What you get

A content management system (CMS) is a system that allows you to manage the content of your website. Most CMS's allow you to do this using nothing but a web enabled browser - ie you can use Firefox or Internet Explorer as long as you are connected to the internet. This type of system is an example of a 'web app' - website application. Facebook is one such web app you may have heard of, or even Hotmail.

There are literally thousands of CMS's to choose from. I chose to specialise in Joomla! back in 2006 and am thankfull that I did. It has come along way, here are a few stats...

• It would take one person around 42 years to write the code for Joomla!
• If you paid for it to be develeoped it would cost over $2.2 million USD
• There are over 160,000 lines of code that make up the Joomla 'core'
• There are over 4500 'extensions' (features) available for Joomla (ie shopping carts, photo galleries...)

Who uses Joomla?

Some of the higher profile companies / institutions that use Joomla include

• NASA (for some of thier websites)
  
• All of the US's top ten Universities
• CityBank (for thier 'intranet')
• British Telecom now use it for all thier clients
• United Nations - for thier European Record Office
• Ever heard of a little company called 'Porsche'?

Is it easy to use?

My personal rule is that if you are capable of sending an attachment in an email you are highly likely to find Joomla easy to use. If you use Facebook, Hotmail and so on then it will be no worries at all.

How much does it cost?

Joomla is free! It's a peace of Open source software realeased under the General Public License Version 2.

I want to know more

If you wan tto know more about Joomla or even have a go at using it then here are some usefull links for you:

www.joomla.org

Joomla on Wikipedia

Some interesting Joomla stats

Long ago I started using the JCE content editor for Joomla on all my clients Joomla websites. It greatly expands on the default editor. It is has many features including:

• Office-like functions and familiar buttons make formatting simple
• Upload, rename, delete, cut/copy/paste images and insert them into your articles using an intuitive and familiar interface
• Upload and link to files such as pdf's or Word Docs.

You can read more about JCE or even try it out yourself here.

Below is a screenshot of me using JCE to type out this page

Well there is not much point having a website if no one can find it. That is why I do all basic search engine optimisation as standard.

I use a Joomla extension called sh404sef. Basically it means that all the addresses of your website will be easy to read for both search engines and sentient bipeds such as humans.

Here are some of the SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) steps I take:

• Relative, informative and specific title and descriptions for each page - a better result is achieved with your input! Keywords have been abused too much and therefor are largely irrelevant these days
• Search Engine Friendly and human friendly 'Urls'
• Making an xml sitemap and submitting it to Google
• The code behind the pages is well written and contains nothing but what is needed, it is therefor much easier for a machine to read (ie the GoogleBot to 'index'). There all also many other advantages to well written code.
• Well thought out content structure not only makes site navigation easier but also increases search engine visibility

With the sh404sef extension for Joomla you'll have a lot of other SEO features including the ability to create completly custom urls, redirect old links to new ones, create a custom error page and the list goes on.

Unless you specifically request otherwise I always provide my clients with custom made video tutorials on how to manage thier website.

These videos will be on your website and are accessed using a username and password. Below is an example:

Please note the video's would usually be magnified a little more than this one.

In addition to the backup system most likely provided by your webhost I now install and configure 'Joomla Pack' on all my clients websites. This allows for backups to be made easily, lets you enter notes for each backup and amongst many other other options allows you to exclude certain folders.

Google Analytics is a free tool provided by the good people of Google. Basically it lets you see who's looking at what, when, where, how and what with on your website. It has so many features it can track almost anything.

If you are running a business and paying tax then your website is of course 100% tax deductable. Why give your hard earned money to the tax man when you can make it earn more for your business by investing in a professional website?