Marg Joomla

I like absolutely nothing about this product.

Where do I begin? The interface is not intuitive, the help documentation is out of date...I could go on and on.

Try Wordpress instead

Keeping a website in existence

The only thing I like is Joomla! can handle a huge database and pull content reliably.

With Joomla! being open source, its developers keep reworking it (some for good reason-security, but when they put out an update it often completely changes the user interface and it scrambles the display of components, requiring time on the users part to go back in, reorder everything, and get the web page to display "as normal." I would never choose this platform, though I have to use it as my client's web page, a huge one, is written in Joomla! Other organizations I have supported have used it, too, but many of them are now defunct. Some of the components are so complicated I cannot prepare them myself and have to turn to a paid expert to add special features to the web page.

Look for another solution. While I'm not a fan of the new scroll down multiple image with text section format, there are many platforms that can help you accomplish your communications mission that will be easier to use.

I inherited Joomla! The organization uses it for its comprehensive web page for all its programs, membership lists, program announcements and more. The only benefit I can define is having a unified place for all the information to be held.

Joomla is free and open source which is always a huge plus.

Development and management of sites has always been unnecessarily cumbersome. I don't think Joomla has been able to keep up with WordPress.

Content management for websites.

The user access levels is good, it is a pretty good system for giving rights to different groups of users. Also, the multilanguage side of Joomla is pretty easy to set up.

The documentation on Joomla is horrible. It is almost like the Joomla developpers do not want people to learn how to use the CMS. Most of the time, when you google for answers, you find old outdated solutions. The documentation is what I hate the most about Joomla. Also, I really dislike that all the content is only available through menu items. The modules system also can be a pain, once you have multilanguage.

I haven't figured out why Joomla could be preferred to other CMSs like Wordpress or Drupal.

Very few. We are really trying to get rid of all our websites using Joomla.

The joomla platform allows a web developer to do pretty much anything. It's got enough flexibility and add-ons to accommodate lots of styles. Text heavy, menu heavy, image heavy - it can handle it. You can customize everything according to your tastes. All that without much knowledge of coding beyond basic HTML 5 (although more certainly helps. It's pretty easy to create an initial (simple website if you don't have a lot of put up.

An interesting function of joomla, is that it's mostly user-run. Once you purchase the platform and a template, all support is run off user forums. So there isn't an official support line, but among the various forums it's pretty easy to get some help.

It's completely non-intuitive. If you know what you're doing and are joomla trained, it's probably an excellent platform. But trying to figure out how to do anything more than author the simple articles is really difficult to understand unless you've explicitly been trained on joomla. While the basic template is really easy to manipulate, beyond that is really difficult. For example, I was attempting to extend the maximum limit of images on a slideshow, and that simple extension took three steps - only one of which was intuitive.

Definitely find a web developer who is specifically Joomla trained. It's important to know how to use the platform well in order to receive the best return. Because it is extremely technical, flexibility is high, but it is not friendly at all. I would not recommend trying to "figure it out" because you will inevitably end up creating a link-flow or process in a way that makes it really difficult to edit later (yes - speaking from experience.

My company is a scientific research and biotech company that puts out all types of content: videos, articles, white papers, and images. Joomla's platform allows us to make the website HUGE, but relatively navigable. It definitely would be easier if the content were less linked and smaller in terms of content, but that applies to every platform, I suppose.