Google and Troubleshooting
One of the things you’ll quickly learn as a developer is when Google may actually be the place to start, rather than the place to end your troubleshooting efforts. There are a couple of search patterns that you’ll find are often very successful:
Joomla 1.5 [component name] [issue]
Joomla 1.5 [error message]
There are certainly other patterns and search strategies one might apply. The first, however, works in instances where you’ve installed a component and it’s not behaving the way that you expect it to. In your search, provide the name of the component and as brief an explanation of the issue as possible. If you receive too many results, provide a more detailed explanation; if you receive too few results, try and make your explanation more generic.
Generally speaking, your goal is to find an answer to your problem in the first page of search results. If you do not, it’s often the best strategy to refine your search phrase.
If you’re fortunate, you’ll actually get a php or similar error on the screen. Copy and paste that error message into Google. This is a particularly effective strategy because most developers will often post error messages when asking other developers for help. If someone else has encountered the same error message, this strategy works better than almost any other.