Introduction to Joomla
Joomla is a content management tool that allows users to create and maintain a web-based application or a website with the use of GUI operations and without writing the codes. This is an extensively used choice, as it is available as open-source, and the user doesn’t need to have programming knowledge or experience. One can easily work on their own website while connecting the backend with databases like MySQL and PostgreSQL.
What is Joomla?
In a nutshell, Joomla is an open-source – meaning-free to use and customize – content management system that lets you create websites and web applications without having to write code from scratch. It connects with a database such as MySQL or PostgreSQL, making content management easy, generating Web Pages, and store & retrieve data. It was launched in 2005, and it has been awarded the Packt Open Source Content Management System award thrice.
Some of the big names that use Joomla are iHop, MTV, and Harvard.
Key Features
Now that you know what Joomla is, let’s take a look at some important features of this CMS:
- Management of Content: It helps in creating and publishing content on the web browser. The posted articles can be organized in any way the user wants; it supports WYSIWYG type of content creation where you can see how it will look before it actually goes online.
- User Management: Joomla supports the creation of multiple user accounts. These accounts have multiple user levels so that only an Admin can drastically change the site. Joomla supports OpenID, Gmail, and LDAP for authentication too.
- Media Manager: Media Manager in Joomla allows users to skip using FTP to upload media to the site. Folders can be created to better categorize the content of the media. This media can then be embedded into the pages for easy viewing without having to be downloaded by the visitor.
- Supports for Templates: Templates in Joomla play an essential role in defining how your sites will look. You can get templates from third parties, too, and once added to the site; you can apply a template sitewide or just for one section of the site.
- Banner Management: Joomla supports setting up banners and other ads. Once configured, you can do a number of clicks, impressions and set up any special URLs if you need to.
- RSS: RSS stands for Rich Site Summary, and it allows a visitor to subscribe to your website and see if there is new content on the site from an RSS Reader. It has full support for burning feeds for users and integrating feeds to post the same content on the website itself.
Why do People Use Joomla?
The reason is actually simple it’s easy, and it’s powerful. While WordPress is also simple to use and customize, with this, the developer has a ton of flexibility and customizability. The modules in Joomla can be enabled and disabled in the installation as needed. It is more secure than other CMSs too.
Templates also play a key role in Joomla; if you don’t like the look of the site, other templates can be installed from various sources on the internet. This saves time in designing the front end of the site.
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Advantages and Disadvantages
We will highlight some advantages and disadvantages Joomla has.
Advantages
- This is easy to install and set up. Compared to installing something like Drupal, you will have a much easier time.
- It supports the installation of plugins to extend its feature set. These plugins are both paid and free, and you can set them from the Official Joomla repository or from one of the many Joomla plugin sites.
- It has great user control options enabling you to allow or disallow features of the site for users.
- Updating the CMS does not require any special software or digging through code.
- These have easy options to create hierarchies so that you can navigate through the site easily, even if It has thousands of pages.
Disadvantages
- Compared to WordPress, Vix, or Blogspot, getting to grips with Joomla is relatively more complex.
- Adding more and more modules and templates increases the load on your server resources, impacting its efficiency.
- Compared to WordPress, the number of plugins for Joomla is low to add insult to the injury; you will find that while there may be a free WordPress plugin for your task, the Joomla counterpart is a paid one.
- It may have some plugin compatibility issues. If you face one with your site, you will have to spend some time with the PHP code to solve it.
- This is the second most used CMS in the world; this makes it one of the easy targets of automated attacks on websites.
Career in Development
Web Development in terms of career options is one of the growing fields. If you want to get into it, having knowledge of Joomla will only be beneficial. Considering Joomla is the second most used CMS on the Internet, you will find many clients who need a site made in Joomla.
It has other career opportunities from the plain development of sites too. Someone good at Joomla and programming languages can create plugins and templates to sell them on the internet too. Unsurprisingly, the demand for polished plugins and templates to customize and adapt the Joomla site to fit different needs is quite high.
Conclusion
As you can see, Joomla is one good CMS that, once mastered, will only enhance your web development skill. Not only you will be able to work on and understand a CMS other than WordPress you will also be able to create websites on a more flexible and powerful platform.
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