What Do You Think Of Joomla?

[thex-faders]

Hi all, we use Joomla a CMS [Content Management System] based site.
The site comes in a package which u upload to your site and then follow the instructions to set up your MySQL database and your done. You can edit the look & feel through CSS and photoshop images, by making your own banner etc.
Joomla is also completely free!! The modules and components are also free, or may require you to sign up to a website.
I have a form builder component, image gallery , website templates and more can be found on the net like secure payment options also.

Does anyone else use Joomla for their website? Or do you find it easier to make your ow on programs like dreamweaver etc?

Thanks for any comments


Admin Note:

Please use proper English.

[Vectis]

Good tool, but not for a mostly-static website IMHO.

I've tried lots of the so-called CMS systems, site builders etc. and find them too restrictive from a creative point of view and they generally push out unnecessarily bloated code.

I always find myself going back to hand-crafting and am slowly getting my head round css, gradually migrating my sites as I learn more.

[TonyB]

In my opinion it is the best out of the CMS's. I have 17 sites set up using Joomla. It is easy to install, templates are easy to customise and there are lots of free extensions/plugins available.

It also saves ton's of time when you want to update a page - just log in, do the update and save it.

[Tony Scott]

Joomla.............never met her!

[Marc J]

Good tool, but not for a mostly-static website IMHO.

I've tried lots of the so-called CMS systems, site builders etc. and find them too restrictive from a creative point of view and they generally push out unnecessarily bloated code.

I agree, to make anything "stand out from the crowd" using Joomla requires a fair amount of PHP / HTML / CSS knowledge, which then defeats the purpose of using it for a static site. Which is probably why most Joomla sites tend to look a bit "samey" in my opinion.


In my opinion it is the best out of the CMS's. I have 17 sites set up using Joomla. It is easy to install, templates are easy to customise and there are lots of free extensions/plugins available.

It also saves ton's of time when you want to update a page - just log in, do the update and save it.

It's good, there's no denying that, but I think a CMS more suited to members here would perhaps be CMS Made Simple (http://www.cmsmadesimple.org/), which I keep hearing good things about and is on my list of things to delve into....

[thex-faders]

Thanks all, I think that Joomla was originally designed for more user participation in the website by allowing comments on news stories etc and forums as it can be edited quickly and doesn't need that much maintaining.

As TonyB said it is so simple to edit a page quickly, as you dont need to edit the content in say dreamweaver and then upload to your site etc, just edit and click save then it updates the database.

In terms of the generic look of the site, if you do have knowledge of CSS& some PHP etc and a good eye for Photoshop designing, you can create templates relatively easily. And with the introduction of simple Javascripting modules & components, like galleries for instance they can look outstanding!

I personally just preffered the simple set up and ease of use, as i found when i made my own HTML sites, i would miss a letter or something and it would throw the code completely! But that was probably down to my inexperiance!!

Thanks again for your comments