What is Joomla?

What is Joomla?

It is impossible to imagine a modern website without content, interesting articles, thematic videos, and photographs. The key to good traffic and attractiveness of the platform for readers and advertisers is not only the freshness, relevance, originality, and uniqueness of the content, but also its orderliness.

CMS Joomla is one of the best content management systems. It is distributed free of charge, but in terms of functionality and ease of use, it is comparable to paid solutions. What are the main features of the system? What are the advantages and disadvantages? What sites is it suitable for?

A little history

Joomla is an open source development. This allows all keen programmers and users to edit it, create add-ons and extensions for both sale and free distribution.

The name is a slightly distorted word “Jumla”, taken by the creators from the African dialect of Swahili. This word can be translated as “all together”, which quite accurately characterizes the main features of the development, its functionality, accessibility, openness.

The emergence of the project is associated with a conflict within the Mambo Foundation. The opinions of the specialists working on the CMS Mambo were divided, there was a split in the company, due to which some decided to leave it, to focus on creating their own system, which became Joomla. The first version was presented in 2005, but the program is still actively developing and improving, acquiring new features, allowing for the effective management of even large Internet platforms, commercial, news, information.

Main features

The main functions of Joomla CMS are as follows:

• Editing site content. The process is simplified as much as possible, changes do not require special knowledge, the specifics of all processes are intuitive. Effective interaction with any content is possible, be it text articles, graphic images, diagrams, videos.
• Dividing access rights. User rights can be strictly delimited to exclude accidental disruption of the site. For example, one category of users can only add new publications to certain sections, while another can delete and edit previously posted articles.
• Automation of management. Joomla has a special media manager built in, allowing you to pre-load articles, but post them at a certain time, by timer.
• Configuring filtering algorithms and menus. With the right settings, visitors will find it easier to interact with the platform, find the materials they are interested in, and navigate to the necessary categories.
• Working with projects of various types, from commercial to informational, regardless of language. Joomla allows you to implement the necessary databases, use the functions that the visitor needs to perform certain actions, such as leaving a comment, placing an online order, making a payment.

Additional features

The basic functionality of the Joomla CMS can be expanded by installing additional modules. This approach is most convenient and rational when managing specialized sites, primarily online stores with a clear commercial focus, created for the purpose of making a profit. Popular extensions should be considered in more detail.

For commercial sites

A typical example is JoomShopping. The module is designed for online stores, allows you to quickly add tens of thousands of product names, while not creating an additional load on the server. Other functional extensions will also be useful on such sites:

• Placing an order “in one click”. A potential buyer may find it tedious to fill out multiple contact forms, which is why he will go to competitors. “Quick order” is a more convenient option that increases the number of customers and increases the profitability of the site.
• Expansion of the cart functions. For example, the buyer will appreciate the ability to enter a promo code, specify the number of the certificate entitling him to a discount.
• Online payment. The most useful function. Trust in remote orders has increased over the years, so people prefer to pay for the goods immediately, rather than upon receipt. In this case, there are many options: from direct entry of card data to a QR code.
• Advanced filters. Relevant for large trading platforms, they allow you to sort products not only by type, but also by size, price, color and other features.

For news portals

News should be sorted by dates and categories so that the reader can immediately go to the desired section, without getting lost among the abundance of information and events. One of the best CMS extensions for solving this problem is JUX Mega Menu.

For blogs

Blogs allow anyone to post essays, opinions, photos, however, publications must be checked to exclude accidental or intentional violations of the law, illegal copying, advertising of prohibited goods. Extensions will help make the platform more convenient for both authors and administrators, will help to quickly identify and eliminate violations.

For social networks

JomSocial is a special Joomla extension that simplifies interaction with social networks, providing convenience when adding comments, photos, videos.

Advantages and disadvantages

First, let's consider the advantages of CMS Joomla:

• Free. Open source code makes the CMS available to anyone who wants to modify it to meet the requirements of a specific Internet site, implement additional functions. Not all paid analogues can boast such an impressive set of features.
• Universality. Joomla is compatible with the vast majority of sites, from one-page business cards and portfolios to huge online stores, news portals of the city, regional and even state level. Depending on the scale of the site, effective management can be established with both basic and advanced functionality by creating or downloading the necessary plugins.
• Ease of learning. To work effectively in Joomla, you do not need to be a programmer, a website creation specialist, an experienced administrator, a layout designer or a designer. All functions of the control panel elements are intuitive, learning them will take literally a few minutes.
• Community activity. CMS Joomla is popular, useful plugins, add-ons developed by users are regularly published on thematic sites, forums. Many are distributed free of charge. Also in communities you can find answers to questions of interest, quickly solve various problems related to Joomla, ask for help.
• Variability of design. In Joomla you can find a template that is ideal for a specific site in terms of visual and technical parts, modern and functional. You do not have to create icons and other menu elements yourself.
• Security and reliability. Joomla has pre-installed tools that protect against network attacks, as well as special troubleshooting tools that help quickly return the site to working order even after a serious failure.
• SEO efficiency. Joomla CMS is well suited for SEO promotion, interaction with search engines. For additional efficiency enhancement, you can use auxiliary plugins.

On the issue of disadvantages

Joomla also has some disadvantages. The most significant ones are as follows:

• Increasing complexity of development along with the scale of the site. Setting up a large Internet platform will require experience and knowledge, the use of special tools.
• Not a very large selection of free extensions and design options. Free options are generally suitable for a small site, but for the implementation of specialized functions, creating an original design, increasing the level of security - it is better to use paid add-ons.
• Lack of official support service. This is due to the open source code and free distribution. However, the minus is compensated by the development of the community, you can always get help from users.
• The need for regular updates. It is necessary to monitor the release of patches, extensions for Joomla, install them immediately after the release. This approach allows you to promptly close potential vulnerabilities, eliminate security problems.

Summing up

There are a huge number of examples of sites running on Joomla. These include small business cards and huge portals, online stores with hundreds of thousands of items, sites of federal organizations, blogs where thousands of authors publish.

This fact alone is enough to understand that Joomla is one of the best available CMS. Built-in plugins, auxiliary add-ons, competent distribution of user rights allow you to reliably protect the site from network attacks, ensure the stability of its operation, eliminate the risk of failure, loss of important information caused by accidental or intentional actions.

Author of the article:

Editor-in-Chief

Danaev Almaz