Hello, I feel as this is my first blog that I had best introduce myself, I am Alan Foley, developer at Close to Water for the past 7 months.
Originally from Glasgow having moved to London in 1998. Prior to starting here, I was contracting in the Greater London area, In a wide variety of web development roles. Everything from PhP & Coldfusion to a little .Net, I have worked primarily with Financial Institutions(no names), Utilities (Gas, Electricity and Water) and in the Events & Exhibition industry.
I joined Close to Water primarily due to Ian’s attitude; he wanted someone and came across, after a quick interview, very driven and convincing regarding Close to Water and its mission statement.
Since starting I have been introduced to the deceptively subtle and impressive CMS that is Joomla. This is not the only string to our bow of course (WordPress, Netsuite, Expression Engine and Levee (our hombrewed Codeigniter variant)) but for the subject of this blog, we’re looking at Joomla.
Prior to working at Close to Water, I had heard of Joomla via the web development contracting community, and unusually within such a ‘focused, independently minded and vocal’ community, as you can imagine, and I had never heard of any significant criticisms of Joomla. This alone made it unusual.
So I started using with no strong preconceptions, and I must say, over the past 7 months, it has impressed.
What’s it got going for it then?
Well it’s got a much more adaptable and customisable admin system compared to wordpress.
Support, no CMS has got as much community support as Joomla, period. It can be a little intimidating if you’re from one of the quieter CMS systems, the overwhelming volume of posts does seem hard to wade through at first, but as you get your feet, you quickly work out the good sites/plugins and you’re off.
It also supports multiple users editing content, perfect for your larger systems where people have whole teams of administrators controlling the content and keeping the site vibrant.
Version 1.5 is as stable as a house brick lying on the floor, you will rarely encounter software this reliable, this useable and logically structured.
And against it?
It does require some php knowledge for any significant functional changes, so it’s certainly not for the casual user.
If your website does not require any functionality (carts, secure pass worded areas) then it’s not the best choice, use wordpress.
The learning curve, again, not for a non-technical user, you would build a simple site with the basic packages, but you would spend hours on the web reading and learning how to use it, but, at least you could do that, unlike a few of its competitors.
1.6 already unsupported (1.7 is here) and can be regarded as flaky until you patch it.
Overall, it is able to build any site, but only realistically suitable for sites that require a decent CMS and have someone to administer it, I certainly believe it’s for the small business upwards, and really starts to shine for the bigger sites.
Another thing to keep in mind about my blog entry today, This is not an advert for Joomla, because it’s free :p
And I am going to finish with a joke, when asked for a new password with a minimum of 8 characters, the client replied, “snow white and the seven dwarfs” – (I never said it would be a funny joke).
