with Created Expression

Joomla! is a freely distributed, open sourced, content management system. This means that it doesn't cost any money to download and install it. It means that the source code making it all work can be modified, detracted from, added on to. And the latter part means that it is a system for managing web content. I am a fan.

The Joomla! community is very active and incredibly large. Much is available for, about and with Joomla!. And although there is a lot of back end, "how to" information on Joomla! out there, little actually discusses what it is or describes how it all functions. I will attempt a brief overview here.

To begin, "Joomla!" is the name of a piece of software. This software is meant to be installed on the web host/server of a web site. Once this software is installed, both the back end (the administrator/manager part) and the front end (the part that visitors see) are accessed through any web browser. By this I mean that simply typing the web address followed by the installation directory of Joomla! into a web browser will bring up the front page of Joomla! on that web site. Using the same address following by "/administrator" will bring up the administrator's login page.

Here is what you see in your web browser after the initial software installation. And, given that this page is rather overwhelming, here it is again but with "things" blocked out...

Notably, everything on this "frontpage" is changeable which brings me back to "content management systems"...

Content management systems are pieces of software that manage content. There are lots of them out there. Some are more complex. Some are more sophisticated. Some work better than others. And you have probably used one or more of them. To manage content, you need content, a place to keep the content, a way of accessing the content.

FileMakerPro can be seen as a content management system. Records of information (content) are entered (stored in a file) and are accessed through templates. The structure of the content (the type of information stored) is determined by the person setting up the FileMakerPro database. The content is entered by whomever. The content is viewed via templates set up by the FMP database administrator.

Blogs are content management systems. The content is some form of posting or "article" (title, content intro, content body, author name, creation date,...). These articles are kept in some sort of "article archive". They are viewed through default templates provided by the blogging software or blog "owner" modified templates. The software running most blogs will allow some level of aesthetic template configuration (you can change fonts, colours, logos) and some will allow the inclusion or exclusion of some fucntionalities (like calendar displays, blogrolls,...).

Flickr is a content management system. This time it is images that are managed rather than articles.

YouTube is a content management system for videos.

eBay can be seen as a content management system where the items managed are articles for sale.

Outlook can be seen as a content management system for mail.

So, even if the term can be used at large or at small, Joomla! is, at its base, a content management system for articles and media and weblinks. Sort of like a blog but split across sections. Rather than having a blogroll section on your blog, you have a weblinks section on a Joomla! site. Rather than having a blog of some number of categories, you can have a Joomla! site with article sections. And these article sections have categories. And these categories have articles. And rather than needing to incorporate your media into articles, in a Joomla site you manage media (images, videos, audio stuff) separately and/but can can on them for use in your articles.

The basic layout of Joomla! is more flexible than a blog too. Rather than a header, a column of content and a column of "menu-like" stuff, in Joomla! there are implicit "modules" (screen areas) that can be used to display a bunch of different things. And these modules, their positioning, their size, their number can be changed too.