Content is king, right? This is absolutely true for present-day web sites. Gone are the days when web sites consisted of static pages with few areas of changing content. Web portals and web communities are the order of the day wherein content is updated not just daily but a few times a day! Businesses, big and small, have realized the importance of providing up-to-date information about their products and services on their web sites. All this, however, has led to a new problem – managing and organizing this growth in content.
Typically, development and maintenance of web sites needed some basic technical knowledge. If you are going to make your web site really dynamic, you will need to constantly update multiple aspects of your site. You’ll also need to keep track of changes to the content. Even with qualified staff, you may soon find that updates are not happening regularly, there are frequently occurring bottlenecks and the performance and appearance of your site is declining.
The demands of dynamic web sites have led to the development of specialized software called content management systems (CMS), of which Joomla, a free award winning software, is one of the most popular.
Joomla is a very powerful software that allows users to develop and maintain dynamic web sites.
While non-technical users can use Joomla to manage various aspects of the site including the content very easily, more technical users can use add-ons to make the site more powerful and actually build large-scale online applications. Joomla is being used to power all kinds of web sites – simple, personal or family sites; small business web sites as well as more complex corporate intranets and extranets; community portals; magazines and newspapers; government applications and so on.
Many web hosting packages now include the Joomla software and it is very easy to install.
Initial customization of Joomla may require some help from a technical person and includes setting up the basic template. The template includes the web site design and navigation system. This template contains a few editable areas but the overall look and flow of the site remains consistent throughout the site.
All you need to start using Joomla is familiarity with browsers and some basic word processing skills. Joomla uses a simple browser-based user interface for managing various aspects of the site. Through easy-to-use web based forms, you can update image or text content, create new content sections or pages, manage your employee listings as well as contact information, regularly update your product catalog or even set it up to take sales orders. When you want to change the appearance of the entire site, all you need to do is make changes in one template file to have it reflected throughout the site.
Joomla also makes it very simple to add new powerful features to your web site with just a click of a button. You can choose from any of the hundreds of extensions available – document management which allows you to index the kinds of documents on your web site, track the changes in them and make them easily searchable; image and multimedia galleries; forums and chat software; blogging software; mailing list management; shopping cart and complete e-commerce software and many more.
Joomla is a great tool for managing dynamic web sites but also a great platform for building more powerful, scalable web applications. If you’re building a new web site or overhauling your existing site, check into CMS software. Applications like Joomla make creating and maintaining a web site much easier.