I’ve co-authored the Top 50 Blog Techniques feature which appears in Issue 171 of Web Designer magazine (available now in all good newsagents in the UK  and in other countries). It contains 50 (count ’em!) tried and tested tips to help you use: WordPress, Joomla!, Drupal and Squarespace.

Joomla! isn’t the most intuitive CMS, so many of my tips are to do with speeding up the process of adding content, locating module positions and creating sections / categories. etc. Four authors wrote the feature and each are experts in the individual CMSs, so it’s a really strong feature.  We didn’t get our bylines on it, which was slightly annoying. Apparently this is being corrected when the feature eventually appears online.

I just wouldn’t recommend this particular feature for absolute CMS beginners. To get the most out of it you’ll need to know the basics of how they work. If you want a quick intro to setting up a Joomla! site, order yourself a copy of Issue 165 instead. You’ll find  a feature that I wrote which takes you through setting up a reasonably decent-looking Joomla! based news site from scratch  and at almost zero cost – it’s so easy once you know how!