So now you know what a Content Management System is, how to choose the right one and have already looked at Wordpress in detail. Now it’s the turn of Joomla. Another fantastic CMS offered as a One-Click app on your Domainmonster.com web hosting. Joomla offers more experienced web developers more control over the design of their site than other Content Management Systems, but also works just as well for beginners. It provides the same wealth of extensions and resources as its rivals, can boast the same high profile users such as MTV'S Quizilla, Harvard and even the private Intranet of banking giant Citibank.

Since its release in 2005 as a re-branded release of Mambo, Joomla has taken the CMS world by storm. It has now been downloaded over 25 million times and counting. It is also an Open Source CMS, which as we mentioned in our Wordpress special means it is free to use, distribute and edit. Therefore the user community is huge. There are thousands of people working on making extensions, themes and fixes that are often released free of charge to the public. Joomla allows you to get more and more in depth as you develop your skills. Whereas Wordpress is a blog where getting your content online quickly and easily is the aim, Joomla provides a community based site with advanced user management and modules that can display your site in different languages to different users!

Wordpress is much more focused on getting content up on the web and personalised quickly. Instead, Joomla has often been used for businesses or communities to create interactive, consistent and user friendly websites so their customers can access all the information they need and allowing customer accounts to be controlled and contacted with ease. Joomla allows lots of different static pages to be set up with advanced menu systems to link these pages together. Beginners can make great looking menus with lots of options pointing to all the correct content.

Joomla has almost unlimited implementations. It can be used for e-commerce, reservation systems, community building and personal portfolios. Joomla uses a three-tiered system to manage content. It allows you to really categorise your content, making it easy for you to display only certain kinds on information on certain pages. Template management is another integral part of Joomla’s usability. As with many other CMS you can download thousands of free templates from hundreds of sources to customise the look of your site. The same three-tiered system that manages content is used when applying templates. You can easily use a specified template when viewing certain content. An advanced messaging system in Joomla means you can keep up to date with your users by sending them email updates. This is extremely useful when you are trying to build a community around a site as interacting with your customers will be extremely important.

Extensions are another great credit to Joomla’s thriving user community. With nearly 9000 extensions available to increase the functionality of your site, Joomla sites are all individual and original. They can add shops, discussion forums and private areas to your site. You can build an adaptable site which can respond to your needs in an instant. There are periodical updates to Joomla which you can perform automatically from your Administration panel. Keeping Joomla up to date means that your site will not only be secure, but also be compatible with the latest browsers and coding technology.

Joomla is a great CMS. It allows a range of users, from novice to expert, to produce sites of professional quality which can adapt to new circumstances and be incredibly user friendly. Beginners will experience usability similar to that of Wordpress but with much simpler user management features. Advanced coders can go more in-depth with their site to tweak it to help SEO, increase usability and change the design. It’s easy to see why the community around Joomla love using it so much and will continue to develop new extensions, themes and updates. Domainmonster.com web hosting provides One-Click apps for all of the Content Management Systems we have mentioned in this series.