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I created this video a couple of months ago for a potential client to showcase just what you can do when you're running your website on Joomla. Have a website you're proud to share with people. One with clean lines or bold colors. There's something for everyone. Easily add images and video. Step up to web 2.0; websites that allow visitors to interact
Why Joomla?
Many Content Management Systems like Drupal and Plone lack style and flexibility. There are thousands of developers actively working on Joomla. They also develop modules to customize your website experience. You can sell real estate, have hotel bookings, allow people to register for events, take surveys, sell items and much more through these adaptive modules. Joomla has a large following of creative folks as well who are constantly developing unique and creative ways to present your website content through themes, templates and customizations. When starting on a website, many people get caught up in the look and feel they could never make a site look amazing by themselves so they hire a graphic designer.
The Problem With Websites Developed By Graphic Designers
It's like hiring an interior decorator to build your office complex. I'm sure they can make things look great on the inside but in terms of building materials and creating a solid foundation for the structure, it requires a different set of skills. This translates into the unfortunate problem that most graphic designers are really quite creative in making things look good with color and layouts but have no programming skills.
- Stale content and you can't change a thing
The site can only be modified by them. Yes, there are lovely links all over but you can't sign in, upload photos, post events or news. You're at the mercy of the website designer.
- Bad Search Engine Rankings, SEO If you are not using a Content Management System like Joomla, it's a very labor intensive process to update the page title (what shows at the top of your browser window), the meta tag data (this is what some search engines look at) and your site and page descriptions (what sets each page apart from another). It involves manual editing of each page if your site is all html and even if it is a bit dynamic and using asp or coldfusion, most don't have tools which will look at your content and pull suggestions for you!
- Designers are still creating entire sites in Flash While it's one thing to have a banner or header that is flash, an entire site will lower your search enging rankings because Flash is not friendly for the search "spiders". They are sent out by the major search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN, Technorati) and they "crawl" your site looking for words and phrases. They report back what they see. One thing Flash based sites can do is create a sitemap but that's only a bandaid.
- Security problems and spam through contact forms
Are your forms littered with spam? Were you attacked with an iframe or XSS attack this year? Without getting too technical, these "exploits" are from poorly coded forms and areas that don't validate their data. If you ask for a phone number and someone is able to submit "mickey mouse" to you, you've got a problem with your form. Joomla has validation like that built in so you don't have to deal with junk spam and "bots". Joomla releases patches quickly when exploits are discovered. They have a process to submit, verify, test and notify the Joomla community. With thousands of developers at your fingertips, Joomla is a great choice.
Fact - Joomla was built to be Search Engine Friendly
Fact - You can take charge of the content on your site if you can edit a Microsoft Word document
Fact - You have choices when it comes to the look, layout and feel of your website
Now, using a content management system like Joomla, you can have content and style; the best of both worlds!
Who is using Joomla?
The Science Museum of Minnesota is using Joomla.
Sometimes Joomla is used to power an intranet for employees so the public doesn't actually see the design. This is how San Francisco's Contra Costa County Police department uses it. In this case, function and an easy learning curve get Joomla in the door. Being able to publish internal department news, share files and post events can make or break a business.
Will Graphic Designers Lose Their Jobs Due To Joomla?
There good new for graphic designers! Learning to design for Joomla isn't too hard. If you learned Adobe Photoshop which has about 600 buttons (and each button must cost $2 in Adobe's world) then you can learn the layout of Joomla. I'm already working with a designer doing just this. As long as you know CSS, Dreamweaver, Photoshop and Illustrator you're good to go. I can help with modules, functionality, backups, SSL and security.
Contact me to get started.
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