Advantages of Joomla! Websites.

We have had an "on-again" "off-again" relationship with Joomla for the past 5 years. We tried it back when it was Mambo. Then after Joomla emerged we tried its content management system. It was slow, buggy and easily hacked. We decided to wait until it was ready for prime time.

Interestingly, it was always the requests of clients that got us to look at it again. Once I told a client that building sites in Joomla! is like playing the piano while wearing leather gloves. It's harder to get a good feel for what's underneath.

That's a PHP programmer's bias because most like to isolate problem causing code and that's harder to do in Joomla! Joomla! uses a MVC architecture that is as sophisticated as any out there. And the fact that it is written in PHP makes it accessible, once one is past the learning curve for how it likes to assimilate and access the different components, plug-ins and modules that make a site work.

The people for whom Joomla! is great fit are those who publish large amounts of information that needs to be categorized for ease of retrieval.

If you are building a website for articles on better nutrition or baseball players then Joomla can save you many hours and dollars through its ability to easily retrieve and present the information.

Joomla is NOT a good fit for beginners. Just setting up a simple menu link will seem alien to those with experience in static HTML pages.

The nomenclature can also be misleading. For example, the "Front Page" may or may not be what people see when they come to your site. it's up to you.

Joomla! is so flexible that sometimes that overly complicates getting comfortable with it.

Joomla! boasts "Search Engine Friendly" links. They can be. They can also be a source of perpetual misery, depending upon how deeply nested your categories are.

If you are committed to having a Joomla! site we recommend the following:

1). Budget at least $200.00/month for general site maintenance. Joomla updates, table repairs new module installations, not to mention site backups can easily consume 3 to 5 hours. You will generally find it cheaper to hire a Joomla pro than to train an employee to keep things up.

2). Hire someone to custom write components and modules for you when the "off the shelf" stuff doesn't work as you want it to. Joomla! has matured to the point that you can probably find relatively inexpensive extent ions that will do most of what you want, but you should not settle for something cheaper if the work it needs to do is critical to your success. You already saved a bundle on the FREE Joomla! code. Spend some savings on making sure things work properly.

One word of caution: TEST ALL NEW SOFTWARE LOCALLY before you deploy it on your live site. Even then, the subtle differences you may encounter in a shared hosting environment can mean that the component that worked on your testing server will not work without adjustment on a shared hosting setup.

Joomla! Strengths

Joomla! has many strengths. The MVC (model-view-controller) structure that it uses is fast and well designed. It's not pure object oriented programming, but it's a good start.

The modularity of Joomla! means that you can try new pieces and if they don't work out you can DISABLE them with the click of a button.

You won't have to re-build your site because something didn't work out. Usually. Be careful of poorly written code that deletes tables or throws off un-trapped errors. You can usually read reviews of extensions before you try them.

Fortunately, that's where Joomla!'s next strength comes in. The community that supports this product is huge. For the most part they are amiable and willing to discuss your struggles. Sign up for the forum at http://www.joomla.org/

Joomla!'s flexibility is also its greatest weakness. People expect to drop in a module or plug-in and have it "auto-magically" work with everything else they are also calling for on a page. At times an extension's failure to satisfy is being caused by something that has "first-rights" on a piece of page real estate or the development of a URL. Search engine friendly link makers are notorious for causing problems for other extensions that work properly on their own.

Joomla! Problems

Here is a quick list of regular maintenance items that you should expect to address to keep your Joomla! site working well.

1). Upgrades - Joomla! went from versions 1.5.9 to 1.5.20 in the past 10 months. Those upgrades were mostly for security reasons. Some were caused by other upgrades such as Apache servers or PHP issuing new code. Ignoring them is asking for trouble.

2). Component, Plug-in and Module changes. Problems occur in new code. They don't usually surface until the code has to play well with others. If what you want is a static site that you can set up and forget then build it in PHP directly and expect to pay for a custom site.

3). Clean the cache. Nothing clears up problems like cleaning the cache. You could turn it off, but then your site performance would suffer. Likewise, tables can get corrupted due to day activity by your Internet Service Provider(ISP). Therefore, you also need perform general table maintenance and do daily back-ups of the databases and/or the entire site.

4). Editors and Authors - The content management possibilities in Joomla are very flexible. However, allowing every author to pop in their favorite bit of javascript or worse, PHP code, invites the law of unintended consequences to be a part of your site. Little things like hard coding a path to an article, image or menu can cause errors later when something moves and leaves no forwarding address.

5). Social Networking Joomla! has the ability to host a large social networking community. However, those kinds of sites don't exist for long without constant monitoring of member problems, requests and enhancements. Before you open up a full blown community, try a blog with comments and see how that works out.

Joomla! Consultants?

There is no such thing as a "Joomla Certification." So be wary of anyone suggesting otherwise. If there were one, the consultant would need to demonstrate a good working knowledge of PHP, JavaScript, HTML, MVC and MySQL. Not a bad alphabet soup for an Open Source product.

If you are thinking about hiring someone to build or maintain your Joomla! site, here are some critical questions that they should not hesitate to answer.

1). What are the components, plug-ins and modules that you plan to use to build our site? Specifically, which editor do you recommend and why?

2). Do you plan to host this on a shared server, Virtual Server or private server?

3). Do we need SSL (Secure Socket Layer) for registration and/or our shopping cart?

4). Why kind of back-up system do you plan to use for the site and the databases?

5). Can you recommend an organizational structure of sections and categories based upon the type of data we plan to present?

6). Can we do nested categories using products like K2?

7). If we want to use videos/audio presentations how should we incorporate them into the sight?

8). When would Joomla! NOT be a good fit for us?

9). If we want search-engine-friendly links, what problems have you seen in using them?

10). What books or tutorials can you recommend so that we can become proficient Joomla! users?

What should a Joomla! site cost?

This is a trick question. If your site is so small that you only anticipate 6 pages, a little content management or a blog and an email contact form, then Joomla! is probably overkill for your needs. Generally speaking the $1,500.00 starting price for most Joomla! sites would discourage a casual user.

But, if your business needs also include a blog, a shopping cart, advanced and extended editing of articles or the the introduction of video material, expect the price tag to shoot to over $4,000 rather quickly.

Most Joomla! developers charge around $65.00 to $100.00 per hour. That's for working with components that are already proven.

If you need someone to write a custom component or module, it can easily take 40 hours to write and debug just one.

Joomla! sites can be changed dramatically in appearance just by changing the theme assigned to the site.

Joomla! comes with several free themes and there are plenty decent themes to be found for little or no cost.

However, Joomla! theme developers have raised the concept of a Joomla! site to new levels by introducing thematic management tools. These allow for precision in changing headers, fonts, module placement, colors and functionality.

Some incorporate additional database functionality such as nested categories.

A good example of cutting edge themes can be seen at Rocket Themes. The Alabama-Organics.com site was developed using Rocket Theme's Affinity Theme.

Of course, considerable additions were made to the basic structure.

In determining what a Joomla! site should cost, you should satisfy the question "What is the website's job?"

If the job is to get someone to consummate the sale of a product, then guiding a buyer along the path that they expect to follow is critical. Too much eye candy or reasons to leave the site to satisfy buying objections will result in lost sales.

If the job is to get the client to call you, then building opportunities for two-way and even four-way communication should be your focus.

Ultimately, the job requirements, aesthetics and functionality required will determine the costs. Rarely, will you find a better value than the integration afforded in a Joomla! site.

Contact us for yours now.