Joomla – The open source CMS

One of the main reasons for Joomla’s pop­ular­ity is that getting to grips with the software is re­l­at­ively easy. It’s possible to operate the CMS and create your own website with basic knowledge and a short induction. Joomla has the following ad­vant­ages:

• Very good, intuitive usability
• Works with almost all web hosting solutions
• Numerous free tutorials and a helpful community
• Easy and flexible plugins
• System is always up to date – quick responses to security breaches
• Valid (correct) HTML and CSS

Joomla has four extension types available – com­pon­ents, modules, plugins, and templates. There is also a dis­tinc­tion made according to whether the extension is for the front end or the back end. Com­pon­ents add features like dynamic content or ad­min­is­tra­tion tools to a Joomla site. These include forums, image galleries, guest books, maps, stat­ist­ics, and back up features. Modules are small units that enable data from the Joomla core or other ex­ten­sions to be displayed in the front end. Plugins include a code that can be in­teg­rated into specific locations within the Joomla framework and add specific content or func­tion­al­ity. Templates are a little different to the other Joomla ex­ten­sions. Joomla templates are pre­fab­ric­ated struc­tures and designs that serve as a basis for your site and consist of at least an HTML and CSS file. By in­teg­rat­ing one of these templates, you can save a lot of work in designing your website.

Some ex­ten­sions are free, while others aren’t. To use an extension, simply download it as a zip file and open it directly in Joomla – the in­stall­a­tion will follow auto­mat­ic­ally. If you have the know-how, it’s also possible to create your own ex­ten­sions.

Through the variety of features that Joomla has available, you can create diverse concepts and designs. There are plenty of ex­ten­sions for every purpose, but the basic version also has an extensive range of functions. Here are just some of Joomla’s many features:

• Mul­ti­lin­gual­ism: over 64 available languages, mul­ti­lin­gual websites
• Simple updates: one-click updates available at all times
• Banner man­age­ment: simple ad placement, com­pat­ible with various tracking systems
• Search function: in­teg­rated search index, auto­mat­ic­ally suggested search terms, etc.
• Simple content man­age­ment: WYSIWYG editor, many pre-installed modules for content present­a­tion, lots of layouts
• Front end editing: minor changes can be made directly at the front end
• Re­spons­ive web design: standard Joomla templates based on Bootstrap are optimized for many devices
• Scalable MVC structure: separate layout and database for more freedom in design
• Free choice of font: no fixed default font, easy in­teg­ra­tion of personal fonts
• User man­age­ment: user groups, rights man­age­ment etc.
• Cloud storage APIs: in­ter­faces enable a simple con­nec­tion to cloud services such as Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, or Dropbox

Even without ad­di­tion­al ex­ten­sions, Joomla offers you everything that you need for basic onpage op­tim­isa­tion. In the admin section, you will find the con­fig­ur­a­tion menu for search engine op­tim­isa­tion. Here, you can active the URL rewriting option or search engine-friendly URLs. You can also define the global metadata – meaning that if you forget the in­form­a­tion for one article, de­scrip­tions and other important metadata won’t appear empty (though it is still best to fill out metadata for each page in­di­vidu­ally). Through the GZIP com­pres­sion, you can reduce the loading time of your site sig­ni­fic­antly. But this page speed op­tim­isa­tion requires the support of the web server. Ad­di­tion­ally, you have the chance to designate menu titles in­de­pend­ent from the URL, by using the URL Alias tool. The same applies to in­di­vidu­al page titles, which can be specified sep­ar­ately in the settings of the page display. But remember that all these im­prove­ments will only show their full effect if your content is also good.

Even though the standard package from Joomla offers an im­press­ive range of design options compared to other free CMSs, it’s Joomla’s ex­ten­sions that make it so flexible. There are plugins to improve the usability, ap­pear­ance, or security of a web project, while others increase the ap­plic­a­tion and per­form­ance of the content man­age­ment system. Here are five popular Joomla ex­ten­sions:

• Akeeba Backup: free and simple backup function for your Joomla project
• Easy Frontend SEO: free, metatags are displayed in a box on the front end where they can be edited directly. In the back end, a summary table of all tags is visible
• Vir­tue­Mart: free, extensive online store component for e-commerce
• EasyBlog: a fee-based extensive blog component that directly links to social networks like Facebook

The Joomla CMS can be used for small and large dynamic web projects. By combining the numerous ex­ten­sions available, users can create well-struc­tured websites as well as powerful web ap­plic­a­tions. E-commerce com­pon­ents like Vir­tue­Mart also make Joomla suitable as a content man­age­ment system for a webstore. If your online presence is in­ter­na­tion­al, Joomla’s im­press­ive mul­ti­lin­gual­ism makes it an excellent choice. Ad­di­tion­ally, the simple SEO options can help optimise your project for search engines.

However, the vast variety of Joomla ex­ten­sions does bring clear dis­ad­vant­ages too: firstly, simply selecting and im­ple­ment­ing suitable ex­ten­sions is very difficult with Joomla, because each must be in­cor­por­ated sep­ar­ately. Security issues have also been as­so­ci­ated with many of these plugins.

To trial Joomla, simply enter your email address for a 90-day free Joomla demo account. To use Joomla, you will need a current PHP version; the CMS supports databases MySQL, SQL Server, and Post­gr­eSQL as well as the web servers Apache, Nginx, and Microsoft IIS.