Open Source Projects are getting a rapid boost these days. They're encouraged a lot, mainly because of it's great advantages. In this article, I'm going to explain about one of the most famous Open Source Projects worldwide - Joomla.
What is Joomla?
Joomla is a web Content Management System written completely in PHP (Hypertext Pre-processor, one of the most used web languages.) For those readers who don't know.. Web Content Management Systems (abbreviated as CMS) are an easy way of developing websites without having to go through the complete hectic process of hand-coding the whole website. There are many CMSes out there, like Drupal, Wordpress, Joomla etc. But my top choice remains Joomla due to many reasons.
It's Origin
It was developed in August 2005, by the developers of Mambo (another web CMS out of which Joomla originated) Its developers believed that Open Source Projects were a great initiative, and they supported it greatly. They started a website that dealt with open source issues and it is said that idea of Joomla originated from that website. Till today it has been making numerous achievements, and has won many awards, too.
Features
It has many great features. First of all, it is very easy to use - its installation is fairly easy (although not as easy as some other's like Wordpress') and anyone with basic knowledge of Internet and Computers can do it - all the user needs to do is upload the files to the webserver and configure the MySQL databases. It's User Interface, at website administration is totally easy as well. The Admin can add pages, configure, upload or delete Addons (plugins, components and templates), delete pages, monitor the visitors' IPs (and even ban any), manage banners etc'. The major reason why Joomla is the most famous CMS, I believe, is because of its versatility - anyone who is familiar with PHP coding can code Joomla-compatible Components, plugins and Templates. And for those who don't know PHP coding - they can still get tons of advantages via this feature..as, there are many free components/extensions on the web. Most of them are open source, but there are few which are sharewares. Either way, it is still the major reason for it's grand success. There are extensions for almost anything that we can imagine on web.
Hosting Issues
Joomla doesn't consume much of the Server CPU's resources, but as a matter of fact, it still is critcised by some as sometimes, if the databases are too big, its speed can slow down drastically, and the php code's Just-In-Time compilation (of the php code) can get slow. But it usually works fine with average Server specifications'. And there are many web-hostings (free as well as paid) that offer pre-installation of Joomla (even cPanels like VistaPanel also have it in their "script installation" feature.
Websites Developed with Joomla
http://www.joomla.org (The Official Joomla site (also uses Joomla, of course)
http://www.porsche.com.br (A truly awesome example of how we can use Joomla to the best)
http://www.aghnation.com/ (A great combination of the worlds of Multimedia and Joomla)
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