Introduction to Joomla Content Management System

April 25, 2013 / CMS PHP

History of Joomla CMS

On the origins of the WWW or World Wide Web, pages that were designed were static in nature and really simple, the language on which HTML2 rested, did not allow much to do. If you had to make any changes, you were required to edit the code for each page individually. Given this, it is possible to get an idea of the work that would modify such sixty pages.

Many developers and manufacturers identified this problem and create the 90 programming languages “server-side” such as ASP 3 or PHP4, which together with the use of databases would allow the dynamic generation of web pages. This opened the way for the development of the first content management systems or CMS (Content Management System).

Using a CMS then is sued by companies or organizations that need a high volume of publications and web content updates such as magazines, newspapers, etc. As far as the mid-90s begin to appear, the first managers of commercial content and in some cases, custom designed for each organization and that, because of cost, were only accessible by large companies or businesses.

Since 2000, with the evolution of the WWW into portals with more and more need for user interaction, the proliferation of content management becomes more noticeable and in addition to existing commercial solutions begin to appear as the first content managers of open source (Open Source) GPL5 licensed as PHP or Mambo7, Nuke6, and many others.

Well, on September 22, 2005, after a conflict of interest related to the type of license of Mambo, the first version of Joomla 1.0 was released as a re-branded release of Mambo 4.5.2.3 which included various bugs and security fixes. After then, Joomla started gaining popularity and acquired one of the best places among top CMS under GNU General Public License.

What is Joomla?

Joomla is one of the top widely used and award-winning content management systems (CMS), which enables you to build a website as well as create powerful online applications. The simplicity of use, both in the installation and management of Joomla has been one of the key factors for diffusion, especially when implementing portals for both large companies and individual users. It is an open-source solution that is available for download to anyone.

The main asset of Joomla is that it easily permits you to edit the content of a website. Joomla is an open-source application developed mostly in PHP under a GPL license. The Joomla CMS can work on work on Internet, intranet and need a MySQL database and an Apache HTTP server to function.

The management of the project Joomla is delegated to the main group (“Core Team”). All the members of this Core Team work together and are committed to leading Joomla within the open-source movement. This group is a combination of various profiles, with different experiences and a diverse array of disciplines.

The “Core Team” group was established when the rapid growth of Joomla in 2005 was experienced. The main group is more of an assembly of developers, and their main responsibility lies in the organization regarding its functional structure and not just in developing the content management system.

Today, the Joomla project is made up of several groups that are formed to enhance the knowledge that Joomla offers. Each group has its own aim and focuses on a specific aspect of Joomla, which is essential for its expansion and development. The main group cannot be involved in a discussion of these issues; hence there is an alternate leader in each of these groups who needs to communicate directly with the main group.

There is an essential communication channel provided by the working groups for the large communities of Joomla and the main group to bring all the concerns to light involved by changes and extension of information.

Joomla – Related Industry

Open Source Matters Inc. (OSM) is a non-profit organization formed under the United States and New York state law providing organizational, legal, and financial support to the Joomla! open-source project. It has been incorporated as a non-profit organization in New York in order to make sure that Joomla and its future projects persist to exist beyond the involvement of individual volunteers.

Joomla Project

For the group of Open Source solutions, Joomla is free software available for the development of multiple fronts which is using different forms of communication such as meetings via IRC, forums, mailing lists, Wikis, and blogs.

The Joomla guidelines are set with its core focus to resolve the requirements of all those who participate in one form or another in the project.

Supported Platforms

Since Joomla is based on PHP and MySQL, you can install and run it on any platform and server supporting PHP and MySQL such as Linux and Windows.

What can be done with Joomla Software?

Today, Joomla is used all over the world and is fit to build various types and sizes of websites and applications. Following are some of the real examples of what Joomla! can do.

  • Corporate Web sites or portals
  • Corporate intranets and extranets
  • Online magazines, newspapers, and publications
  • E-commerce and online reservations
  • Government applications
  • Small business Web sites
  • Non-profit and organizational Web sites
  • Community-based portals
  • School and church Web sites
  • Personal or family homepages

Type of add-ons, web developers can create with Joomla:

  • Inventory control systems
  • Data reporting tools
  • Application bridges
  • Custom product catalogs
  • Integrated e-commerce systems
  • Complex business directories
  • Reservation systems
  • Communication tools

Like many others, Joomla CMS has one more potential and that is the large number of extensions programmed and developed by its user community. This helps to increase the possibilities of Joomla with new features that can be effortlessly integrated into it. Currently, Joomla is serving 6192 extensions to their community users.

Some of the Top Rated and Popular Joomla Extensions are:

  • VirtueMart
  • Google maps Plugin
  • Akeeba Backup
  • AcyMailing Starter
  • Attachments
  • Admin Tools
  • jQuery Easy
  • Modules Anywhere
  • Tabs
  • Component Creator
  • JFBAlbum
  • Latest tweets
  • Asynchronous Google Analytics Plugin
  • Custom CSS

Types of Joomla Extensions

These extensions are further divided into five different types, which are:

  • Components
  • Modules
  • Templates
  • Plugins
  • Languages

Popular sites running on Joomla CMS:

  • MTV Networks Quizilla (Social networking)
  • IHOP (Restaurant chain)
  • Harvard University (Educational)

There were many new content management systems available in the market, however, in comparison with Drupal and Blogger, rapid growth of Joomla was seen in the trends.

As shown in the graph above, Joomla CMS is one of the most widely used content management systems as compared to Drupal and Blogger.

Similar to many other popular web applications, you can run Joomla on a LAMP stack. Today, many web hosts offer Joomla Hosting with easy-to-use control panels such as cPanel for Linux and Plesk for Windows that allow for automatic installation of Joomla script.

Joomla enjoys great support on the web from web hosting providers that specialize in or support it. There are many resources available on the Internet, which offer information on installing and maintaining Joomla sites. bodHOST blog is one of those best resources for various information about Joomla CMS.

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