UPDATE: Here are links to several other Joomla!-based sites the Frog created: King Kitchen, a great family-style place, and the King Antique Mall, both are located in King, North Carolina. I also took all of the images for both of these sites
After working only on static sites, I recently, I created my first, and second commercial “Joomla!”-based web sites. I am happy to confirm that the content management system (CMS) has very much proven to be a system that is highly workable for a small business, as well as being rather fun to work with. I could not be more pleased with the results: the clients noticed an almost immediate increase in unique visitors after we published the sites. Even better, it’s true that a person with basic word-processing skills can perform most every update on the site, from pages, to adding images and links.
It was no accident that I chose “Joomla!”. A few years ago, I heard about this new type of web site building system called a “content management system” or CMS, during course-work on the Linux operating system and interaction with Linux User Groups. Further, it was said that it enabled a non-programmer to easily perform web site updates in a WYSIWYG-style interface. I realized it had the potential to address the needs of many small businesses. As I tend to do, I embarked on a thorough investigation of several of the more mature of these products. And I didn’t stop at online research; I also went right to the source and spoke to a number of developers that work with this type of system every day. “Joomla!” soon leapt ahead as a clear contender.
Unlike many other open-source products of the genre, the Joomla project is very mature. By this, I mean that there are literally thousands of well-written quality add-ons, known as extensions, available for it. These extensions serve to extend Joomla’s base functionality. An example is a product I recently installed and configured that enables a completed form to be e-mailed. Not only that, you can resolve most problems by contacting any one of thousands of developers via the forums at the main Joomla site or any number of other companies.
As you might guess, Joomla! remained as the top two or three contender for a number of reasons. For one, it was paramount that I be able to build sites that offered a high degree of usability and accessibility support, as well as plenty of built-in SEO support. Any which way you turn, Joomla excels at that. What’s more, Joomla offers a high degree of built-in support for search engine bots.
Hence, I became convinced that this turn-key style system would be an excellent solution for the small business that needs content on their site to be updated frequently, and didn’t want to either wait for or pay a professional to get these small tasks done in a timely manner.
As I mentioned, Joomla! is designed out-of-the-box to be search-engine friendly (SEF). In fact, each page on a site has a built-in place for entry of keywords which is easily accessible through the standard WYSIWYG interface. There is a wealth of firms offering great templates to use as a base for a quick turn-around.
Here are links to the two sites I created:
