Let's face it - Joomla is a big powerful beast that takes time to learn on your own, especially if you want to do anything beyond simple articles with a couple of pictures and some text.
PacktPublishing
Packt Publishing is one of the most respected publishers of technologies and solutions books. They offer a wide range of books with the focus on Joomla 1.5, and one of their latest Joomla books is a book by Allan Walker.
AllanWalker
Allan Walker has been involved with a number of large-scale Joomla projects, helping to establish Joomla within the UK government and corporate sectors.
He has been a mentor for the 2009 Joomla Google Summer of Code program, and is a member of the Joomla Marketing Team.
Needless to say, Allan is more than qualified to write about Joomla; and his first book covers Joomla and multimedia; with information for the very new to Joomla to the more experienced; so wherever on the ladder you may consider yourself standing, this book will help you make more out of your Joomla based web site.
BasicInformation
With that said, there are some fairly elementary chapters that range from "what is Joomla" to "multimedia and accessibility", "managing your Joomla media" to "adding and managing image content".
These chapters covers the basics of Joomla and multimedia in general, and will be mostly glanced at by anyone with some Joomla experience, however they are necessary to get the full picture and there are a few nuggets of information that you may not have known before.
Where this book shines though is in its coverage of how to add audio and podcasts, using video and including external resources like Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook and many more.
It offers suggestion of modules and plugins to use, describing what each one does and how it would fit into your site and why; this is a real time saver but at the same time you run into the inevitability that the information will eventually be dated and less useful.
ChapterGuide
Chapter one:Getting Started with Joomla Multimedia
Chapter two:Managing Your Joomla Media
Chapter three:Text, Characters, and Fonts in Your Joomla Site
Chapter four:Adding and Managing Image Content
Chapter five:Using Audio in Your Joomla Website
Chapter six:Using Video in Your Joomla Website
Chapter seven:Collaborating with External Sources
Chapter eight:Joomla Templates and Multimedia
Chapter nine:Joomla Multimedia Project
Learn by Doing
The last chapter is a cookbook-style approach to building a multimedia packed Joomla website from start to finish applying the techniques described in the previous eight chapters.
This chapter truly is a step-by-step guide to setting up a brand new Joomla site; from the global configuration settings to setting up sections and categories to adding audio, video and social profiling features to adding RSS feeds and Google maps to changing the default favicon with everything in between, and it's an interesting read.
Conclusion
This is the definite resource for adding video and audio to your Joomla site but despite its monicker; it covers more than just multimedia within Joomla, as it touches on a multitude of additional topics in various degrees.
These "subtopics" make this a good book for anyone starting out with Joomla, and there is also plentiful of things for the seasoned Joomla administrator as well.
With its 340 plus pages compromised in nine chapters, it can serve as either a very long read or as a reference guide for anything Joomla multimedia and more.
It is well structured, easy to read and in depth where it matters; Allan has done a good job at providing URL links to each module, plugin and resource referenced in the book.
Packt Joomla 1.5 Multimedia
