Over the past year, I’ve been researching various content management systems. The latest one that I chose to use is Joomla!. And all I can say is wow!
Usually Prefer to build the backend myself, but after many late nights researching the software, as well as finding quality support for Joomla in the open source community, I decided to switch to the Joomla CMS.
To anyone getting ready to build a website or websites, I would fully reccomend the Joomla CMS. With fantastic support and resources online, it doesn’t matter what time of the day or even what day it is, you can get your Joomla! site up and running with any customizations you like whenever you want.
Everytime I wanted to add a new piece to the backend (i.e. mod rewrites, adsense, amazon products, etc…), it was as easy as locating the module, or plugin from the joomla.org website, downloading the plugin to my local machine, then using Joomla’s backend installer to upload the plugin. Although you need to slightly customize each plugin to your site’s needs, it’s still ten times easier than building it from scratch.
Probably my favorite feature of Joomla! is the ability to change the look and feel of the entire website through the use of various templates. Again, like the plugins, all you need to do is find a template you like, and use the user friendly features in the Joomla! admin panel to upload the new template. Once the template is uploaded, simply goto your site templatate manager page (“Site -> Template Manager -> Site Templates”) and select the template you uploaded. Joomla! keeps a database of all the templates which you’ve installed, so at anytime you can fall back to a previous template.
I’ve found literally hundreds of quality templates by following links from the Joomla.org website, but I plan on contracting a programmer to build me a custom one.
To anyone interested in setting up they’re own Joomla site check out: joomla.org.
