Joomla! - Open Source CMS for Business
January 23, 2015
Joomla! - Open Source CMS for Business
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Software Version
1.x, 2.x, 3.x
Modules Used
- Site
- Users
- Menus
- Content
- Extensions
Overall Satisfaction with Joomla!
Joomla is currently the content management solution for our website. Joomla provides for a user account based front and back end as well as a public website presence. We have also implemented customer contact forms within our Joomla site for reviews, quote requests and more. The entire organization provides content for our Joomla site. Sales and Marketing are the largest users and responsible for the majority of the content.
- User management, the creation of custom groups of users, various security levels, and the ability to separate back end from front end users. For example you could grant a customer access to a particular front end page that has content dedicated to them only with a username and password, yet keep them from other customers files on the back end of the system.
- Numerous free extensions, Joomla provides a solid foundation for whatever kind of site you would like to build and offers a range of not only free templates but free functions such as photo galleries, contact forms, shopping cart functions.
- Joomla! extension development and customization for plugins and modules. With knowledge of MySQL and PHP a skilled developer, or in many cases, even novice users can create their own extensions. For example, we created a custom FTP front end to share files with users.
- Joomla! is open source and therefore does not provide immediate support for the product. If a problem occurs during setup or operation the best way to solve a problem is report it to the Joomla! community support, but a quick fix to your problem is not guaranteed.
- Joomla!'s data is held (typically) in a MySQL database that the user will never see. When a Joomla! site becomes very large with an extensive number of users and/or information it can become sluggish, but this can be mitigated with some basic database management skills, specifically someone who can create new indexes, procedures or someone who knows the data well enough to archive at a certain point.
- Content Management Solutions, such as Joomla!, continuously update and change with the market requirements and security requirements of the online community. I would like to see a standardized backup and restore process implemented so that if a user does upgrade there system it is easily reverted and or changes are tracked more thoroughly.
- A down stream effect of our Joomla! website's contact form has been improved customer service and response time. Our previous site did not have a contact page and there for the only way to reach our team was through a direct email to a sales person or by calling the headquarters.
- We also sell products on the Amazon marketplace and by referencing the products being sold on our Joomla website we were able to drive consumer traffic to purchase there, for small quantity orders.
- Saving Money! Because Joomla is open source and fairly quick to setup we were able to save a great deal of cost over other solutions. Joomla also runs well on open source serves such as Ubuntu or another flavor of Linux with MySQL.
- WordPress,Drupal,GoDaddy Website Builder
Joomla! is great for large data applications such as sites that hold a large number of products. WordPress and Drupal have very clean and fluid front ends; however that lack the data driven power needed for online retailers. Joomla! sites can be made with responsive layouts and controls like WordPress and Drupal, but are not as simple to setup as Drupal and WordPress. WordPress setup is "So easy a caveman can do it." Joomla! requires a bit more, but your ROI will be greater.
In the end it really boils down to what you want to do with your website. If it is more of a billboard with limited functionality I would say use WordPress or Drupal, but if you need some real functionality and tools, more of a web-system, then I would hands down recommend Joomla!.
In the end it really boils down to what you want to do with your website. If it is more of a billboard with limited functionality I would say use WordPress or Drupal, but if you need some real functionality and tools, more of a web-system, then I would hands down recommend Joomla!.