Free and open source tool #6: Joomla!

Submitted by mpm on
I don't exactly know where the exclamation point came from, but if you want a scarily easy CMS to install, Joomla is a place to start. Like any powerful CMS, though, there is quite the learning curve in order to get a site up and running. But at least the first technical hurdle to jump over is a small one. Joomla is growing fast. They just released version 1.5, which, I must say, rocks. I'll be migrating my main consulting site over to it quite soon. They have an amazing user community, and there are places to get amazing themes. I'll mention the other FOSS CMS systems in other posts. I'll have to admit to my preference for Joomla, although Drupal is growing on me more and more. I haven't spend enough time with Plone to really get a feel for it. Joomla does have an interesting history - it was the fork of a project (called Mambo). Mambo is way less popular than Joomla at this point. If you want to try and get a small website going for your organization - Joomla is a good place to start. It installs easily on generic virtual hosts, and has a very sweet, eye-candy full admin interface. It will take some time and effort to get a site up, but that's standard for any website. It will probably take you less time than a generic HTML site will.

Comments

Hi there, nice blog. Ive

Submitted by Leo Germani (not verified) on

Hi there,

nice blog. Ive been using CMSs for a while now and Im really involved with wordpress. I remember I had a look on Joomla but what disappointed me was exactly that I couldnt find many themes. All I would find was themes for sale.

On Modules it was a little better, but again there was lots of comercial stuff...

I found it a very comercialized communities and didnt get to know users and developers talk exchange freely...

would you clarify me on that? For instance, the site you point to get themes is not free (nor as in free beer or speech)

Leo,,

Hi Leo, OK, I agree with

Submitted by admin (not verified) on

Hi Leo,

OK, I agree with you - most of the themes aren't free (in any sense of the word.) It is unfortunate - it would be great to be able to get lots of themes for free (like for WordPress - the theme I'm using was a free one.)

I do disagree with you about the commercialization of the Joomla community, though. It is a huge community, so it is hard to get to know users, since there are so many, but it's not commercialized, from my experience.

Just also to say - I don't think of WordPress and Joomla as "competitors" - they are both really good tools, and great at what they do. Joomla is great for a website CMS - it's great for categorized content, multiple levels of menus, granular control of layout of content, etc. WordPress is one of the best blogging tools known to humankind, but I'd never want to use it to do a website that needed good categorization of content, and Joomla is way overkill for just a blog.

Hi - just one point, I see in

Submitted by Laura Whitehead (not verified) on

Hi - just one point, I see in nptech world the bend/promotion towards Wordpress, Drupal and Joomla alot which is no bad thing I work successfully with all of them, they are all good and great, and fairly easy to use for the end user.

As a web dev, and one into usability, accessibility and web standards, I did alot of research into which CMS were the best for my needs and my clients, and now favour Modx, sNews (and Xoops) as platforms that often get rarely mentioned, but do feel they do need raising awareness of. Plone has come on in leaps and bounds too, and I'm looking foward to getting back into that too.
In dealing with problems with groups with their websites I did a recent quick tot up of support calls from small orgs; Joomla last year received my highest amount of problems and issues that needed support, not only with accessibility and web standards but also customisation to make it their own and easily (or security problems which appeared lots with hackers attacking sites due to some of the plug ins being used!).

So just to say really, that we should be mindful that as well as the biggies out there that we all know about, we should promote and participate in other great FOSS CMS that are futureproofed and adaptable for the nptech world too!
(If you want to see my article about my impressions of snews...see sNews - an easy and simple web publishing tool for non profit organisations

Each CMS should be judged by an org, on what it can provide now for an organisation as well as in the future. This is where the role of nptech peeps like e-riders and so on can help support in an unbiased way to help groups to make the correct and informed choices (which is partly why I personally work with so many different apps). Joomla can be overkill for some smaller orgs, and pending on purpose ie: collaborative or tying in with Civi for example, Drupal can be a good choice, or small easy to update - Wordpress and so on... When I work with a new organisation whether I'm designing the site or enabling them to get on and do it themselves (which I find very inspiring to see!) I help them to work out first what they want and why, then help find the right tool to do the job. We're so lucky with FOSS CMS and various frameworks that there are such vibrant communities and a good diversity to choose from to meet a wide range of needs.

Modx is wonderful for

Submitted by Laura Whitehead (not verified) on

Modx is wonderful for adaptability (especially as a web dev) and sNews - just keep watching, no instant install as yet, still young, but wow - amazing since only one really lightweight simple php file! As a web dev - sites running on the above are so much quicker to code from scratch and create compared to ones like Wordpress, Drupal and Joomla, but obviously on the other end of the scale, many nonprofits want an instant, free and quick solutions where they can just get going, on their own, and not getting others involved in helping...so the big more well known ones are sometimes what they think they need more... (until they want to customise features and plugins to suit their own needs!)

BTW, really enjoying your 100 foss posts... keep it up!
Laura

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