Joomla, intranet and Multi Site

[Gavin Scott]

OK - SO!

Work has two sites, built with templates and updated with Joomla CMS. Planning a wee intranet using an off the shelf Joomla template, but website developers has emailed us with the following bullshit:

As mentioned this morning on the phone, YooTheme templates are particularly not straight-forward to install: on top of the template itself, they require a very large number of additions and modifications to existing files on the system, which would ultimately affect the other two sites. It would be possible to install everything manually bit-by-bit, but this would be very time consuming, and I'm afraid this would mean we'd have to charge you for the work involved. Please let us know what you would like to do.

Is it possible to discuss this here without going wildly into detail?

[Nick Harvey]

Without knowing any of the detail whatsoever, that looks awfully like a bit of "lets earn ourselves lots more money by making it sound far more complicated than it really is" text.

I'd be quite proud of myself had I written it.

[Gavin Scott]

Without knowing any of the detail whatsoever, that looks awfully like a bit of "lets earn ourselves lots more money by making it sound far more complicated than it really is" text.

I'd be quite proud of myself had I written it.

Spot on Mr H.

The worst part is that he opens with, "as discussed on the phone" - well it was me he spoke with and at no stage did he disclaim with any aspect of "extra work", "lots of fiddling" and "additional charge".

Clearly had a chat with his manager and had £ signs like roller blinds flapping on their eyes.

We've decided that for the right person (*pete*) we would be happy to make an appropriate emolument on an ad hoc basis for the right assistance, and not get into a contract with someone lousy.

I probably should have mentioned that to Peter in my first post.

[Sput]

Does it need to be integrated with the existing website in any way at all? If not you could always just fork out for some additional hosting and install whatever intranet solution exists on it. Alternatively you could go with a hosted intranet solution.

[Gavin Scott]

Does it need to be integrated with the existing website in any way at all?

Only to the extent that the Joomla CMS system is built in to the existing sites, and so using a subdomain (intranet.blah.com) makes more sense.

[Dr Lobster*]

i can't comment on those particular templates, but templates from http://www.mambodesign.co.uk/ which i use for our intranet at work can be installed through the joomla/mambo interface and require no back end file changes. i have several installed and they can be switched and changed in a few clicks.

i've only needed to tweak the template file to remove the copyright line and a few other bits - but this was done though the interface and was easy enough.

so, i think perhaps the easiest solution maybe just to use a template that you can install through the interface - mambodesign membership cost about 25 euros when signed up for the site a few years ago.

[Dr Lobster*]

also, just to add if you want to test the site you can easily install a joomla cms on a fedora or unbuntu linux on an old box somewhere.

[Pete]

it seems to suggest on the youtheme site that there may be a little framework thing you also have to install so they can do more than the default joomla allows. to be honest I'm finding the site a tad light on info regarding how it works but am digging.

edit: actually, it seems that "warp" is just their guff speak for them carefully spriteing all the images and stuff so I'm not quite sure what da funk your it guy is on about. :s