[kiteflyer]

a small question...
I am now getting fairly confident in XHTML and CSS but wan't to expand my abilities more.
I would like to learn how to deal with things like wordpress or joomla or some other CMS system (there seems to be more and more call for it at the moment) but am not sure where to start.

Is it simply (yes yes I know it's an understatement) of learning PHP? I have been googling here and there but nowhere can I seem to find a direct answer to this. Can anybody help?

[bluesage]

just using a CMS doesnt really require to know any programming, as they are designed to manage the content for you and most allow a simple editing of the layout and colors.

If you want to be able to modify certain parts to your liking and wish to really understand their code then yes Php is necessary (if the CMS is written in php of course). However just knowing the language wouldnt really help much unless you understand some basics as to how templates work, possibly certain design patterns such as MVC.

Personally I find most CMS program code hard to understand, it requires a lot of time (at least for me) to figure out how they organised everything and the way it was coded.

of course that is only my opinion

[pgo]

The best way to start is to install it on your home machine and play with it!

I wrote a guide to setting up a local web server on Windows.

Then just follow the instructions for installation of the CMS. Wordpress is good. I've never tried to mess with Joomla. I've used CMS Made Simple extensively.

[neka]

You really don't need much experience with PHP for Wordpress, it actually seems to teach you along the way once you try to customize it a bit.

[Snowshiro]

I've just finished converting a old hand coded site to an entirely Wordpress driven version at the request of a client. The brief was to make the new site resemble the old version as much as possible but bring it within the more robust maintenance environment of a CMS.

The main benefit I found with Wordpress -I daresay that other CMSs work on a similar principle- was being able to do almost all the necessary hacks, layout changes and intergrations within individual theme files. I hacked the default theme rather than bothering to make a new one. There were a few occasions where I had to modify the way the WP engine itself worked, but these were minimal.

However, while the PHP I had to write myself wasn't particularly difficult, knowing where and how to make the changes, would require some knowledge as you'll have to be able to figure out Wordpress's slightly convoluted way of doing things (occasionally I was left thinking, "why the heck did they do it like that?").

The main complication in my case was that the entire site had to be produced in both English and Japanese, with bilingual navigation, page content etc. but through a single management system. I found that the easiest way to achieve this was by essentially running two copies of Wordpress from a single database source.