Joomla enabled web development - the way of the future

There is a consensus between those who write extensively about the internet marketing world and those who work in this arena that content management is the next big thing. And it is only going to get more and more important. The increasing number of businesses vying for online presence has made it important that firms find newer ways to make their web spaces attractive. Content management systems take care of the entire lifecycle of digital information (better known as content). The entire lifecycle would include creating, updating, publishing, translating, archiving and retiring information. The fundamental purpose of content management systems is to carry out a set of such automated processes.

Joomla is one such content management system, in fact to be precise a highly reputed open source content management system that eases the process of publishing content on the web or intranet. This free content management system is written with Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP) using a MySQL database. The name is derived from the Swahili word 'Jumla' meaning 'as a whole' or "all together" and Joomla does in fact bring together many attractive features. Joomla is useful whether one is making a simple personal home page or creating a complex web application. The best feature that Joomla boasts of, is that it is extensible, which then means that its structure is such that there is hardly anything that one cannot do on with it. A few of the important features include, page caching, RSS feeds, blogs, news flashes etc.

So what is the radical change that Joomla facilitates? To understand the change, it is important to know the system before Joomla came into existence. Prior to the introduction to Joomla, webmasters were responsible for entering all the content into the site. As the amount of work increased, the number of people responsible for this task also increased Needless to say, the resultant chaos increased proportionally. Worse than the chaos, in this kind of a system the biggest setback was posed by one contributor (and there always is one) who may not be completely aware of the systems at work. Ordinarily, software such as Frontpage or Dreamweaver is used in such situations, which obviously also has a cost implication. The contributors would obviously need to be well-versed with HTML, and that wasn't always the case. What often happened was that mistakes made by an individual impede the functioning of the entire website.

Content management systems are used primarily to make it easy for non-technical users to update the website. Automatically, with Joomla in place, a separation is created between the technical and non-technical tasks. The developer sets up a template that is meant for others to work in. Hereafter, the developer (or the owner) decides who can log in and enter content to the website. Organizing the content is without doubt, a difficult task. But the entire exercise is simplified in this way with the help of Joomla. Clearly, the best bit is that it becomes easy to use for non-technical users to add new content, or edit existing content. Also, the webmasters job becomes, at the most, looking through and approving the page.

From the perspective of a web developer person also, Joomla is a boon. Web developers often not only have to ensure the functionality of complex back-end operations but also take care of some simple non-technical tasks. Joomla takes care of these things, and saves the developer the extra effort. The Joomla template is basically just a standard HTML page. Additionally, there are a few special hooks for Joomla to know where the content elements must be output. If/when a website requires different layouts on its different pages, multiple templates can be used. The Joomla Administrator can then be used to assign templates to their corresponding option in the menu.

If advances in technology are meant to simplify processes as far as possible, Joomla is a great example. Website owners, especially smaller companies, would much rather update their own site every now and then. Smaller companies would become apprehensive at the thought of a consistent spend on updating a website. If the site is created with Joomla, the process becomes very easy. With a better awareness of its advantages, nowadays many people are looking at converting HTML websites into Joomla. But it is always advisable to start afresh with Joomla, because there may be certain aspects to a certain page, for instance interactive features, which may pose difficulty in the conversion.

With subsequent updates and releases, Joomla is adding new features. What is noteworthy is that these changes are made in tandem with the suggestions and advice of the wide user community. There are no two ways about it - this award-winning content management system is sooner than later going to become a key component for website development.