You might have heard some things about Joomla and what it is. Let me assure you Joomla is a lot more than what you ever thought was possible. Joomla allows you the end user to add, edit and delete content within your own website. You can modify text in a WYSIWYG editor. Move and change images on the page. Create menu items and add search optimised content to the pages. Joomla will also allow you to plugin almost any addon imagineable - which can transform your Joomla website from a basic run of the mill website to a professional photo gallery, blog, video library, ecommerce website and these are just to name a few addons.

So, what is Joomla! ?

Joomla is an award winning, web based, Content Management System(CMS) that gives website administrators the power to control their website by adding, editing and deleting content. The content of a website is best described as the "meat of the website", which is everything contained within the web site - on page copy and images. Joomla also allows you to move content around on the page and turn off showing content as you wish. I have found when introducing this system to non-technical users that they find it easy to add or edit content, update images and to manage the whole website within a couple of hours tutorial. I have found that anyone with simple word processing skill will have no issue in learning how to manage a Joomla web site.

From a business perspective what does this mean to the average business owner? Well, I setting up a Joomla website you can probably anticipate that being provided with the ability to manage content on the website is going to cost more to setup than setting up a simple static website. So it only stands to prove that you need to be prepared to see the benefits in being given this extra functionality. Understanding what impact this will have on your business is important and also analysing the cost to benefit of this functionality.

Simply put, what having a CMS website means is that the administrator or business owner then has much more freedom to make immediate changes to their website without need for a programmer or webmaster. The freedom to make changes to your website without the need to hire web site developer or web programmer normally needed to make changes for you.

Joomla also has the added benefit of being open source so it free for everyone to use so long as the GNU/GPL license is maintained - which is not an issue at all.

At this point in time Joomla drives many thousands of web sites around the World, like the United Nations website and the Porsche Brazil website to much smaller websites for personal users or SME businesses. One of the biggest advantages of Joomla is that it offers versatility in how it can be used. As I have already mentioned Joomla can be used with many combinations of plugins to turn it from a basic website into a complex membership system with forums and blogs and photo galleries. There are of course often needs for more complex websites and hiring a web designer and a web programmer to make sure the job is done properly, looks professional and is completed is often the wisest of choices. In order to locate Joomla qualified web designers is made much easier because Joomla has the largest following of all Web based Content Management Systems. A simple search online will locate many freelance and contractor for hire websites where potential designer and programmer candidates bid on your project in order to win your business - like ebay but for contract jobs.

So, why not consider using Joomla for your next business website? - it may just give you the edge and control that you are looking for!