Quite often when clients from existing small businesses come to us for a website a lot of the reason behind it is they want something that looks professional and does a good job at reflecting their business.
For recent client Chic Sister this was certainly the case. Their old website wasn’t exactly reflecting the ‘Chic’ image they were trying to portray.
This is video 4 of 6 in the series ‘The Website Starter Guide’ where I talk about each chapter of the website starter guide ebook. In the video below, I talk about chapter 4 which is all about Content Management Systems (CMS). The video covers the basics of what a CMS is, why you need one, commercial vs open source and some open source options (WordPress and Joomla!). Enjoy and feel free to comment and / or share.
Joomla! is a content management system (CMS) that gives website owners the control to self-manage the content on their websites via an administrative backend. In fact it is the world’s leading CMS powering over 2.5% of the entire web!
Joomla! is used by website owners ranging from micro businesses through to large corporations and because of it’s wide application and its ability to be extended to such an extent, it’s a bit more complex than a simple small business CMS.
The Joomla! team have written comprehensive documentation that will help you explore the specifics of each part of the system but there is a lot to know and before you delve into it we’ve written this outline to give you the basics.
You can also find out more at the main Joomla! site and the Joomla! 1.6 site.
Note if you are specifically interested in the features of Joomla! 1.6 – please view this post which includes an outline that covers the major advancements in the new version.
5 years ago when I started my web design company Web Circle, I got very excited about what content management systems could offer. For my first project I tried to build my own, learning the ASP programming language and building a simple one from scratch. After that one I figured there must be a better way so I started researching open source content management systems.
Back then clients were not asking for self-managed websites and most didn’t know what a CMS was. I researched around 20 different systems and after doing a lot of testing I settled on Joomla! which had just broken away from another CMS called Mambo Server.
Almost 5 years on and Joomla! is now the most popular open source content management system in the world, powering over 2.5% of the entire web! Yesterday they released the long awaited and very much anticipated new version – Joomla! 1.6. We have implemented it internally and will be using it for all new websites built under our ‘CMS Premium’ website package from now on.
Here we have provided a quick outline on the most significant changes in Joomla! 1.6, I hope you find it useful. If you have any questions about Joomla 1.6 please feel free to make contact with us or post a comment on here.
You can also find out more at the main Joomla! site and the Joomla! 1.6 site.
Note if you are new to Joomla! we have created an outline especially for beginners to give them the information they need before logging in to administer their sites. Please view this post to download that outline.
Web Circle Client www.babystitch.com.au was recently mentioned on Joomlahosting.com in their post “10 Brilliant websites using Joomla and Virtuemart“). The post praises the website design and the use of the cart and larger product icons.
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