Joomla and its advantage to create a CMS website

Joomla is one of the most popular free and open source content management systems (CMS) in the world that allows you to easily create and manage a dynamic website. It is estimated to be the second most used content management system on the Internet, after WordPress. It's built on a model–view–controller (MVC) web application framework that can be used independently of the CMS that allows you to build powerful online applications. It has an intuitive management interface to control all the features and functionality this powerful CMS possesses. For Joomla, there are hundreds of free extensions written that allows users to extend its functionality and customize it to their own objectives.

Joomla was initially released on August 17, 2005, as the result of a fork of Mambo. At that time, the Mambo name was a trademark of Miro International Pvt. Ltd, who formed a non-profit foundation with the stated purpose of funding the project and protecting it from lawsuits.

On August 18, Andrew Eddie called for community input to suggest a name for the project. The core team reserved the right for the final naming decision and chose a name not suggested by the community. On September 22, the new name, Joomla!, was announced.

Joomla Content Management System is supported by a large and friendly community where newbies could really rely on assistance from more experienced members.

CMS is an application (web-based), that provides capabilities for multiple users with different permission levels to manage (all or a section of) content, data or information of a website project, or intranet application. Managing content refers to creating, editing, archiving, publishing, collaborating on, reporting, distributing website content, data, and information.

Since Joomla is based on PHP and MySQL, you're building powerful applications on an open platform anyone can use, share, and support. It uses object-oriented programming (OOP) techniques (since v1.5) and software design patterns, stores data in a MySQL, MS SQL (since v2.5), or PostgreSQL (since v3.0) database, and includes features such as page caching, RSS feeds, printable versions of pages, news flashes, blogs, search, and support for language internationalization.

So, why use Joomla? What are the benefits of using Joomla?

Joomla has a number of advantages over many of its competitors. In addition to being a full-featured CMS, it is easy to learn, quick to set up, and inexpensive.

Let's see its features -

It's free

Joomla is absolutely free. 100% free to use, regardless of your implementation. This is due, in part, to its non-corporate roots and volunteer-driven support structure. There are few bills the Joomla project needs to pay to keep up and running, and everyone that contributes to its development does so out of a passion for creating something that truly meets the needs of sites both large and small.

Open source

Joomla is open source, and that means no surprises will pop up once you have started your site. Every part of the Joomla platform is open for you to inspect and even modify to meet your site's individual needs. Joomla's extensive third-party development community has created thousands of plugins, extensions, templates, and other options to empower you to make the most of your site without having to be an expert in Web development.

Easy to install

Joomla! is quite simple to install. It takes only about ten minutes from downloading to having a working script on a server.

Easy to use

Joomla CMS was designed to make it easy to use. It is extremely easy to use and convenient to perform any task. As compared to other content management systems, Joomla saves a lot of time. It is easy to manage permission levels and no need to change tabs.

Flexible

Joomla is highly functional and interactive. It has over 8000 extensions that help in making it productive and useful for developers. You can add social media widgets and integrate social networking with your website. There are a lot of customizations possible with Joomla. The Joomla extensions are divided into 33 categories including marketing, editing tools, communication. Languages, social media, etc. This makes Joomla one of the best platforms.

Make eCommerce easy

Joomla is one of the best choices for eCommerce businesses. It is an eCommerce friendly CMS that offers many components created specifically for an eCommerce website. It is easy to manage the products and related content with Joomla CMS. There are also third-party components that run inside the Joomla like Virtuemart. It also provides several options, like, PayPal, shipping and payment gateways. It is very easy to use the platform.

SEO functionality

One of the main benefits of Joomla is that it is SEO friendly. There are search friendly URL’s built in Joomla. You can choose your own meta tags, descriptions and keywords that can help optimize your website for search engine rankings. You have basic SEO under your control in Joomla.

Secure

Joomla, being a matter of course, is secure. When you download the most recent Joomla version zip file and introduce it on the site, at that point the site is secure.

Useful templates

There are huge numbers of Joomla templates out there that it’s hard for anybody not to discover one that suits their business. Also, in the uncommon situation when a Joomla template is required and can’t discover a premade one that works, at that point it’s simple and shabby to get one produced for the site.

The powerful and easy menu creation tool

Perhaps the number one reason that made Joomla so popular in the CMS world is its easy menu creation tool. All CMS veterans can attest that Joomla has the easiest and most powerful menu creation tool. Their supporting argument is that anyone, even those with no programming experience whatsoever, can easily create hierarchical menus consisting of various menu items pointing to different locations internally (to the website) and externally.

Versatility

While, in most cases, Joomla is a LAMP web application (LAMP stands for “Linux Apache MySQL PHP” - the 4 cornerstones of open source on the web), Joomla can also run with MSSQL (Microsoft SQL) or Oracle (yes, Joomla can work on Oracle) as a database, LiteSpeed or IIS as a web server, Windows as a server. This makes Joomla a very versatile CMS – that is able to adapt in nearly any environment.

Access control lists (ACLs)

Joomla, since its inception, is blessed with a very powerful ACL component. That ACL allows you to set who views what, who edits what, and who creates what. As of Joomla 1.6, the ACL has been completely revamped to make it more flexible.

Frontend editing

Joomla CMS that allow frontend editing. Joomla does. Frontend editing means editing content on the website itself – for example, if you’re logged in to the website (and of course, you have the right permissions) and you see a page that needs editing, then you can edit it directly without going to the backend. This is an important feature especially for those Joomla website owners who have little Internet experience/knowledge.

Scalable engine

Joomla’s engine is scalable and can be modified to sustain large amounts of traffic – talking about hundreds of thousands of visitors per day. Of course, the modifications need to be heavy – very heavy to handle this amount of traffic.

Compatible with nearly all browsers

A Joomla website, by default, is compatible with all browsers. However, browser compatibility issues on Joomla websites are caused by either the template (if it’s not developed by the Joomla team) or by non-standard extensions.

 

Joomla is the most chosen CMS because of its various benefits. It is flexible, easy to use and has a large support community. You can manage your content better with Joomla and it is easy to start an online store or a blog with Joomla.

You can share your experiences with us in the comment section. Thank you!

 

Stock photo from Piotr Swat