Now that Joomla! is becoming the content management system of choice world wide, there is a growing need for training courses and trainers. In South Africa, an initiative is taking shape, called Learn Joomla! Due to an overwhelming interest in Joomla! training, a webdesign company with roots in education noticed that a lot of designers prefer to outsource or subcontract training. The same could be said for support, however without anyone to refer clients to, they are normally left with no alternative but to train and support Joomla! users themselves.

In response to this opportunity, members of the Joomla! Southern African Portal set out to develop an introductory course that would help people who are new to Joomla! and/or content management in general. It soon became clear that the Joomla! Users Manual is not ideally suited for training purposes. A great find was the Joomla! Admin Manual from Compass Designs, which is much easier to work through with a group of learners, however in a one day course, something much more focused is actually required.

The solution to these and other challenges is an online learning system called Moodle, which provides the space within which a crash course in Joomla! can be delivered, either at a distance, with regular moderation, or in person, referring to the resources provided in the Joomla End Users Course (J101) classroom. These include the awesome Visual and Animated Tutorials developed by Brad Baker, the Joomla! Manuals, links to the best template repositories and a number of locally grown tutorials, notes, audio tracks and so on - all of which is in constant review and ongoing development. The course is aimed to empower the end user of Joomla!, who would typically do most of their content management on the front end of their Joomla! website, with a few minor forays into the Administration Backend, to manage users, pages and contacts.

A Joomla! 301 course aimed to empower Developers is currently in, well.. development. This course is geared towards tooling and recognising the ability to develop a website using the Joomla! CMS, by borrowing an idea from Full Code Press, the course developers, Slingshot, are piloting a way to train and equip would be Joomla! Users and Developers. It works something like this...

Non-profit organisations who are in need of a professional website are invited to apply for an opportunity to have their website developed by one of the students in the Learn Joomla! course. Given the NGO's specifications, preferences and materials, the student is required to build a website in one day, within the course framework, under supervision of a skilled trainer, who may be standing in front of them (one day crash course) or may be available in the discussion forum (online moderation). Working with the NGO and the Trainer, the learner is able to focus on a specific website during the course, solve real problems and hopefully produce a Joomla! powered website that can be published, used and managed by the NGO.

The Joomla!'nGO pilot is currently running it's first learner through the course, and should produce a website for an NGO within one month following training. Please Contact Us should you want to undergo some Joomla!'nGO training.

For those wondering, the Joomla! 201 course will follow after the developers course is stable. This would be an administrator focused course for those users who need to do some work with extensions, such as running an electronic newsletter on their site, managing various menu systems and handling collaborative updates on larger sites. This is a bit of a gray area between users and developers, so the course developers are starting on the ends and working their way into the middle, like eating a hot dog, or a melting ice-cream.

Training options and details can be found at Joomla! Training. Course formats are flexible and they can easily tailor make a training session for you, your staff and /or your clients which can be based on a couple of hours, the whole day or even a number of days if necessary. The Joomla! trainers are highly mobile and are happy to arrange trips to various parts of South Africa as the need arises. They usually advertise the proposed training ahead of time to enlist others, which helps to make the most of every trip. Training events are often linked to the Joomla!Day events which are fast becoming a must-do in the Joomla! circles.

Their next scheduled training dates are listed alongside the courses, so watch out for the next one in your region. Training can also be delivered online via Skype - contact us for more on this.

Contact Joomla.org.za who will be able to refer you to a suitably skilled and available Joomla! trainer if you are interested in doing a course, tailoring a training session or participating in the Joomla'nGo programme. Check our Learn Joomla ! for a course outline, notes and other training resources (first time visitors should create an account or login as a guest)