What's a content management system (CMS)?

A content management system is software that keeps track of every piece of content on your Web site, much like your local public library keeps track of books and stores them. Content can be simple text, photos, music, video, documents, or just about anything you can think of. A major advantage of using a CMS is that it requires almost no technical skill or knowledge to manage. Since the CMS manages all your content, you don't need all that skill.

The traditional method of maintaining a website is that a consultant is keeping track of all files that the site consists of. When a change need to be made, the consultant had to be contacted. You have to describe to him what is to be changed or added. He is then doing the job with all the complicated programs. Then you have to check that the changes are correct. If not, he has to correct the contents and so on. This consumes a lot of effort and money. With CMS all this a child's game really.

What are some real world examples of what Joomla! can do?

Joomla is used all over the world to power Web sites of all shapes and sizes. For example:

• Corporate Web sites or portals
• Corporate intranets and extranets
• Online magazines, newspapers, and publications
• E-commerce and online reservations
• Government applications
• Small business Web sites
• Non-profit and organizational Web sites
• Community-based portals
• School and church Web sites
• Personal or family homepages

Joomla! is designed for both technical and non-technical people alike. It is used by technical people like us to build and develop a full Content Management System so that non-technical people are then able to add, edit, delete and update web pages independently with the same ease as amending a Microsoft Word document. Joomla! holds many powerful features, but probably the most powerful feature of all is the ability to update a website without the need of external web developers making it cost effective to anyone in business.

In its simplistic form there are two parts to any Content Management System like Joomla!. Firstly you have the front-end and secondly the back-end. The front-end is your website that is available to anyone on the World Wide Web where content can be viewed, downloaded, printed, emailed, purchased or converted into PDF format. The site can have many additional features installed for further enhancement like secure client areas, dynamic content feeds and much more; but in essence the site is developed using the latest Web Standards and is compatible with most web browsers.