I am a Web Developer & I own a Web Design & SEO firm based in Melbourne, Australia. Over the last 9 years, I have developed many websites and worked with many different content management systems. I have designed and built my own content management systems and I have seen many half done open source systems come and go. So, it comes as no surprise that over the last 9 years that the calls by many clients for a more complete open source CMS solution have been answered by an open source solution. This article is about one of the best open source content management systems available, Joomla and I walk you through the potential benefits that Joomla can provide for your business.

So, what is Joomla! ?

Joomla! is an award-winning, web based, Content Management System(CMS) that provides its users with the ability to add, edit and delete content. Content is the meat of a website, everything on the site, from page titles and images to text and placement on the page. It is simple for even non-technical users to add or edit content, update images, and to manage the vital data that makes your company run. Anybody with basic word processing skills can easily learn to manage a Joomla! site. So what this means to the many non-programmers in the business World, is a freedom. The freedom to modify your website without need of hiring a html developer or web programmer just to update one image or change some text. So what is the catch? well, there really isn't one! Joomla! is open source and is released under the GPL/GNU Licence so that means its free for anyone to use as long as licenses within the code remain intact!

Currently Joomla powers millions of websites Worldwide, from the United Nations and Porsche Brazil to websites for smaller businesses with more modest design budgets. Joomla offers a versatility in how it can be used and who it can be used by. Of course for more complex jobs of modifying design and your own look and feel you might need to hire a designer, however this task is made easier because Joomla is so popular. To find qualified web designers who have used Joomla in the past, it is very easy, a simple search on one of the many freelance designer-for-hire websites on the Internet. You can even post your individual project and have designers bid on your project and you can make your selection from the bidders.

From my experience most people have no trouble understanding the basics necessary to edit content and pages and given that Joomla has such an active and growing community of more than 40,000 users and developers it is quite easy to find information online. Using the simple, browser-based interface you will be able to easily add new news items, manage staff information, job listings, product images, and create an unlimited amount of sections or content pages on your website.

From my web design experience I know that with very little configuration, Joomla! does a fantastic job of managing the web content needed to make a business website run. However for many people, the true power of Joomla! lies in its ability to be modified with components and modules. There are literally hundreds & hundreds of component addons and plugins that add to the base Joomla website system framework so that it can be molded into suiting your business processes better. For example, there are extensions to make the website an ecommerce website, to make the website a property management website or a complex download repository.

In few short words it might be worthwhile exploring Joomla for your next website as it provides you with diverse flexibility and a level of control of your content not present 5 years ago.