glaring at a computer screen.  There was very little human interaction or stimulation.  Contrast that with the CMS Expo, people interacted with each other all day long (and all night long too).  At one point, Kyle Ledbetter, from JoomlaPraise came over to a group of us and said “Alright guys let’s talk about something cool.  Forget this technical talk…we do that on Skype…”.

The point is, CMSX is not just a great place for a technical conference but a haven for all those that need assurance there is life outside of geekdom.

Actual business goes on

At previous conferences I’ve attended, very little business went on and if it did it was one-sided.  To be fair, it’s probably because most the attendees at other conferences were not business people.  I venture to say that the majority of the CMSX attendees are business owners or people with drive to start a business.  The multi-faceted purpose of the expo really lends itself to not just small breakout meetings regarding the latest technology or development standards but engaging debates and conversations on running a web business, or selling software, or how to scale your business (not just your server).  I learned just as much about business as I did anything technical.

The small sessions are the strong point

In other conferences I’ve attended, the main events were the large keynotes.  The CMSX had a handful of general talks, such as Dries Buytaert’s inspiring rally for the Open Source community.  However, the real gem of the expo is in it’s small sessions.  The sessions are not an after thought like many conferences but rather the focus.  It offered a wide range of sessions for it’s attendees.  For coders that need to sharpen their business wit, there was a business tract.  For those looking to broaden their services to another CMS, they had opportunity to get good training in CMSs such as Drupal, Joomla, Plone, and WordPress.   There were even some good overview sessions for lesser known CMSs such as EZPublish.

As someone who typically is skeptical at the value of conferences, I can highly recommend the CMS Expo to anyone.  Plan on attending next year!

Here’s a video of it in action

Keep in mind: The extensions come without support and might have a bug or two.  If someone would like to take the time and get it in a repository like Joomla Forge or Google Code let me know and I’ll post a link here.

Download the extensions

• The main component (com_ecwid)
• Category menu module (mod_ecwid_categories)
• Mini cart module (mod_ecwid_minicart)
• Search module (mod_ecwid_search)

UPDATE

The above extensions are now in an SVN repository on Google Code.  Check it out and contribute here!

From perusing the web, it looks like there are several approaches to doing this. Below is an example I wrote up quickly, to test out the concept.

jQuery.fn.extend({
// Override the core hide() method
  hide : function() { alert('hide method overriden'); }
});

And now to test it out:

$('#test').click(function() {
     $(p).hide();
});

When clicking on a link with an id=test, it will use my overridden method. I know this isn’t a practical example, but does show how overriding jQuery core methods is possible!

Here’s another example (view the source): http://expressionindesign.com/files/jqueryOverride/jquery_override.html

Other References

• A more complete example
• jQuery Documentation Example

I’ve had experience in several real estate websites (one with over 5,000 properties and custom integration into their internal Access database and local MLS).  However, rather than write my thoughts and rebuttal to this company, I am going to let one of my friends, Doug Krum, respond.  He specifically deals with Joomla-based real estate websites.  Here’s his response:

—————————

Upon reading the following link, some items came to mind that weren’t covered. Keep in mind this comes with many years experience in real estate technology with close workings with top 100 real estate companies in the US.

>>Joomla is an open source content management platform. It was built to make building a generic website easier.

It would more accurate to say that Joomla is a php application used for a web site platform. With this in mind, Joomla is a starting point that can be taken into many directions as long as the right people are at the steering wheel. Since one of Joomla’s core values is EXTENSIBILITY this means a developer can add or develop plugins and extensions anyway he or she sees fit taking Joomla into a new direction never thought of before. This, in essence, is also an advantage to using open source software.

Since Joomla already has a correct MVC architecture in place, a developer can automatically strengthen the plugin by using the built-in security. The plugin can’t run unless called by Joomla. Many self-built content management systems (CMS) won’t have very many security features in place and will fail when it comes to security.

>>It was not built for real estate offices or agents.

Joomla wasn’t built specifically for real estate just as the IPHONE wasn’t built for real estate. Should we not use the IPHONE as well? In similar fashion, the IPHONE is a base communications platform that can be taken into many different directions by various industries, real estate, finance, sales, etc. depending on the APP that is loaded.

>>At Boston Logic, we’ve developed the ONE System Real Estate Website Platform, but I’m not going to write about that today.

You should talk about it as it’s your 12 hour work days that are at risk. Developing a platform is going to put all the changes, bugs, moves, adds back onto your own team. This isn’t to be taken lightly. Anyone who has been part of a development team knows the work-load that comes with the territory. The idea that any less than 3 full-time people working on a php application project and it’s going to be a success now and still be around in the future, isn’t a reality. Projects must move with technology. That movement must be done by real people. Those people cost money. Therefore any reliable, custom-built platform project is going to cost a significant amount.

Now as a customer or real estate office, why would I spend that amount of money, take the risk on an un-verified platform that is either in-secure, not well maintained, going to be bought out by another company or is simply going to disappear either through lack of support for the project or through advancements in technology? As a customer or real estate office, I’d be better off spending the money on a verified platform, that is known to be secure (with the right people), that is going to be well maintained now and in the future, that isn’t going to be bought out by anyone and isn’t going to disappear through a lack of support and will roll with advancements in technology. In fact, I’d be an inexperienced fool not to use a well supported project. History has more than shown that non-well supported projects die away.

Even more, your own blog is proof of evidence of this principle as it runs off WordPress. What? You didn’t create your own? You didn’t trust a small company who developed their own blogging platform? Why not?

