JOOMLA is an open source Content management system, which is supported by a large online community. Over time, this community has discussed and developed many ways to create JOOMLA templates and components. Though some of these online communities are way ahead of the others in terms of technology and creation, it does not take too much time to learn how to create a JOOMLA Template.
JOOMLA is freely available online. The most popular type of JOOMLA templates is the CSS that is otherwise called the cascading style sheets. This will produce a layout without the use of tables. This is what most JOOMLA users will like to use, because it is easier to validate to the world wide web consortium to the W3C.
This will also tend to load faster, be easier to maintain and will load faster on search engines. The JOOMLA template is a series of files within the JOOMLA content management system, which controls the presentation of the content.
The JOOMLA template is not a website, and it should also not be considered as the complete website design. The template may be the basic design that is the foundation to view the JOOMLA website. The templates work hand in hand with the content stored in the JOOMLA database, to provide a complete website.
Things to be noted about JOOMLA templates:
Using templates will have its advantages and disadvantages too. There will be a separation from content and presentation. This is noted when CSS is used, and this is what most new web standards require. New templates may be applied instantly.
Positioning of content, colors and graphics may be changed. The built in functionality to present different layouts in one website is not reliable though. The page that a user sees on a JOOMLA powered website, is created through various PHP commands that are in the template.
JOOMLA template creation:
HTML editors such as Dreamweaver is used commonly now. This means the designer does not need to code the html. This however cannot be used in JOOMLA template design process, and all designers must make note of this important point.
The designer must then code by hand, and view the output page on a served page. Most designers may use a local server on their computer. This is a software that will serve the web pages on the designer’s computer. There are no rules to be followed while creating a web page. It can totally be up to the designer.
If designers understand graphics, they may use Photoshop to do the needful. After that they may break up the images they will need to use from this. If designers are even more tech savvy than these, they may directly go into CSS and start coding.
Designing JOOMLA powered sites, present a lot of challenges to meet validation standards. In some series, the code uses a number of pages to output its pages. Cascading style sheets is a simple mechanism that allows you to add style to the template, like fonts, colors and spacing to web documents.
The JOOMLA template designer however will not be able to see the result of the coding on the same editor. The best way to do the design is to make changes with the html editor, and save the changes. A local host server will then have to run in the background to run JOOMLA. The edits must then be viewed in a web browser.
Free editors are available for those who do not use Dreamweaver. In high quality web pages that are mostly used today, three factors will be considered. They are usability, accessibility and search engine optimization. The template designs will have to cater to all three.
Though there is an overlap of all three, a web page that qualifies for one, may qualify for all the rest. The best way to achieve this will be to use the W3C web standards. Most designers will state three things when it comes to creating templates. They will be using a valid code whether html or others, semantically correct code and the use of cascading style sheets.
While creating a template, one must first fix the type of the web page layout. It can be fixed or fluid. These are methods to control the width of the page. Majority of the designers use 76 percent (1024 by 768). A typical design must use tables to layout the page. They are useful because you only have to set the width of the page as percentages.
Components of JOOMLA template:
The components of a template will be large in number. You will have contents of the documents that are instructions for the installer. There will be the name of the template and the date of creation. The name of the author, his e-mail address, where people may reach him for questions about the website, and copyright instructions will follow.
There will also be the author’s url and the image sections. All image files that the template uses will be listed in the image Section. There are some great tips that can be followed while creating JOOMLA templates. Fixed width boxes with two images will be useful for various reasons. It is very lean in code, and half size images will be easier to load.
One important thing to remember while creating templates, is to have security codes, that will prevent all other users from accessing your template files directly. There are simple JOOMLA template guides, as well as advanced ones that you may find easily on the internet.
Many JOOMLA template designers are biased towards java and flash. This is probably for the accessibility and search engine optimization. You may download two types of templates when you want to tutor yourself to create templates. One will be an empty template, the other will be a simple one.
They have their drawbacks too, however. They have lots of extra code, are difficult to maintain, and the content cannot be source ordered. Step by step instructions to create a JOOMLA template are available on several JOOMLA dedicated websites. Since they are the order of the day, go find them! 
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