Getting Joomla excited!

Posted on March 21, 2009
Filed Under Software, Websites, open source | 4 Comments

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Do you know how easy it is to get a Content Management Software (CMS) website up and running? I’ll tell you how easy it is. Recently, I decided to create a website for my family and I wanted it to be an open source CMS with good user management module, available templates and lots of plug-ins or add-ons. I also wanted to put the site together as quickly as possible with minimum coding. The reason for the website is to create an environment for sharing and staying in touch. My family members live in various parts of the world and if we are lucky, we see each other once a year. Now with the generation Y kids growing up, I thought it was time to network and get to know each other better, especially the next generation. Hence, the idea of a common website.

Joomla came to mind as a CMS platform that I can install and try out. Although Joomla wasn’t my first choice. The hosting company I am with, Bluehost, provided multiple CMS installs that I could choose from and install was easy using Simple Scripts or Fantastico Deluxe.

Within minutes, I had installed Joomla 1.5.8 using Fantastico Deluxe. Once the installation was completed, I login to the Administration site and started putting the site together.

The beauty of using Joomla CMS is its vast availability of extensions and the community developing, supporting and building the product for its user base. Joomla’s extension directory has over 3,500 extensions which you can download, install and configure for it to appear on the front-end of your website.

Here are the extensions I downloaded and installed.

1. ccBoard Forum to add a discussion forum in the CMS
2. Event List to create and display a list of birthday reminders
3. Phoca Gallery to add a photo gallery and photo management on the front-end
4. yvComment to allow users to post article comments
5. JoomlaWorks Simple Image Rotator to display rotating pictures on the website
6. ShoutBox to add interactivity by allow users to post short messages/shouts on the home page
7. JoomlaWorks AllVideos plugin to embed online streaming videos inside the content items as well as video or audio content that resides either on the server or some remote server.
8. Finally, I added the Community Builder extension which extends the website user management systems and management of users.

Key features of Community Builder : extra fields in profile, enhanced registration workflows, user lists, connection paths between users, admin defined tabs and user profiles, image upload, front-end workflow management, integration with other components, like PMS, Newsletter, Forum, Galleries.

Just by configuring the extensions and tinkering with sections and categories to appear on the front-end menus, I put together a CMS website without having to add a single line of PHP coding. The power of Joomla is in its CMS framework and its vast resource of extensions. Now Joomla has got me all excited about creating more website.

Here is a screenshot of the family website using Joomla.

Next: More on Joomla’s Community Builder extension

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Comments

4 Responses to “Getting Joomla excited!”

Getting Joomla excited! - PHP-update.co.uk on March 22nd, 2009 1:12 am

[...] Continue here: Getting Joomla excited! [...]
Erwin Lozano on March 22nd, 2009 1:07 pm

Great!This is indeed very useful for me. I have checked some of your articles in the your RSS feeds as well. I have bookmarked them.Thanks a gain!
Jayce on March 30th, 2009 1:16 pm

Compare to WordPress… Which one is better?

Jayce’s last blog post..JayceOoi.com turns 2
ash on March 31st, 2009 7:30 pm

@Jayce
My personal thought is if you want a blog then WordPress is the best software to use but if you have the intention to build a website with user management, i.e. membership, then Joomla is a good CMS platform.

You can use Joomla as a blog, there are blog extensions but personally I would stick with WordPress for blogs.