Joomla: Content Management For Any Level

Having been a user of Joomla, and it’s predecessor, Mambo, I can easily tell you that the two products are very powerful. Mambo and Joomla are content management systems that help even novice users manage the content on their sites easily. In this review I will be focusing on the strengths of the powerful Joomla framework and how it can be used for a community site.

Joomla by itself is one immense package, giving you lots of features right out of the box. Aside from content management, you get a links system, contacts pages, an RSS reader and several other basic components. If you are looking to build a small site for your business, this will often suffice.

With some extensions (as they are formally known, and include modules, components and plugins) you can transform your site into a powerful community or intranet. Joomla provides the framework for components like Joomlaboard (a fully-integrated forum) and Community Builder (for user profiling and member lists). Hundreds of third-party components exist, and cover dozens of applications, from help desks to event calendars.

If you already use certain tools on your web site, like Simple Machines Forum or Coppermine Gallery, there are components released by the community to integrate them with the Joomla environment.

For changing the look and feel of your site, Joomla has a templating system that uses PHP for its template tags. Although many people find this to be rather annoying, the next major release (Joomla 1.5) will have an new system with designer-friendly tags. However there will also be backwards compatibility for current templates as well.

For many kinds of sites, simple static HTML won’t make the cut. Communities and enterprises need more that the traditional web-site building tools. Content management systems like Joomla will fulfill many needs of these organizations, and can be easily extended to fit their needs.