Posted: Thu, October 23, 2008
Content Management for your website with Joomla!
By Miles Cook
Since the beginning of the web, businesses have relied on their web development companies to
manage their site updates. In recent years, bespoke and off the shelf Content Management Systems
for websites have empowered businesses to run their own site. This has provided the following
benefits:
- Reduced maintenance costs - no longer needing to pay the web developer for content
updates,
- Quicker updates - rather than waiting around for your supplier, your latest news article or
promotion is on your site as soon as it's written,
- Better search engine ranking - CMSs tend to be more Search Engine Friendly, with
features such as URL rewriting to match your article titles,
- Better accessibility - CMSs can ensure your website adheres to government legislation
regarding accessibility of websites,
- Increased functionality - add-on modules allow your site to have calendar booking
systems, forums, E-Commerce and many more.
Open Source alternatives
Content management solutions for websites have been expensive bespoke add-ons for your site, and
commercial off the shelf products. However recently, Open Source CMSs have been emerging with
functionality and ease of use comfortably competing with commercial products. Such systems as
Joomla, Wordpress and Drupal, have accumulated thousands of development hours between their
respective project communities, combining the benefits of Open Source software with the power of
CMSs. Add-on modules extend functionality even further.
Where your web developer fits in
A CMS driven website is rather like your office computer network along with office software,
networking and network services. In most cases this is best left to IT companies to set up and
support when required, but after this initial expertise, you can use these tools with a small amount
of IT proficiency. Easy to use Content Management Systems for websites take this idea to the web
- after all you don't need an IT company to write your own emails and letters, and likewise your
own website should not be out of your own control.
Joomla Content Management Interface
This is not to say us web developers are becoming redundant. Our expertise is still required to
implement your CMS, apply a graphics template with your branding, apply your search engine
strategy, support your CMS with software updates etc, just like your IT office solution companies.
Company websites have long ceased to be a 'gimmick' they are now an integral part of many
businesses, and we are moving in to an age whereby control of your own content should rightly be
passed to you.
Sample Joomla Site
Joomla!
So how does a CMS work? Let's take Joomla - a very popular Open Source CMS - for example.
The system comprises largely of software to generate pages on-the-fly using your website graphical
template, and content taken from a database. No pages as files are stored, only 'articles' in your
database, and Joomla displays these articles however you dictate according to virtual page
structures.
For instance, you may have your front page displaying the last 5 articles displayed in
order of publishing, several news articles linked by headline, the first few lines of featured articles
with a 'read more' link etc. Subsequent pages may have one article per page, with the news
headlines displayed on every page at the top. Not only articles, but also your menu structure is
dynamic, so you can add new sections. The customisation possible is limitless.
Extending functionality
As Joomla is open source, this encourages many high quality plugins such as the E-Commerce
plugin Virtuemart. This fits within the Joomla system and allows the web administrator to add and
updates products through an additional interface in the Joomla administrator system.
Sample E-Commerce site with Joomla and Virtuemart
For almost any application you can imagine, there will be a Joomla module to bolt on, such as site
translation mirroring, to calendar and booking systems. These modules, as well as Joomla itself,
can be configured to display in a massive variety of ways.
You can of course integrate your own existing bespoke applications into wrappers within the
Joomla framework, or better still have you developer modify your existing system to be a fully
compatible Joomla module itself.
About the author
Miles Cook is the Managing Director of CookieOnline Ltd, which started out in 2005 as a web development and IT solutions company. Their experience with business customers has led us to offer services such as website software development, Content Management Systems, search engine strategies etc. in an effort to cover all a business's on-line needs.
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