Joomla is content management system software that is powerful and easy to learn. Almost no web technical skill is needed to build and manage a Joomla site. It is one of the most popular of all the content management systems. With over 3,000 extensions, an online community, and free components, modules and plug-ins, Joomla is popular with website designers. Anyone can learn Joomla, and much of the training in The Internet Business Coach. A few things are needed to build a Joomla site.
What is Joomla?
A content management system is a powerful library of all your critical content. Joomla has over 3,700 extensions on Joomla.com. This number changes daily as developers come up with new or updated components, modules and plug-ins.
There are a many components, modules and plug-ins that manage your information. Your valuable web content must be arranged in logical sections and categories and stored as articles. This requires planning before you begin to work with Joomla.
Components are powerful little machines that help you to do many wonderful things without knowing a thing about HTML coding; it is done for you in a component. The most popular component that Joomla has is Community Builder, which manages your website visitors and members.
Modules are also mini-tools but they are dedicated to locations on your site. If you want your components to show up on your site, you need a menu and a location, and modules are used to store these.
Plug-ins on a Joomla 1.5 site (once called Mambots) give the extensions power to do things like search and log in.
Expert Insight
Joomla is at the top in the content management system world. Drupal and Word Press cannot compare to the power and flexibility of Joomla. Water & Stone--The Open Source Boutique reported, "Joomla commands the highest mind share in the market." Elance reports there are 2,281 weekly requests for installation and set up of Joomla sites and over 37,762 searches per week for Joomla professionals on Google. Craig Watch and Learn is offering a book camp for Joomla students and sited that Joomla.org has well over 1,060,000 inbound links. That means over a million people on planet Earth feel so strongly about Joomla and how well it is built that they are willing to provide them with free advertising. There are 66 Joomla Facebook groups.
Learn from the experts like The Internet Business Coach before you begin your project. It will help in your building process to learn the Joomla basics before you begin to plan your site.
Plan Your Site
Planning is the essential first step to developing a Joomla website. Joomla can keep track of your valuable content, but you have to put it into the system so your web audience can access your information and have a positive experience.
Decide who your audience is and what they want to know. Be careful at this point to consider what your target audience wants from you, not what you want to give them. You might consider using a focus group to make lists of what they would want in a website.
Clarify your organization's mission and make sure it is in every element of your website planning process. If you are all about selling widgets, then provide high-quality content that will sell your widget. If you are about providing resources, then write or borrow, with permission (links), the best information you can provide to your audience.
Develop major sections that will become your menu items. Under each section, make different categories. Your sections should have categories so you can then place your articles and content in a place that is easy for your target audience to find.
The choices for the look of your Joomla website are unlimited. Templates can be found that fit right into your website, and some servers provide free templates with hosting.
After the planning is finished, enlist a server that is Joomla friendly. Many will install the latest version of Joomla and your website template choice, and you are ready to begin implementing your plan.
Powerful Extensions
Extensions make your content usable for your web audience. The secret of Joomla's power is in the ease of use, flexible platform, constant updates and over 3,100 extensions--components, modules and plug-ins.
Joomla extensions are reminiscent of the iPhone commercials, "We have an App for that." If you can dream up something for your website to do or arrange your content in some way that the audience can find it with ease, there is an extension for that. There are new extensions every day, most of them are free, and there is support to back them up.
Promote
Joomla has built-in website promotional tools and extensions to let people know when your site is up, when you have new content and how to find your site.
Every time you add an article, you can give the article meta tag information and article summaries to drive traffic. In a traditional site, you have to put this information in each page in the header in HTML coding. It is much easier to click a Joomla tab and enter the information in a box. A page title plug-in can be added to give each page a separate title instead of a jumble of letters, symbols and numbers. Joomla followers are hoping the new Joomla 1.6 will offer this automatically.
You can add an extension that makes your site more social media friendly. There are hundreds of ways to include your Facebook, MySpace and Twitter links on your Joomla site. RSS feeds are a standard plug-in for Joomla.
Set up an email marketing account separately or within your Joomla site. Let site members sign up for updates, newsletters and free stuff and keep them coming back for more from your Joomla site.