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!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Check out Foxycart!

Get the Joomla extensions for Foxycart (as seen in the video)

Here’s a quick-and-dirty video (hence some of the errors) on how it’s done…

Click here to view the embedded video.

Resources:

• Cornerstone – SVN for mere mortals
• SpringLoops – Hosted source-code management

Limited Coupon!

The guys that made Cornerstone were kind enough to offer a 20% off coupon for the first 10 people to use it from the site!  Just enter:  BEAUTYINDESIGN0409 on checkout to get the discount!

(1) Specific to a type of use
(2) Simple
(3) fast loading

Thus I call this template “Usability”! There aren’t many bells and whistles. You should have the freedom to decide what javascript library to use, what modules and special effects to include in your site (and there’s plenty of extensions out there to build upon this design!), so I made sure this template doesn’t get in the way.

An HTML version comes with it too!

Want to see it? Check out the demo and simple template instructions

To be fair, I did include jQuery for a user requested feature (which was implemented at the last second). However, I have enabled the jQuery “NoConflict” mode so it won’t interfere with any other scripts you are currently running. Don’t want to load the library at all? No problem! Just turn it off in the template parameters and you’re all set.

Template Features

Speed

This template is really fast. There’s a minimal use of images, a nicely spliced CSS file, and really no 3rd party scripts to slow things down.

Support

What’s so cool about that? Integrated into the template administration area is BiD’s getSatisfaction support area! What does that mean? You can issue a support ticket now right from your Joomla administration. You don’t even have to visit this site again! From the template manager you’ll also have access to the latest BiD news, keeping you up-to-date on template updates, new releases, support tickets, etc. Cool eh?

Styling

There are a handful of module styles to choose from and easy-to-use template parameters in the Template Manager (so you can toggle stuff you want…like the color of the template). There are 3 colors to choose from.

Standards

Everything validates. Ok, so maybe that’s not really a ‘feature’ but I thought I’d mention it anyway. The CSS code is commented and uses my own, modified version of the Blueprint CSS framework.

Want to see it? Check out the demo and simple template instructions

Included in your purchase is the Joomla 1.5 template, an HTML version, and a layered PSD

• Provide a friendly place for all types of users to meet-up and collaborate
• Create a community in South Florida and beyond that can offer opportunities, help, training, and more.
• A central place for people to catch up on news regarding Joomla, web design, development, SEO, and more, in the South Florida region.
• A place to get students (high-school and college) involved in web design and development.
• A place to cultivate business opportunity and business enhancement.
• To have a great time with fellow Joomla-ers…

Read the full announcement…

Also, featured on the site is a community for others to join (yes, using the new JomSocial component…review article coming too).  So come on and join up!

Don’t forget to register for the Joomla template classes I’m teaching in Miami and Atlanta this year!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Missed the other lessons?

• Lesson One – What is Joomla!?
• Lesson Two – The Community
• Lesson Three – Installation
• Lesson Four – Admin Overview (current page)

Currently, the bundle has shortcuts and snippets for:

• Template module positions
• Template XML structure
• Miscellaneous template tags
• Controller template, toolbar template, etc.
• A few commonly used snippets from the JPATH, JTable, JFactory, and JRequest super-classes.

My goal for the joomla textmate bundle is to encompass a large portion of Joomla’s framework in it (or at least the most commonly used portions).  I would love for someone to help out with it.  Currently it is hosted with Google Code, so go forth and download!

Some great shortcuts include:

• Type module and hit TAB and you’ll get some module position options
• Type jhead and hit TAB and you’ll get a leaned down HEAD section
• Type query and hit TAB to form a database object and query
• …much more.

Here’s a video showing off some of the features:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Installing JOOMLA is a simple task.  Just make sure you have your MySQL username and password ready and preferably your FTP username and password ready.  If you have those two things you’re ready to go.

Missed the other lessons?

• Lesson One – What is Joomla!?
• Lesson Two – The Community
• Lesson Three – Installation (current page)
• Lesson Four – Admin Overview