Joomla!

During the .com boom of the 90's a CMS with less capabilities than Joomla cost nearly $1 million. Now it's free.

The program is great -- it works. There are hundreds and hundreds of extensions available and they are a piece of cake to install.

There are also hundreds and hundreds of free and commercial templates (Skins) for Joomla.

The community is huge and the forum has answered all of my questions.

One fellow complained about slow development. Look at the Joomla site and you will see global cooperative effort to advance the project. The real problem is the development is so fast that the extension providers have a hard time keeping up.

Frank Dwyer

Someone wrote "While looking really good, Joomla is very limited. It has close to none good extensions. Limited to CMS usability almost without possible extending.

Slow development, project not flexible at all."

Wrong on ALL parts, for one Joomla is extremely flexible, I am using it on two different e commerce sites and was able to meet all the customer's requirements and +!

"None to none good extensions"!!!??? There are 1000s of extensions, I have not yet been in a situtation where I did not find something I needed. To top it off, I have to say that most extensions are simply AMAZING and the rating and review system works well.

Simply an Amazing Framework, Amazing Capabilities, Amazing Community and developers!

I am a system integrator/sys admin and I can't think of one product that comes even closes to have all the capabilities, even for a lot of $$$.

Versatility is what Joomla brings to the table. Someone reviewed Joomla as pretty but not extensible. I disagree! Not only are there thousands of extensions already built, but it comes with several for you to use on install. If none of these work for your purpose, you can write your own components (programs that run within Joomla), or Modules (display areas that can be placed in a variety of locations on the site), or plug-ins; also called Mambots as a vestige of the old Mambo roots Joomla has. The new 1.5 version uses the term plug-ins. (Plugins can change the way that Joomla treats certain data or makes it easier for you to add in data (images, movies, sounds, etc)).

With all this extensibility, it is easy to put together some of the most useful pieces of a website or portal site. The biggest feature of Joomla is it's ease of use, and flexibility. Anyone who knows a little bit about internet publishing can do a whole lot with this little gem. Top of the line, and best in it's category. You can't find better for good money.

Bottom line, if you need to build a site with registered users, and/or have something to sell, this is the way to go. If you want to blog, this is a good choice, if you want to have a corporate site with great features, way to go.

OR you can hire a team of programmers, designers, testers, and roll out a site in about 6 months with a $500,000 to $1mil price tag. That takes a little time to recupe...

OR you can use something like PHPNuke, which is OK, but really for the amatures doing their game sites.

Hey, you build something better, let me know, and if you're promoting it Open Source and charging nothing for it, I may try it out. I think I will let go of my Joomla when you can pry it from my dead grasping fingers. :-)

~Brian Elliott
BE Enterprises

Short version: among php/mysql ones, look closer at Drupal for something like Joomla but created with security in mind -- or at TYPO3 if you need *really* flexible high-end CMS. Joomla is neither.

Longer version: over the years mambo/joomla folks managed to surprise me with both hideous security flaws constantly found in it (believe me, I do remember the very similar buzz on phpnuke and reading up bugtraq@ to patch it real quick week after week) -- and the immaturity feeling: licensing jumps, the lack of proper automatic navigation means, "in a year we'll have some more TYPO3 features".

I've hosted joomla sites and consulted on replacing another one with TYPO3-based one after it being broken through -- TYPO3 *is* hard but getting stuck with stuff like Joomla or Windows, no, thanks.

2 developers: sorry, I don't want to hurt your feelings, but I just don't use/recommend your product due to what's described above -- still hoping that this will change.

This is the first experience I've had with a CMS that was as easy to install as Joomla and add to the look and feel and functionality. I lovvvveee it!!!

5 Kudos for the JOOMLA Developers and Designers and especially those that have taken the time to write books, tutorials and create trainings.

Lanesa