In today’s world where time is money, the websites need to be built quickly. The first thing that strikes the mind as soon as we think of designing a website is the Content Management System. To accomplish this developers are turning towards open source CMS. With thousands of CMS available on the web the task of finding the right one is somewhat ordeal.

What is CMS?

Content Management System (CMS) is a web application that is used to manage the content of a website. The content can be text, music, photos, videos or anything you can imagine. The major advantage of CMS is no technical expertise or knowledge is required for managing the site.

What is Joomla?

When it comes to Content Management System design joomla has become a trendsetter. Joomla is an open source CMS written in PHP with MySQL as default database and uses OOPs (Object Oriented Programming) concept. It has won many awards since its inception and is one of the fastest growing open source CMS.

Joomla enable you to develop a wide range of websites, ranging from simple to complex. Further it is a great platform for the creation of web portals and corporate applications. It can be used to manage each and every aspect of your website, be it adding content, updating product catalogue, online reservations or processing credit card payments. It lets you keep track of each and every piece of content on your website. Joomla has a huge community of friendly Joomla Developers, contributors and users across the world. The incredible features and vast amount of extensions makes it a cult.

Features of Joomla:

• Language manager, allows both users and administrator to translate the site in any language
• The multi-user and multi-environment that joomla offers, allows different authors to easily upload their content anytime instead of waiting for programmers or designers.
• It is easy to give multiple user authentications using joomla enabling number of people log on to the site simultaneously with the individual permissions granted.
• Integrated help system
• Flexible, ideal for blogs, portals, news sites, portals, e-commerce sites & more
• SEO friendly
• Weblink management
• Absolutely Database driven site engines
• Products, News and Services easily manageable
• Create, publish, edit and reorder articles with just a click
• Syndication, RSS, News feed Manager
• Dynamic Forums/polls/voting for on the spot results
• Customizable layouts and templates
• Banner manager
• Rash manager for your website
• Archive manager for easy storage of old articles & stories
• Email, print option for every article or story
• Built-in WSIWYG content editor
• SEF (Search Engine Friendly) URL’s

With these and many more features you will be amazed by the wonders that this CMS can do for your business or personal website. Joomla is not just a robust CMS but the real power of Joomla Development lies in its extensibility. I personally prefer joomla and would recommend it to anyone willing to extend their websites functionality, make it more interactive and user friendly.

Open source content management system Joomla (www.joomla.org) announced on Tuesday that it has reached more than 25 million downloads.

Recently, Joomla 1.7 was released to simplify the CMS installation process and improve the development lifecycle. The WHIR talked to Ryan Ozimek, president of Open Source Matters, the non-profit that supports Joomla through organizational, legal and financial support about the update.

Several web hosting providers offer Joomla-specific packages and Joomla expertise to clients. HostGator, for example, offers three different levels of Joomla plans starting around $7 per month. With an international user base, Joomla and other open source CMS can provide an opportunity to web hosts looking to expand their offerings.

Joomla has been used for the backend management for websites including Citibank, eBay, GE, Ikea and McDonald’s.

According to the press release, Joomla has more than 225,000 registered developers at the joomlacode.or site, and about 3,000 individuals who have contributed directly to the development of the core codebase.

Joomla says these numbers do not represent the “massive international” Joomla communities.

“What makes Joomla unique is that it has attracted a community of hundreds of thousands of developers over a relatively small amount of time, many of whom make a good living off the project,” Ozimek said in a statement.  “Being able to contribute to so many people’s livelihoods around the world and seeing the project grow despite the economic downturn is not only rewarding — it is a testament to the community and the product that community has built.”

First made available in 2005, Joomla only started tracking the number of CMS downloads in 2007, so the number could be much higher, according to the press release.

“Joomla has created a brand new industry for our employees to not only make a living, but be passionate about building a community,” TJ Baker of Joomlashack, a provider of free and commercial Joomla templates and extensions, said in a statement. “Joomla is the reason we were able to start our own business and there are thousands more development firms who share this same history with Joomla.”

According to the press release, 2.7 percent of the web runs Joomla.

Source: http://www.thewhir.com/web-hosting-news/091411_Open_Source_CMS_Joomla_Hits_25_Million_Downloads