Joomla! CMS Review- Joomla! is an open source software Content Management System (CMS). Being open source means that it is available to the user to manipulate as he or she wants. Read this article to see what you can do with Joomla!.
What Is a CMS?
A content management system is a type of software designed to keep track of content. It can be used for organizing and keeping track of files, such as images, videos, audio files, or documents. Alternatively, it can be made to build a website. People have done all these things and more with Joomla! CMS. The fact that Joomla! is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL) means that users are allowed to copy, modify, and/or distribute Joomla!, either in its original form, or in the modified form they have created. Many of the different types of CMS software are offered with a GPL license.
Joomla! CMS’s History
Joomla! evolved from a split off from the earlier CMS Mambo. The precipitating event was the trademarking of the name Mambo and the creation of a non-profit foundation to both fund Mambo and defend it in case of lawsuits. Some members of the Mambo group felt that the creation of this foundation made major changes in direction that were not consistent with an open source approach. Creating a website called <I>OpenSourceMatters.org</i>, the controversial split off group established themselves as separate from the original Mambo group in August 2005. In September 2005, the name Joomla!, an English transliteration of the word jumla, which in Swahili means “together as one,” was chosen.
Types of Joomla! CMS’s Uses
Joomla! can be used in intranets or on the Internet. It has been used to craft websites from simple personal homepages to ecommerce sites, to corporate and government sites. It is used by educational institutions, financial institutions, restaurants, and cultural organizations. Besides websites, other content management applications for which Joomla! has been used include product catalogs, business directories, ecommerce systems, communications tools, and inventory control systems.
Joomla! CMS’s Technical Requirements
Joomla! CMS can be installed on a local computer, but is widely available through webhosts. In order to function properly, it requires particular versions of PHP, MySQL, Apache, and Microsoft IIS, as applicable, and the website designates both the minimum and the recommended versions. Joomla! is on version 1.5 as of June 2010, and the website warns that the PHP and MySQL minimum requirements will be higher when Joomla! 1.6 is released (in June 2010, it was in beta). Many CMS’s are created with PHP and MySQL.
Joomla! CMS’s Features
The way that Joomla! CMS’s features are described make it sound like it was set up for sites with frequently renewed material, particularly blogs. For example, syndication and newsfeed management is available, as well as authentication systems to use in connection with user input or interaction, such as OpenID capability. Templates and a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor make the system usable who don’t have the skills to—or don’t wish to—program every last detail themselves.
Joomla! CMS’s Extensions
Saying that Joomla! has extensive extensions would not be an overstatement. There are 5150 of them. Web developers have a wide range of choices in a wide range of errors. Ecommerce sites—besides the obvious ecommerce category—may benefit from access and security extensions, ads and affiliates extensions, and contacts and feedback extensions. Other useful extension types are likely to be those that focus on mailing and newsletters, those offering help desk functionality, and those that help created a live support system. For ecommerce sites with an international audience, financial extensions, like currency converters, may also be of use. There are also dedicated real estate extensions.