Why Joomla?

Joomla is getting more popular all the time, but why? Why are so many people turning on to the Joomla system and using it to design, develop and generally take care of their online presence. There are probably as many reasons for this as there are individual Joomla users, but I will attempt to break down the appeal of the Joomla system into a few key areas. Firstly, as an open source system Joomla is free and has a philosophy of community integration and dialogue, is this important to people? Secondly, Joomla is a flexible solution that gives people a lot of room to move, is this why they like it? Thirdly, even though extremely flexible, Joomla is also accessible to people and offers a template driven approach that is not too scary even for beginners. In this article I will talk of these issues and why they seem important to people when they choose the Joomla solution.

Every time I see open source software making it to the big time it puts a huge smile on my face. I truly think that it is great for the evolution of the planet when we can all have access to and improve on the available information that is out there; why hide it away in the arms of the rich and powerful. It would be great if all software was open source and under the public GNU license so that it could be available for all. This is one reason that Joomla is so great, the whole open source philosophy leads to a lot of community involvement and documentation. It also leads to relevant software as everyone has a say in development issues and not just a few people who may or may not be in touch with the core users. This commitment to open source software also leads to Joomla's second big selling point, flexibility.

The Joomla environment is very flexible and can be tweaked to suit the needs of every different user with ease. It has a great structure that is very object oriented with sections and categories that can be used very dynamically if you want to. This unique and intelligent structural design works with the core Joomla objects that are the components and modules to create a very interactive experience, from a developers point of view. This interaction also spills over to the front end and the reader of a Joomla page could be accessing these features in a number of different ways. This philosophy of object orientation also means that there is a general separation in Joomla between navigation or design and content, this separation makes it easier to change design features along the way. The Joomla system does not seem to lose any of it's accessibility with this flexible approach however, and is still quite easy to use for a beginner.

The third and final reason Joomla is so popular is because it can be easy if you want it to be. There are many templates out there that a user can install to make the development process so much easier. Indeed, the Joomla system is really template oriented, but because these templates can be edited and updated very easily it retains it's appeal to those who like to be in control. Another reason why Joomla retains accessibility even with all it's powerful features is because it is designed with a layered approach that doesn't require you to get any deeper than you have to.