Joomla! One of the most powerful Open Source CMS

What exactly is Joomla?

Joomla! has become one of the most powerful Open Source Content Management Systems on the planet.
It is a 'free' open source framework and content publishing system designed for quickly creating highly interactive multi-language Web sites, online communities, media portals, blogs and eCommerce applications.
The name 'Joomla' is derived from the Swahili word 'Jumla', which means 'all together'.

Who uses Joomla!... apart from us?

Joomla! is used all over the world to power everything from simple, personal homepages to complex corporate web applications. Here are just some of the ways this award winning CMS solution is used:

• Corporate websites or portals
• Real Estate Websites
• Online commerce
• Hotel and Tourism websites
• Small business websites
• Non-profit and organizational websites
• Government applications
• Corporate intranets and extranets
• School and church websites
• Personal or family homepages
• Community-based portals
• Magazines and newspapers
• the possibilities are seemingly endless…
  
  

It can be used to easily manage every aspect of your website, from adding content and images to updating a product catalogue, processing credit card payments or taking online reservations.

The difference between Joomla! and commercial CMS solutions?

Unlike commercial solutions that offer different versions according to your budget, Joomla! is available in just one 'all encompassing' version - and it is cost free.
Many commercial CMS solutions boast a vast array of modules - in some cases up to 80 of them. Joomla! offers an awesome amount of extensions that currently numbers at more than 7300. Wow!
Joomla! has an active community of more than 200,000 (validated) friendly users and developers.

A big advantage you should not overlook...

If your company or organization hires a third party Joomla! developer such as Jacarlin Web Solutions or builds in-house software using the Joomla! framework, you are building on an open platform that does not tie you to any one design company, developer or to a proprietary, closed application. You own your site and can develop it with anyone you choose. This is of huge importance if things begin to go wrong with your current design company. Be smart - use Joomla!

Is a CMS website search engine friendly?

CMS offers the best platform to develop sites that meet all the SEO requirements.
HTML layout is well formed with no nestled tables making it easy to read for crawlers.
We can ensure that URL's do not have any query strings. The URL's can be of the type www.yoursite.com/pagename.html Such URL's are extremely Search engine friendly.
Meta keywords can be defined at a global level (across the site) and also at page level.

Is a CMS web site difficult to maintain?

Once Joomla! is installed and running, it is simple for even non-technical users to add or edit content, update images, and to manage the critical data that makes your company or organization effective. Anybody with basic word processing skills can easily learn to manage a Joomla! site.

See our 1 minute demo video which shows just how easy it is to update your CMS website and publish it online... in just one minute!
Via a simple, browser-based interface you will be able to easily add new press releases or news items, manage staff pages, job listings, product images, and create an unlimited amount of sections or content pages on your site.

Is a Joomla! CMS website expensive?

The emergence of powerful, flexible, Open Source CMS's is truly a revolution in web technology. Firms like Interwoven, Broadvision, and of course Microsoft, have in the past dominated the CMS market with offerings that start at Euro 12,000 (plus plus PLUS)! Whilst it may seem too good to be true, highly functional CMS platforms are now available without licensing costs. It is true!
Today, 'Navega Bem - Web Design' can develop a Joomla based (CMS) web site for almost the same cost as a static site.

What is LAMP technology?

As an effective alternative to expensive proprietary software, LAMP technology (Linux + Apache + MySQL + PHP) Open Source technologies are leading the websites and applications development market and have become the platform of choice for developing robust dynamic web solutions at an affordable cost.

What about multi-lingual web sites?

Probably one of the biggest advantages of our CMS solution is its ability to run multi-lingual web sites - and there is only one 'back office' to manage it all! Joomla recognises a users operating system and automatically displays a site in the users language if it is available. Of course users may switch to other languages as they wish.
'Navega Bem' designed and developed several 12 language hotel sites (including Russian) for a Tour Operator in Madeira and maintaining the sites has been very simple for our client. The sites also rank very well indeed in the Google search engines of all the languages used.

Decentralised Editing on any browser!

Editing can be done with any normal web browser from anywhere in the world - or with your iPhone :)

Peter Russell, Joomla core team founder member says...

"Palheiro Golf website demonstrates the maturity of open source solutions for complex multi-lingual delivery. Less than five years ago a content management system such as Palheiro Golf has implemented would have cost many tens of thousands of euros ... Joomla! delivers (with the assistance of professional developers) for a fraction of that."

"Open Source software such as Joomla! redefines what a small, medium and even enterprise business can achieve without being tied to proprietary software. More flexiblity, more power and more potential without the associated costs. More and more we're seeing people moving to Joomla! and other open source web applications because there is so much scope for extending features right out of the box."