Joomla as a Web Development environment
Posted by Martin Wessel on Thu, May 27, 2010
We've looked at why a content managment system is a great choice for Web Development. But that opens the question of which content management system. After all, there are hundreds available ranging from small open source projects to monolithic commercial offerings such as Microsoft’s SharePoint. When looking at these systems a number of factors must be considered:
- Support
- Cost
- Ease of implementation
- Portability
Of these, the support for a product is key. In this case, support means not just calling customer service for help but how widespread the product is in the industry. Some measures for how popular a content management system include how many sites use the system, how many hosting companies offer the system, how many third party developers create add-ins, and how active any support forums are. When applied, these criteria quickly thin out the available options.
Once all these factors are considered, a few content management systems stand out. Of these, the Open Source content management system Joomla is a clear choice. The support is very good, with several options for paid support and a user base of almost 200,000 that actively provide peer support. It is an option available on many hosting companies and it’s underlying technologies are available on nearly every host in the world. It also enjoys an active third party development community, with almost 3000 extensions available ranging from eCommerce to social networking to podcasting. All this functionality can be added after the site is created and provides a good way to increase the functionality of a web site. Better yet, as Open Source Joomla is freely available and should an issue develop with the system a core group of programmers quickly respond and address the issue.
It seems clear that developing a Web site with a content management system has some significant advantages not just during development but over the life of the web set. As a leading content management system, Joomla has some clear advantages over others alternatives and is the content management system of choice.