Chris Salmon Technologies

OK so we have our teacher's website all up and going.  But, it's only a base install with the default look and feel, and the default data that you can include with it.  I prefer to include the default data on the install and modify it later, because it gives at least a bit of structure to build on.  But I may be changing my mind about that on my next Joomla project.  Not sure I need anything but a blank slate anymore.  

At any rate, I don't wish to re-install so let's dig in and clean up the data that is on there now.  I don't need any of the articles that come with a default joomla install, so let's just mass-delete all of those.  We log into the administrative back end, and go to the article manager.  On the top left is a checkbox, that will cause all the articles to be checked.  We check that, and delete all articles.  

OK now let's take a look at other content we can delete or modify.  The front page is showing several modules, like the newsflashes and the poll, that we won't need right now for Lisa's website.  So let's just unpublish them.  This will leave them in the database for later modification and usage, rather than completely deleting them as we did with the articles.  We won't ever need the text from those articles, but it doesn't hurt to have some of these modules all set up and premade so we can merely modify them for our own usage later.  

We go into "module manager" and merely uncheck the "enabled" checkmark on the modules we don't want to use right now, which is most of them. 

OK so out of the many modules that come with the default Joomla install, we've only kept 8 of them in an enabled state.  Main menu, who's online, search, top menu, footer, syndication, user menu, and login form are the modules that we'll find most immediately handy for our application.

Now then, this leaves us with a very clean basic set of menus and modules with which to start our site development, as you can see below.  In our next article, we will use a tool I really like called "Artisteer" to create a nice look and feel for the site, and modify the layout.  Then, we will begin to add the tools and software integration we need to do the things that Lisa wants for her kids.

We've also, at Lisa's request, decided to make this project larger by adding Moodle into the mix.  I've never worked with Moodle so this should be very fun and educational for all of us, including myself!! 

Here is our cleaned up default Joomla install: