Forum Moderators: mack
But if you try to be objective: What is the minus for Joomla compared with other solutions? What is the most important reason NOT to use Joomla for a newbee compared with other packages?
If you just want to blog, I recommend that you use Wordpress.
If you want to create a portal, then Joomla might suit you better.
Joomla is very easy to install. You don't need to know any PHP.
(1) Create a database for joomla
(2) Upload the software Joomla into your server.
(3) Enter the url of your domain in your browser and you will see the step by step instruction. Click next....next... next
Of course you have to key in the database name, database username, etc.
The more complicated part is setting up your site i.e. customizing the template of the site to suit your needs. To do this a little knowledge of PHP might help. If not, just stick to the default template.
I have to admit that I will get some help to make the first templates ;-). But I hope I'm able to make my own after a while.
I think that the major security issues have been addressed (at least until the next one is discovered;)). There was a big hole that allowed rogue bots to replace the index page. A lot of sites were brought down by some Turks.
The learning curve for Joomla can be pretty steep, but again, there is a lot of flexibility once it is figured out.
With the correct addons and contributions it is possible to deal with dup content issues, do a nice job of SEO, and virutually hide the fact the site is being run on Joomla - all good things.
There is a large base of user contributions, and integration with E-Stores, Forum software, etc., but each of these comes with its own security risks, and udates to the core Joomla script can break user contributions, which leads to a lot of frustration.
I have three sites running on Joomla, one on Wordpress, and a couple more semi-static sites (with some custom written scripts to keep certain areas updated). Alll in all, I find Joomla to be a pretty robust CMS, although there is a need to keep up on the security updates.
Don't let being a NOOB stopp you from taking the plunge.
WBF
I've looked into Joomla and it has many great features out of the box, like user management, and many modules to use.
The major disadvantage for me is its wysiwyg content creating interface makes crappy unmaintainable HTML.
Have you any information about this crapy HTML when using ver.1.5 as well (I haven't tried it yet, but are waiting for final release).
If you're concerned over complexity, then you'll want to look at the Admin interfaces. It's pretty easy to find CMS demos [google.com] that allow you to do this.
Personally, I'm a big fan of Joomla, but there are definately some tweaks you'll want to explore before hand. For example, make sure you check out what's available in SEF URLs. You'll also want to pay attention to your structure. Joomla uses a Section, Category, Content approach, although they are getting away from this requirement.
I use wysiwyg pro. So I cannot comment on unmaintainable HTML created by the built in editor - which is better than it was when I bought wysiwyg pro. You always have the option of hand editing your HTML which I do from time to time (wysiwyg pro does not insert tables correctly).
You always have the option of hand editing your HTML which I do from time to time
In my attempts to work with Joomla, you can definitely hand-write your code. However if you dump the hand-coded html into the html version of the editor, switch to the wysiwyg, and then switch back to the html editor, you'll find that it has re-formatted your html doing such monstrosities as removing all line breaks and removing <style> declarations etc. This is the unmaintainable aspect.
The crappy aspect is the markup it uses for menu items and headers etc. I can't recall exactly what it uses but it isn't semantic. Instead of saying <h1> for headers, it makes something like <div class='color:X; font-size:Y'> or worse. I can't remember. The point is that the world is moving to multiple readers (not just browsers), and w/o semantics, the structure isn't portable. Big red fonts may indicate a structure on your site. This is meaningles if you're blind though, and use an audio reader.
Look for Joomla at Work to fix some of the problems. There are also menu components that help with the tabled menue structure.
Also, declaring classes in your linke stylesheet (which is actually best practice) will prevent Joomla from stripping inline style declarations, at least with the editor I am using. (Then there is Opera, which refuses to run the WYSIWYG editor and forces one to use html)
The content sectin being in a table remains a problem though.
WBF
wysiwyg pro doesn't do this - so I cannot comment on this problem. As mentioned Joomlatwork has a product that fixes some of the seo problems. And even I've written some hacks to to fix things such as h1 tags.
So I went with Drupal instead and it looks promising, very flexible, good access control for individual users and good block control for designing the look and navigation of pages.
Wordpress is also interesting, its elegant and straight forward, it can be used for normal website, not just blog but I think for each user having own area you need something more complex.
There are some 3rd party fixes: I use OpenSEF for URLs (tho doesn't work for all third party components, like my photo galleries); SEO Patch helps with meta tags and some other issues.
Sadly, Joomla core team seem to be code gurus rather than website creators; when it comes to SEO issues, prone to downplaying their importance, and even explaining why various SEO features aren't in basic Joomla. (I've just responded to one such post on J forum; found this thread after searching webworld, lest there might be nifty alternative: I looked at drupal some time ago, couldn't get my head round the "nodes" etc and didn't see site designs I liked.)
But, with help such as OpenSEF, I think Joomla is very helpful for creating sites.
The security issues seem ok for now, partly as Joomla now running with globals.php off, whatever that means (! - apparently should make it a good bit safer)
Plenty of third party add-ons, tho development of these uneven, and at times become abandonware.
