BuildAJoomlaWebsite.com has revised its online Joomla video training course and has released it for free.

Build a Joomla Website owner Richard Pearce said that it was an easy decision to release the training for free. “When I discovered Joomla, I found it difficult to understand, complicated to use and the documentation was poor. I became so frustrated trying to use it that I threw it away three times before knuckling down to work it out once and for all,” said Pearce, a web developer of 15 years.

“Once I mastered Joomla, I decided to produce a training course that teaches beginners the essentials of Joomla in around an hour, instead of weeks. Hundreds of people paid for and enjoyed the training. Many customers told me that if it wasn’t for my course, they too would have given up using Joomla. So when it came time to revise the course, I did not want anyone to go through the same miserable experience I had and so I decided to release it for free.”

Joomla is arguably the world’s most popular content management system that allows website owners to construct and maintain their own website. Professional web developers also use Joomla because it is free and the underlying code is open source, which gives programmers the ability to modify the way it functions. In addition, third party developers have built over 5000 add-ons to Joomla (called “extensions”) that allow a website owner to add features such as an e-commerce store, a photo gallery or a membership site.

The Build a Joomla Website Beginner course includes 19 online video tutorials. The lessons cover everything a beginner needs to know to build their first site including how to install Joomla, the Joomla storage system, how to position secondary content on a page using modules, working with images and how to find and install Joomla templates and extensions. As the lessons are delivered by video, a student can watch a lesson multiple times if they have difficulty understanding something the first time.

An upgrade to the course, called “Beginner Plus”, is available for a modest fee. This includes download versions of the lessons, six additional videos demonstrating how to build a Joomla website from scratch, two reports and a reference manual.

An advanced course is currently in production and is due for release in the 4th quarter of 2010.