>>Before we invested the thousands of hours that we’ve put into building this system

And it still isn’t finished. Be prepared to invest many more thousands of hours for things you’ve missed, didn’t think about, didn’t prepare for, had no idea about and for items that aren’t in existence yet but will be 6 months from now. I really, really feel sorry for your team.

>>Joomla is not built to integrate with an MLS.

Nothing is built to integrate with an MLS. MLS systems are simply application projects (in essence no different than Joomla). Anything that is built to integrate is most likely done so by the MLS developers. Since, MLS systems aren’t unified across the US or anywhere else, it’s really irrelevant. As soon as you start dealing with two different MLS systems with two different sets of standards, all hope is lost on any type of easy integration. It must be done like all other integration, by hand.

>>Obviously, joomla doesn’t have a real estate lead management system for you to leverage.

And your team built a custom lead management system? If so, I really, really, really feel sorry for your team. Lead management systems (or CRM) is another project by itself. Every company has trouble figuring out how to integrate their CRM of choice (Tiger, Sugar, PeopleSoft, etc) with their site.

>>Joomla’s content management system is overcomplicated for real estate.

Any item that is powerful and customizable is going to be complicated. This is the nature of customization projects. A good aspect of Joomla exists in the fact that any developer can re-template the admin panel and limit what the end customer uses.

>>Joomla is relatively laborious to style. Our team has worked with Joomla plenty of times. It’s still a bear to make the pages all look good. If you think you’re saving money, think again.

I respectfully disagree. Once template for all pages isn’t laborious. One of the reasons Joomla has gained popularity is the styling ease of CSS. Possibly your team should brush up on Joomla styling (I can recommend some excellent people). This brings more to the point. If your team can’t style Joomla, how in the world do you really think you’re going to support a whole CMS (with CRM integrated)?

>>As a point of reference the last Joomla site that we worked on required about $75,000 in work to get to what the client wanted.

Show the site. This may be true but you fail to show what the site will do. What would it have cost without Joomla? My last pitch I got for a site was $300,000. That’s a $225,000 savings, if they are the same. Again, to be fair, we don’t know because you haven’t told us.

>>Joomla is hard to turn into an effective real estate website. Great real estate websites have lots of features that are not part of the Joomla platform.

And music is hard for everyone except musicians. Using Joomla as a platform for effective real estate websites is easy for a Joomlaian (Joomlaite?).

The big idea here is that the whole reason special item projects exists (Joomla, Drupal, Tiger, Sugar, Peoplesoft, Foxycart, Freshbooks, SAP) is because it’s been known that developing projects is difficult, costly and time-consuming. Rather than having the support put solely on your teams shoulders, it better to be part of a paying team that pulls resources together to produce a good product.

Think about it this way, who creates their own mapping solution anymore? Why would you when Gmaps, Ymaps, MSNmaps and MapQuest have all done the hard work. If you did build one, would it be any better than what’s already available? No. Simply choose one you like, integrate it and pay the respective cost.

Real Estate offices are complicated customers that have many complicated moving parts with massive amounts of information with laws that must be followed. Pulling this together has and will continue to be difficult.

Two types of projects exist; the projects that are built with separate blocks and the projects that are all in one solutions. AFAIK, effective and affordable all in one solutions don’t exist. They are very expensive and only somewhat effective. The projects built with separate blocks excel in some areas and not in others. Integration is a bear but if successful will excel past the alternative. I know of no other way. Joomla can be used a building block for an effective real estate web site.

Check out two that are coming up:  HTML to Joomla conversion and Joomla SEO Essentials

SOLD OUT…..

You heard right! For the first five people to sign-up, they will get their choice of a custom design or a sliced, coded Joomla template from their design of choice (OR BOTH). It’s a deal Marco nor I have ever offered to the community and now is the chance to jump in!

Two Great Services for $500 each!

Either one of the services is $500 (that’s a $400 discount off the normal prices)! So that means you can choose to have your Photoshop layout converted into a Joomla template for $500 or get a custom designed Photoshop layout for your site for $500 or get a whole new design and Joomla template ready to go for $1,000!

Custom design for your website

The custom design special offer has the following benefits:

• Personal interview from Marco to get your likes, dislikes, etc.
• One design and one revision.
• Deliverable is a design comp in Photoshop (PSD) format.

Sliced, coded Joomla template

The sliced, Joomla template special offer has the following benefits:

• Converted graphic file (Must be a Photoshop file) to Valid XHTML/CSS Markup
• Fast-loading and built with search engine friendly code
• Fully compatible in browsers: IE6, IE7, Safari 3, Firefox 3
• Deliverable is both an HTML and Joomla template

About the Designers

Rick and Marco have worked together for a while, collaborating to make beautiful websites, here’s some more about them:

Rick Blalock
Rick Blalock is a partner in the web design firm Expression in Design (XiD), located in Jupiter, Florida. (XiD) specializes in CMS consultancy and custom solutions for medium-size businesses. Rick’s passion is training clients with one-on-one session, as well as creating video tutorials, and just having fun helping others find their way through the Joomla! world. Rick also is the main contributor to this blog (BiD).

Marco Suarez
Marco Suarez lives in the small, yet not too small, beautiful city of Greenville, SC. He is one of those creative people. Don’t ask him to solve a math problem because he is all right-brained. He is an experienced designer and a creative thinker that will take your site’s look and feel to the next level. Check out his blog.

Some of Marco’s work:

cforms contact form by delicious:days

More info on the sessions:

http://www.cmsexpo.net/sessions/288-joomla-sitebuilder-1.html
http://www.cmsexpo.net/sessions/289-joomla-sitebuilder-2.html

See the interview here

I look forward to seeing some of you at the classes.  It will be a great time of learning and fun!