Standard Joomla Features

We can't take credit for these, as these are the "in built" functions of the web platform (Joomla!) we have chosen to build websites with. If we installed Joomla! for you and did nothing else, here's the functionality you would have available.

Easy Content Writing

Joomla! is a CMS (Content Management System), which is a program that allows you to separate writing text (content) from actually designing and formatting a website completely. It is this function that means that anyone can now maintain a website, update it and work with it - all with a couple of hours of learning (instead of months!). The default Joomla editor isn't as nice as the one we work with, but it does the job and it can be worked with well enough.

Content Management

Part of being a CMS is the ability to categorise, edit, publish, unpublish and authorise articles that go live on your site. Joomla! features a very simple and effective content management process that will allow you as much or as little control as you need. If you just want to type and publish content - go right ahead. If you want several people writing articles that you must personally approve, that's built in right off the shelf.

Menu Creation and Linking to Articles/Categories

Creating articles, putting them in categories and authorising them is all very nice. But having to create your own menus to point to articles, categories of articles, weblink lists and news items would be a nightmare. Fortunately, Joomla! handles all that for you.

Blog - Off The Shelf

With Joomla!'s ability to point a single menu item to an entire category of articles, you can have a blog (or several blogs) blended right into your business website, without any extra software or effort. Joomla! will handle the pagination, display, ordering and archiving for you.

FAQs

Joomla! has a very simple (sometimes, too simple) FAQ system that allows you write Frequently Asked Question articles and publish them. We prefer the use of QuickFAQ as it has more features than the standard.

Simple Contact Forms

Joomla! allows you to have "contacts" on your site that are linked to user logins. Lets say you had 3 people who contributed to your website content - each of those would have their own log in. Simple create a contact that links to each of these users and you can then create a contact form for them. We prefer RS Form (custom form builder) as the default Joomla! contact form is plain and not very customisable.

News and News Feeds

This is a big one - RSS feeds, both incoming and outgoing. If you want other websites to be able to link to your newest articles easily, or you want to bring in fresh articles from other sites, Joomla! has you covered. This is collectively known as "content aggregation" or simply "feeds" and it is a very big deal.

Links

Got some links to other websites that you think your viewers might like? Not a problem - Joomla! again has you covered. Create weblinks, categorise them and publish them easily.

Wrappers

Wrappers are a little odd. Lets say you have a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) program (like Salesforce or SugarCRM) - which is a web based product. You could have your Joomla! site "wrap" around your CRM product webpage - so the "outside" of the page would be your site and your navigation, but the "inside" of the page would be whatever page you are wrapping around. If that didn't make sense, let's just say that a wrapper allows you blend a non-Joomla! page right into your Joomla! site.

Search

Not much point in having lots of content if no-one can find it. And once you go past about 20 pages, it can get difficult to find things quickly. Joomla! has its own search engine that you can use to let users find your pages quickly and easily.

Themes and Extensions

A core idea behind Joomla! is that it is modular - the actual "code design" of the site is completely separate to the look and feel of it (the "theme"), which is also separate to the things you can add to it ("extensions"). This means that you can completely change the look of your site just by installing a theme - no need to recode every page from scratch. Additionally, it means that your site can grow with your business in the future, by adding on extensions that do certain things.