NYCPHP Meetup

[Ajai Khattri]

David A.Roth wrote:
> As a PHP developer, what is the relationship of PHP to Joomla?
Joomla is written in PHP.
> How do I 
> incorporate PHP into Joomla?
Depends on what exactly you want to do: if you want something that is 
managed from within Joomla then you will need to write a component / 
module / mambot - you can do this using PHP (or more likely) using 
Joomla's API.
> How do I maintain and manage PHP 
> development within a Joomla environment? Does Joomla know the 
> difference between HTML and PHP code in its pages?
Not sure what you mean there... Joomla uses PHP to generate HTML...
> Does an entire web site application need to be in Joomla?
Doesn't *have* to be but if you want to use Joomla to manage it then it 
would probably be better to make it so.
> Can some 
> parts of the site remain purely PHP and still work with Joomla? Or is 
> there no reason why the entire web application shouldn't be in Joomla?
Again depends on what you're doing: I wrote a custom component for 
managing audio tracks but because I wanted it to become part of the 
backend, it seemed easier to use the existing API to write it than 
simply coding it from the ground up in PHP (also, since it worked off 
the products database in Virtuemart, another plugin I was using, it 
seemed easier to integrate it as a component).
> Are their limitations with Joomla as a CMS tool that I should be aware 
> of as a PHP developer? Can Joomla have access to Linux easily to 
> execute a shell script (that you have file permissions to), for 
> example?
Well, the back end allows you to write config files, install 
components/plugins/templates and edit certain files (e.g. stylesheets) 
so yes you can do whatever PHP can do (assuming permissions are set 
correctly, etc).
> As I am designing a new web application from the start with the 
> intention of making the entire web site in PHP where pages would be 
> dynamically created to obtain fresh data from a MySQL database, how can 
> I use Joomla to best handle the CMS functions?
What is your application? If your application handles written content 
then it would benefit to have *some* sort of content management tool 
such as Joomla for writers to use, (sorry, phpmyadmin does *not* count 
as a content management tool ;-). Otherwise you will end up writing some 
kind of back end from scratch which is a lot more work than working with 
Joomla instead.
>
> How do I take a web/graphic designer's design/layout and put this into 
> Joomla?
Most probably you will make template/templates from the design - 
essentially the process is taking the HTML and adding the PHP code in it 
for blocks that are generated by Joomla. (The PHP code will call a 
Joomla function telling it to put certain modules at the current 
location in the page).

Sounds complicated but generally most areas of the page will be static 
so it ends up being relatively simple. In my case (an e-commerce site 
selling CDs and having streaming audio) the template ended up being ONE 
file (plus stylesheet and a few images). Because I used a plugin to 
perform most of the ecommerce back end functions it was realtively easy 
to build a site fast.
>  Are their any limitations of how the web pages must look in 
> Joomla?
Not that Im aware of.


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