Joomla is an open source Content Management System used to publish content throughout the web. It uses the PHP programming language with the MySQL database being used as a default option. The entire Joomla package is designed to be constructed using standardized units.
This improves the flexibility and variance with regards to created extensions and additional integrations. This is useful as a response to the rapidly evolving environment on the world wide web. For example, extensions can be incorporated in Joomla to create new functionality. The emergence of Wikipedia has given rise to a WikiBot feature. Joomla articles can be imbedded with tags that link directly to the appropriate article in Wikipedia. Some of the more useful extensions include: blogging software, newsletter emails, shopping cart engines, calendars, and forum software. There are plenty of communities that offer extensions and templates. This helps as you can browse through the different modules made available to find one that is suited for your needs. Joomla is used to construct a variety of web sites. It can be used to create web sites related to business, such as online commerce. It can also be used for personal web sites. Non-technical users should be able to install the software easily. Basic functions such as adding or editing content can be very simple to implement. Basic word processing skills are generally enough to handle those functions. Although it does not require programming skills, Joomla can be difficult to use. Using the many features available to the system requires some time to learn and understand. Although Joomla is an open source CMS suite, and thus free, the functionality is somewhat limited. Most of the functional components that are essential to a CMS suite are included in commercial version, which negates one of its biggest advantages. Joomla can handle complex page layouts just fine. Content can be placed in whatever place you wish, helping in the layout development process. However, it is difficult to manage the HTML code that is generated. There are plenty of server calls which cause slow load times. Another minus is with regards to search engine functionality. The next version aims to improve on those two aspects. Joomla is best used when the web site that is being constructed needs additional features such as the ones that are provided by the different extensions available. If a simple web site is all that is needed, a more basic application such as CMS made simple should suffice.