Joomla: The fastest way to convert a ready-made html site to Joomla

Question

I have made some simple Joomla sites before. They use their own template created by me. These are simple websites, because they have a simple linear menu, all pages have the same layout, only some articles change between pages.

But in my new project, I have a ready-made html site that I need to convert to Joomla. The problem is that there is not a single repeating menu and there is no consistent layout. To simplify things a bit: there are 10 pages, and they all have different layouts. Between changes to the background of the pages, changes to the menu, changes to the contents of the menu, changes to blocks of content, everything changes. This means that I cannot make this site the way I did before, using one index.php template, which simply contained my repeating page structure.

My dream is to simply change ready_page1.html to ready_page1.php by adding some modules inside php (which are then available for online editing, which is the reason for switching to Joomla). I would do it on every page. Custom menus within each page, I would "manually" point to the corresponding php files instead of the old html files. Is it possible? I could not figure out how to do this.

It is not important for me to lose a lot of the basic Joomla functions due to this crude method, I just want the simplest way to do this.

In the end, I just need the same site that I already have on html, but I want some of the selected rectangular areas on the html pages to be editable Joomla modules. Modules will have a pen icon for editing. There is no other function for this.

Answer 1

It looks like the site you are converting is a usability nightmare. Consistency is part of providing the user with a positive experience. However, if you need to do this in exactly the same way, then the easiest way is to make the right way to start.

First you need to learn about page class suffixes. You can add them to the menu item so you can control CSS based on each page. This will allow you to change the background and other elements on each page.

Documentation - http://docs.joomla.org/Page_Class_Suffix

Then you need to create a template so that each of the module positions is collapsible. If you are planning your position, you should be able to use one index.php for the whole site. We have our own template, which we use for each site that we make, and it rarely needs to be touched, because all the positions that we would like to use already exist, they simply are not used until the module is placed in the position.

Documentation - http://docs.joomla.org/Collapsing_columns

You will also want to make sure that you understand the purpose of the menu. You should be able to assign modules to pages as needed to create the layout you want for each page. If you use 2.5.x, then you can probably get by with the built-in menu assignment functions. If you are using 1.5.x, then (you really need to upgrade) you probably want to use the "Advanced Module Manager" , as it greatly facilitates making the menu more flexible.

Documentation - http://docs.joomla.org/Help15:Screen.modules.edit.15#Menu_Assignment

Once you understand well how Joomla templates work and how they should be used, you will find that you can basically do anything within the framework so as not to lose functionality.

Answer 2

• Build your website and create these 10 pages (content, heredity, etc.).

• then create your templates based on these html files. here you adapt html to joomla template. after this step you should have no more than 10 templates depending on your styles (rough but fast)

• as far as I know from the documentation , Joomla 1.7 supports the "template per page" (see screenshot). You can choose which style will be applied to that element. this even applies to subpages. other documentation here