Joomla!

During the .com boom of the 90's a CMS with less capabilities than Joomla cost nearly $1 million. Now it's free.

The program is great -- it works. There are hundreds and hundreds of extensions available and they are a piece of cake to install.

There are also hundreds and hundreds of free and commercial templates (Skins) for Joomla.

The community is huge and the forum has answered all of my questions.

One fellow complained about slow development. Look at the Joomla site and you will see global cooperative effort to advance the project. The real problem is the development is so fast that the extension providers have a hard time keeping up.

Frank Dwyer

Someone wrote "While looking really good, Joomla is very limited. It has close to none good extensions. Limited to CMS usability almost without possible extending.

Slow development, project not flexible at all."

Wrong on ALL parts, for one Joomla is extremely flexible, I am using it on two different e commerce sites and was able to meet all the customer's requirements and +!

"None to none good extensions"!!!??? There are 1000s of extensions, I have not yet been in a situtation where I did not find something I needed. To top it off, I have to say that most extensions are simply AMAZING and the rating and review system works well.

Simply an Amazing Framework, Amazing Capabilities, Amazing Community and developers!

I am a system integrator/sys admin and I can't think of one product that comes even closes to have all the capabilities, even for a lot of $$$.

Versatility is what Joomla brings to the table. Someone reviewed Joomla as pretty but not extensible. I disagree! Not only are there thousands of extensions already built, but it comes with several for you to use on install. If none of these work for your purpose, you can write your own components (programs that run within Joomla), or Modules (display areas that can be placed in a variety of locations on the site), or plug-ins; also called Mambots as a vestige of the old Mambo roots Joomla has. The new 1.5 version uses the term plug-ins. (Plugins can change the way that Joomla treats certain data or makes it easier for you to add in data (images, movies, sounds, etc)).

With all this extensibility, it is easy to put together some of the most useful pieces of a website or portal site. The biggest feature of Joomla is it's ease of use, and flexibility. Anyone who knows a little bit about internet publishing can do a whole lot with this little gem. Top of the line, and best in it's category. You can't find better for good money.

Bottom line, if you need to build a site with registered users, and/or have something to sell, this is the way to go. If you want to blog, this is a good choice, if you want to have a corporate site with great features, way to go.

OR you can hire a team of programmers, designers, testers, and roll out a site in about 6 months with a $500,000 to $1mil price tag. That takes a little time to recupe...

OR you can use something like PHPNuke, which is OK, but really for the amatures doing their game sites.

Hey, you build something better, let me know, and if you're promoting it Open Source and charging nothing for it, I may try it out. I think I will let go of my Joomla when you can pry it from my dead grasping fingers. :-)

~Brian Elliott
BE Enterprises

Short version: among php/mysql ones, look closer at Drupal for something like Joomla but created with security in mind -- or at TYPO3 if you need *really* flexible high-end CMS. Joomla is neither.

Longer version: over the years mambo/joomla folks managed to surprise me with both hideous security flaws constantly found in it (believe me, I do remember the very similar buzz on phpnuke and reading up bugtraq@ to patch it real quick week after week) -- and the immaturity feeling: licensing jumps, the lack of proper automatic navigation means, "in a year we'll have some more TYPO3 features".

I've hosted joomla sites and consulted on replacing another one with TYPO3-based one after it being broken through -- TYPO3 *is* hard but getting stuck with stuff like Joomla or Windows, no, thanks.

2 developers: sorry, I don't want to hurt your feelings, but I just don't use/recommend your product due to what's described above -- still hoping that this will change.

This is the first experience I've had with a CMS that was as easy to install as Joomla and add to the look and feel and functionality. I lovvvveee it!!!

5 Kudos for the JOOMLA Developers and Designers and especially those that have taken the time to write books, tutorials and create trainings.

Lanesa

I have been using Joomla for a while now and absolutely love it. It is missing one critical element, better access control, seems Joomla 1.6 to be addressing this.

It’s easy install and setup by just mouse. The user and administrative interface for Joomla was one of the best designed among other CMS.

I’m building websites on this incredible platform and when it comes to mission critical, Joomla saves the day. I appreciate all the hard work that has gone into the development. I can't praise Joomla enough. I have been using Joomla on shared and VPS server environments and have had not one problem. It’s a good choice.

I've use to work with Joomla! on many occasions and use to be a big advocate, until I saw what you really should be able to do with a CMS (if you can call Joomla a CMS) and I have vowed never to use it ever again.

If all you want is to get a prepackaged theme and use the core components and modules, you'll probably get by. But as soon as you want to customize the fine grained details (e.g. pagination, permissions, etc) you will keep hitting brick walls trying to find a component or module that does what the Joomla! core should have been able to do in the first place.

The administration interface can be very confusing and cluttered with distracting and vague fields and attributes.

If you're making a small site which is just a hobby and will probably not grow or expand, Joomla will probably work for you. Otherwise I would look in to more flexible systems like Drupal, eZ Publish or django.

Remember, the foundation you lay for your website can crumble as you continue to build your site if you do not choose the right concrete (CMS).

I have been using Joomla for many years from the Mambo days, it is awesome. It is missing one critical element, better access control. Attention to this area seems to be ignored all these years, Joomla 1.6 seems to be addressing this.

Joomla is so great!

I mean, there are a few negatives but here are the positives to using Joomla. Joomla is easily to install, and if you need any help you can always refer to the manual. Joomla also has a great modification base, making endless possibilities to the site you may want to have. Joomla also has a great support and development base, which means that if you ever need help you can get it at their forums.

Joomla is constantly being developed on, no matter if it's the core itself, or maybe a modification, but Joomla is always going to come out with something to excite you and make your site better.

But as there are pros to a good CMS such as Joomla, there are cons.

A major con is the modifications, and how they can only support either J 1.0 or J 1.5. Which version is totally up to your preference, but sometimes a modification may only be for another version, which may be a bummer. 1.5 has this neat thing called 1.5 Legacy, but that doesn't always work out as planned. So one of the cons of Joomla is that not all modifications you want can be used in your version.

The same thing goes with skins. That's a bummer.

Another con of Joomla is that it has set usergroup and permissions for you, which sort of makes it hard to set things such as a person who just does the skins for your site, and the person who makes the articles and such. But there are workarounds, I've seen two modifications that fix this.

Another con is also the SEO/SEF that Joomla has. It's not a major con because there are many great mods that fix it, but the SEO/SEF isn't built in.

I guess that's pretty much it about my feelings about Joomla. It has a great learning curve, and it is one of the best CMS there is. So why haven't you tried it? (I love this project so much that I have put effort into translating J! into another language.) You should try it.

Some may see it as a Weakness but Joomla is one of the most easiest CMS's i've ever worked with. It has great documentation, templates, components, plugins and modules, everything is easy to find and there are lots of all of them. And even if you don't find exactly what you need, you can always build your own without needing too much information about the CMS itself. And if you ever run into a problem, there are great community's in very much different languages eager to help. But to be really honest most problems i run into were already answered on forums or very easy to find in the documentation.
So in short: A really good CMS with everything you can wish for.

Keep up the good work!
Recondor