Firstly, A bit about me, A Joomla Expert
Like I said above, I have been using Joomla for 20 years now and I am very active in the Joomla community. I have spoken at numerous conferences about Joomla and I am an active member of both the Perth Joomla user group and the Perth Joomla user group. Joomla is all about the community so even if you just have a question about Joomla, call me. I am always happy to help. I enjoy talking to people about their Joomla projects and my advice is always FREE.
So what is this Joomla thing then?
Joomla is an award-winning content management system (CMS), which enables you to build websites and powerful online applications. Many aspects, including its ease-of-use and extensibility, have made Joomla the most popular Web site software available. Best of all, Joomla is an open source solution that is freely available to everyone.
What is a content management system (CMS)?
A content management system or CMS is a piece of software that enables you to easily manage the content of your system (usually a website or application). By content, I mean all the information that the website contains. Content can be anything like pictures, videos, text, digital music files, pdfs or word docs, anything. All CMS websites enable the user to edit their content directly by logging into the system with a username and password, make changes and save them to update the website. One major benefit of a CMS, and one of the reasons they are so popular for website applications, is they require little or no technical knowledge to manage. Most people these days have used Microsoft Word to type up a document. Well a CMS will usually have a very simple interface that looks very similar to word which the user can edit comfortably.
Another benefit of a CMS is that we can configure it to manage a lot of dynamic, day to day tasks that a basic website cannot perform, such as:
- Simplifying/automating Search Engine Optimisation
- Allowing certain users to do specific things with different permissions, e.g. editor and publisher. One user can write content but cannot publish it. The other user can do both.
- Resizing images as they are being uploaded to the website. A lot of people struggle with resizing images as they don’t know how to use Photoshop or similar software.
- Allow content to appear on your website at predefined dates and times. E.g. you want to write your news article before you go on holiday but don’t want to publish it until next week. Just set the website to do it.
A lot of people ask me the following question. “Who uses Joomla?”. Well the answer is a lot of large, reputable, multi-national organisations and famous companies use Joomla.
Here are a few links to some of the websites built using Joomla
- La Folie Douce – https://www.lafoliedouce.com
- iTWire Technology News & Jobs Australia https://itwire.com/
- Citibank (Financial intranet)
- Pays Mellois – https://ot-paysmellois.org/
- La Ciotat – https://www.laciotat.com/
- PlayShakespeare.com (Cultural) – https://www.playshakespeare.com
And many more.
If it is good enough for them, it is has to be good enough for you and me.
Why should you use Joomla for your website?
Apart from all of the above, Joomla is a very stable, scalable, secure and cost-effective CMS. It is easy to use and we can make it look however you want. It is open source so you don’t have to pay any annual subscriptions to use it and it is really powerful and feature rich.
Joomla is still widely used by a lot of professional developers like me. The problem with custom-built or in-house CMS’s is they tie the customer into that company. That is why they use them, you cannot go anywhere else. Well you can but you will probably have to completely rebuild your website with a new company. With Joomla, you can simply contact any other Joomla developer and they can pick up where I left off. But that is also true of any open source CMS. That’s the benefit of open source.
What kind of website can you build with Joomla?
Joomla is used all over the world to power web sites of all shapes and sizes. For example:
- All kinds, Anything
- E-commerce Shopping Online Stores
- Catalogue website, same as a shop but without prices or payment integration
- Directory websites
- Corporate websites or portals
- Corporate intranets and extranets
- Online magazines, newspapers, and publications
- Online reservations
- Government websites
- Small business websites
- Non-profit and organisational websites
- Community-based portals
- School and church websites
- Personal or family homepages
Why use Joomla over other CMS’s?
The most popular and widely used CMS’s today are Joomla, WordPress and Drupal. Obviously everyone has their own preference but at agenda we favour Joomla and WordPress. I often choose Joomla for a reason. I could use anything. I could write my own but I choose not to. Joomla has the right balance of everything. It is easy to use, easy for developers to develop with and is very secure. Drupal for example is very powerful but is too confusing for customers to use. WordPress is easy to use as well and great choice.
I favour Joomla for these main reasons.
- It is easier for you to use when I hand control over to you
- It is widely used, so other developers can use it too
- It is technically a better system than the others, it is better programmed and requires less resources to run
- The file size on server is much smaller meaning it loads quickly and is easier to back up
- I am a developer. I could choose to use any of them. I have used all of them. Why would I choose to make my own life harder? I use it because it is very good.
So if you have a run a business and have a Joomla website already that you would like to make changes to, contact me or give me a call to discuss your requirements. Likewise, if you don’t have a website at all, Joomla is a great choice, you won’t be disappointed.