What is Joomla and what can it do for Website Owners?
For website owners, Joomla is an excellent content management system that allows you to easily manage and maintain your website with little or no programming knowledge necessary. It offers all the needed features to add and update everything such as your images, article pages, navigation menus, users, and much more. A good comparison to the user friendliness of Joomla would be Microsoft Word. I tell customers that if they can use Microsoft word than they can use Joomla. The text editors provided in the Joomla article manager provides the same basic features that you would use when creating a word document. Also, the size of the Joomla community has grown to great numbers over the last 5 years. Getting help for using Joomla is as easy asking your question in Google search or on the Joomla forum. There are literally millions of Joomla users all over the world and this large of a community can provide great support for new Joomla users. I've found hundreds if not thousands of Joomla
What can Joomla do for Web Developers?
For developers, Joomla is an open source content management system that allows you to build powerful and extensible websites and applications in a fraction of the time it could take with custom coding. Before I used Joomla, it could easily take me 2 months to build a custom content management system that would only compare to a fraction of Joomla's standard features and possibilities. However, the best part about developing is the thousands of Joomla extensions that are readily available. The Joomla Extension Directory now includes over 5,000 extensions. The extensions, in my mind, are what makes Joomla the best open source CMS out there. With so many extensions that are very affordable and easy to install, it takes minimal effort to build advanced websites. Of course the most important part is that Joomla is that it is open source, so developers can build websites for a lot cheaper than you could in the past. The process of building custom applications can also be much faster by just creating extensions using the Joomla framework. The Joomla framework is an excellent subsystem that includes support programs, code libraries, and just about everything you need to help generate powerful custom applications.
What about the design? Is there something easy for that?
There are many websites that offer free and commercial Joomla templates. Using a Joomla template can give you a quick jumpstart on your project. Jooma templates are usually easy to customize and many have settings called parameters that you can quickly adjust to get the look and feel you deserve. If you find a great template that you like and it's easy to configure, it is possible to have a finished website within as little as a few days. However, if you are like me, you may want more custom features than some templates have to offer, therefore creating your own custom Joomla template may be a better choice.
What if I want a custom design for my Joomla site?
Designing for Joomla is just like designing any other website. You want to keep the html code as simple as possible to present a faster, more search engine friendly website so the majority of the code will most likely be in your CSS file. Try to keep a table-less CSS layout, and let Joomla do what it is meant to do, meaning don't design a site that needs to use a whole lot of images in the layout. Think about site maintenance and how you can make it easy for the site owner to add new menu items and pages without having to adjust the design or create menu images.
How Easy is it to Create a Custom Joomla Template?
I won't lie, the first time I created a Joomla template it took me a few days to get my head around it. I had difficulty understanding how it works because at that time there was little documentation about it. Of course this was back when Joomla had just emerged from Mambo, but as soon as I understood what components and modules were and how they worked within a template; I never wanted to build a website any other way. Today there are plenty of
Anything Else?
If you are looking to build an extensible, powerful website or application, that offers thousands of readily available extensions, is user-friendly, and will be a site that you can continuously grow with, I would recommend that you take a hard look at Joomla Web Design. If you need a professional web design company that specializes in Joomla web design, feel free to contact me or my company with any questions regarding your new Joomla website project. Our staff will be more than happy to answer any questions you may have.
Dallas Moore
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