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What is Joomla?

Joomla is a free content management system used to create websites. Joomla is an award-winning content management system (CMS), which enables you to build Web sites and powerful online applications. Joomla allows web designers to construct sites by combining modules, and requires no knowledge of programming to use. Many aspects, including its ease-of-use and extensibility, have made Joomla the most popular Web site software available. Joomla’s framework is written in PHP, as are the modules used to customize websites.Best of all, Joomla is an open source solution that is freely available to everyone. Joomla! is set to change all that …

Joomla! is different from the normal models for portal software. Joomla is the result of a fork of Mambo. For a start, it’s not complicated. Joomla! has been developed for the masses. It’s licensed under the GNU/GPL license, easy to install and administer and reliable. There is a wide variety of modules available, including RSS feeds, polls, and language internationalization, which make it easy for Joomla™ users to publish content to the web, even with minimal web design experience. Joomla! doesn’t even require the user or administrator of the system to know HTML to operate it once it’s up and running. Joomla! also gives you the ability to manage who can log into the site and who is allowed to do administrative type duties. An example of such are extensions called “Plugins”.

Joomla! features:

• Completely database driven site engines
• Browser upload of images to your own library for use anywhere in the site
• Runs on Linux, FreeBSD, MacOSX server, Solaris and AIX
• News, products or services sections fully editable and manageable
• Dynamic Forum/Poll/Voting booth for on-the-spot results
• Topics sections can be added to by contributing authors
• Fully customisable layouts including left, center and right menu boxes

Because Joomla’s code is open source, anyone is able to write modules and extensions of the system, making it extremely adaptable. Joomla! package consists of many different parts, which allow modular extensions and integrations to be made easily. Released under the terms of the GNU General Public License, Joomla is free software. These modules are available for download, typically through their creators’ websites. Installation and usage instructions can be found on the Joomla! Help Site.

Joomla! comes standard with a lot of features and tools that you would need to create anything from a modest to a fairly large Web site. You can manage articles, contact forms, advertising banners, newsfeeds, links and a heap of other things. Many web designers also create Joomla design elements, called ‘themes’, which they then make available for download. Not all Joomla themes are free, however, and many web designers will make custom themes for a price. That’s pretty neat especially when you can tick-and-flick who is able to do this.

What’s a content management system (CMS)?

A content management system is software that keeps track of every piece of content on your Web site, much like your local public library keeps track of books and stores them. Joomla is a Content Management System (CMS) built for anyone who needs to edit website content, and built a separate toolset for those who actually make the websites. Joomla is a CMS to be tailored; You can easily create the content that fit with your design. Content can be simple text, photos, music, video, documents, or just about anything you can think of. A major advantage of using a CMS is that it requires almost no technical skill or knowledge to manage. Since the CMS manages all your content, you don’t have to. End users can build on the framework created for them easily, while still maintaining the integrity of the Look & Feel. The result is a more intuitive CMS.