Is Web 2.0 passing you by?

Our industry is very fond of buzz-words and Web 2.0 is just such a tasty term to use in the selling game. "Your website should be Web 2.0.", "As a company we are Web 2.0". The scary thing is that the term Web 2.0 was already coined in 2004!

We are probably quickly on our way to 'Web 3.0' (whatever principles that may embody) and for a lot of us Web 2.0 will probably quietly pass us by without so much as a ripple on our placid existence.

Or will it?

You might not know it, but the nature of the Internet has evolved so much over the past five years that we are living in the midst of 'Web 2.0' without really noticing it, much like a fish does not notice the water it lives in.

Every time that you go onto Facebook - or frown at your employee for wasting time on Facebook, every time that you watch a video on Youtube and comment on it, every time that you order something from Amazon, you are interacting with a site that displays the properties of being 'Web 2.0'. These properties being those of Rich User Experiences, Remixable data and data transformations, Harnessing Collective Intelligence and so forth.

Sadly, most corporate and personal websites still remain firmly rooted in the Web 1.0 era - static, no interaction with your visitors, no dynamic and current updating of information, no sharing of information…

One of the main problems is that it is not that easy to build a 'Web 2.0' enabled website using traditional web development software. One of the major Web 2.0 characteristics of website software is that it is firmly rooted in dynamic scripting, Open Source software and components that are integrated into a larger whole resulting in rich web applications.

Luckily there is an easy way to get into the whole 'Web 2.0' web development arena with little effort. Most of the modern Open Source Content Management Systems such as Drupal, Joomla and Wordpress offer built-in capabilities to build 'Web 2.0' ready websites.

These are facilities such as built-in RSS capabilities, Ajax to improve the web interaction experience especially with regards to logins, lookups and so forth, user contribution capabilities in the form of commenting, social interaction, profiles, avatars, forums, use of folksonomies such as tagging, multimedia capabilities and much more.

Tailormade4you is offering their next Introduction to Joomla course for those developers interested in ramping up into building websites using a database driven Content Management System. The beauty of using Joomla for web development is that it is possible to build any type of website from static brochure-ware (for those conservative clients who are not ready for Web 2.0) to fully interactive social-enabled sites with functionality such as social networking, RSS syndication, and anything in between.

Our course teaches you the basics of using Joomla and will enable you to progress from building Web 1.0 type sites to Web 2.0 type sites - before it is too late and Web 3.0 overtakes you!

To read more about the course and to make an booking, visit http://www.tm4y.co.za/intro-to-joomla.html.