Inspirion Joomla Template

A content management system is software that allows you to make changes easily to your own website. They keep track of all of the content on your website such as simple text, photos, music, video, documents and more. A major advantage of using a CMS is that it requires almost no technical skill or knowledge to manage. With the CMS managing all your content, you can concentrate on adding new content to keep your site fresh.

A CMS may also allow multiple users to update the site with different levels of permissions so the site’s main administrator can stay in control of all content posted. Content Management Systems vary greatly. Some allow you to do simple updates, others are feature-rich supporting site memberships, forums, blogs, banner ads, photo galleries and shopping carts. This has made complex sites that used to be hugely expensive affordable for the smallest of businesses. A good CMS provides a lot of value to users at surprisingly low costs.

There are hundreds of different CMS applications offered by online companies, some are reliable and well supported while others are plagued with bugs and may be out of business before you know it. XBM has chosen two that we work with regularly and which offer the functions our clients need. They are WordPress, for smaller sites, and Joomla for larger or feature-heavy sites. Both are proven, open source systems with hundreds of thousands of users and a large support community. Neither one is going anywhere for a long, long time.

Selecting the right CMS for your website is an important decision. Feel free to call or email us if you’d like to discuss what solution is right for you without any high-pressure sales pitch. This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

The Differences of WordPress and Joomla

Here’s a short description of these two great systems. The one you choose depends on what you intend your website to do. If you need a large, feature-rich website, then Joomla is perfect for you, but if you intend to blog or have a small website with fewer features, use Wordpress as your CMS.

What is WordPress

WordPress is a state-of-the-art publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. WordPress began as a platform for blogging but has now evolved into a robust CMS with over 1,400 plugins available to extend its basic features. WordPress was created for the community and is an Open Source project that uses PHP and MySQL technology and is ideal for both beginners, being intuitive and easy to use, and for experienced bloggers and site administrators.

How can I be sure there will be WordPress! support in the future?

WordPress is one of the most popular open source CMS’s currently available. WP has over 200,000 users and an ever-growing support network. It’s hugely popular and will be around for a very long time.

WordPress is basically a very user friendly blog system but it can be used as a simple website which you can update without any knowledge of html (the same goes for Joomla but with a steeper  learning curve). You can create pages and posts, and with plugins, you can add a lot of functionality to your site.

It is setup very quickly and you can be listed in Google within 2 days. Anybody can learn enough in 2 hours to create content with WordPress right away, including using categories and sub pages. But it is not as flexible as Joomla. Changing the navigation structure or look of your design requires knowledge of the WP scripting language and CSS. 

What is Joomla?

Joomla is an award-winning content management system (CMS), which enables you to build Web sites and powerful online applications. Joomla is stable, fast, powerful, generates clean html code and has extensive capabilities relating to databases. It does not require any knowledge about html, php, etc to use, but the “back-end” for maintaining and editing the site has a steep learning curve.

Joomla’s core functionality and its extensibility, have made Joomla the most popular Web site software available. Best of all, Joomla is an open source solution that is freely available to everyone. Joomla is used all over the world to power Web sites of all shapes and sizes. With over 3,000 extensions available to extend its basic features you’re sure to be able to find one to suit your needs.

How can I be sure there will be Joomla! support in the future?

Joomla is the most popular open source CMS currently available as evidenced by a vibrant and growing community of friendly users and talented developers. Joomla's roots go back to 2000 and, with over 200,000 community users and contributors, the future looks bright for the award-winning Joomla Project.

If you want to create a large site with features such as a membership area, newsroom, forums, articles, comments, input from external authors etc… then Joomla is a good choice. Joomla has a very powerful “back-end” administration area where you can control your site globally or on a page by page or article by article basis. If you are new to CMSs you will want to get a good book on such as “Beginning Joomla” from Dan Rahmel to help you in maintaining your site. Another great source for training is www.lynda.com online tutorials.

Joomla’s strength is in its complexity and built-in functionality.  Deep level navigation, sections in sections, categories etc… It has fixed pages and posts, and is great for community sites. You can create a regular site with it and allow many employees to contribute to it, but it would be overkill to use it for a small, mostly static site.

In Conclusion…

WordPress is well managed and is really easy to work with, while Joomla! comes with powerful options and detailed parameters for each component, giving you the possibility to manipulate and organize what you want and how you want.

Both platforms work well for managing a website, Wordpress is the best option for small to medium business and Joomla is fantastic for a website that requires multiple user privileges or custom database work.

If your still not sure what choice is right for your business please give us a call or send an email and we’ll be happy to discuss it with you. This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it