13 Reasons to Design Your Website Using the Joomla CMS

As the art of website designing becomes increasing not just a matter of creativity but also of functionality and flexibility, it is worth considering why of all the web design and management solutions out there, Joomla is increasingly becoming the obvious choice for most web designers.

Here are some of the reasons thousands have decided to create and manage their own sites with Joomla. These are also the reasons you should start using it now, if you have been sitting on the fence.

So, let’s start counting on our toes, shall we?

a. Power: Joomla is probably the only open source web design solution out there that you can use to:

Create and manage your own fully-functional membership site (with all the bells and whistles);

Build your own secure and feature-rich online store front (selling downloadable as well as shippable products);

Develop a social networking site like MySpace and FaceBook, etc (with dozens of extensions that could be added to enhance it);

Manage a well-developed and community portal that has its own business directory, classifieds section, events calendar, forums, local news, live weather reports and so much more.

I hate to make it seem like web design utopia is finally here. But if you can conceive it, you can probably create it with Joomla.

b. Flexibility: Designing Joomla sites becomes even the more exciting when you realize that, unlike other web design software and open source Content Management Systems (CMS), a Joomla website designer has the most flexibility when creating his master piece. You can move different elements of the page to different locations at the click of a button; add, edit, publish or un-publish content and add-on scripts in a few easy steps and much more.

Add to that the fact that you have thousands of extensions to help you enhance the usability and develop the uniqueness of your website. You can virtually create a masterpiece of a site once you get the system.

c. Saves Money: While you may need to spend hundreds of dollars to acquire and keep commercial website design software like Dreamweaver, Flash, Frontpage and others, as a Joomla website designer you pay a very nominal fee: $0. Yes, zero. Just download it, install it on your site and you start tweaking away.

You can develop and manage a fully functional membership, ecommerce or portal site without spending a dime in software or licensing fees.

Joomla says “why not use that money to reward yourself with a new pair of shoes or a one-day getaway?”

d. Unlimited Supply of Templates: There are dozens of websites online whose sole mission is to supply you with a never-ending stream of professionally-designed Joomla templates. Thousands are free, but some would rather have you swipe your card before you download. But all the same, they do help make your life much easier.

e. Security: Even though it is quite normal that open source software be vulnerable to attacks and have security issues and be buggy, Joomla has consistently taken steps to be ahead of the game. A major reason for its regular updates (at least every two months) is to up its security level and fix potential bugs that could render the websites of Joomla webmasters everywhere vulnerable.

This has made it the most secure and frequently updated of all the open source website design solutions available.

The Joomla Security Strike Team (JSST) is quite alert when it comes to security issues. Consider them the elite security force of web design and management.

f. Compatibility: Unlike other CMSs out there, developers have been consistently working to create ‘bridges’ which would make Joomla compatible with third party applications. As a result, you can integrate your phpBB, vBulletin and other forum scripts with your Joomla-based website; install and use Wikis on your Joomla site and so on. You can even configure your Joomla site to work with your Aweber, Getresponse and other accounts.

g. Regular Updates: Joomla is frequently updated to improve its user interface, bulk up security, enhance simplicity and make designing Joomla sites a breeze. This makes it easy for new users and webmasters to work with the CMS to create, design and manage websites even without a sound background in HTML, JavaScript, PHP or CSS (Cascading Style Sheets).

And don’t worry; Joomla will be here for a long time to come. ;)

h. SEO-Friendliness: If one of your worries is how to optimize your website enough to make it SEO-friendly and successfully woo the search engine robots, then Joomla is what you need. You can set META tags and descriptions, create search engine friendly URLs, enable RSS feeds creation for all your content sections and categories, and a whole lot more with Joomla.

I can say without reservation that the sites that I have created with Joomla have far outperformed the non-Joomla sites in terms of search engine ranking, traffic, page rank, etc.

i. It’s Free: Worried about having to spend hundreds of dollars to buy Frontpage, Dreamweaver, Flash or other WYSIWYG software programs? Feed the pig instead. Just download Joomla. Free to use the first time, free to upgrade anytime. Now, how about spending that money on treating your honey to a 5-star restaurant? J

j. It’s Growing: Unlike other open source platforms that may have a handful of extensions (add-on scripts), the Joomla Extensions Directory (where all Joomla add-on scripts are listed) is growing by the hundreds every month. As of the time of writing this (January, 2009), there were over 4300 (four thousand three hundred) extensions spanning dozens of categories and some few hundred sub-categories.

Now that’s what I call a robust application!

And this is the reason thousands of people around the world-from the poorest to the richest-are all migrating to the Joomlasphere.

k. Support and Community: If you need help you can always visit the 250,000-member strong Joomla Forum to ask your questions or connect with others, join a local Joomla User Group to network and share ideas, contribute to the Joomla! Wiki (once you get comfortable working with the CMS) and a whole lot more.

It is all about family on Joomla. Don’t let the Joomla-wagon leave you behind.

l. It’s the Best: Because I say so. Because the Joomla Pros say so. Because the smart web designer knows it.

Because that’s why thousands of people are migrating to Joomla every month. Because it is the Open Source platform of choice among corporations, small businesses and the average (but wise) Joe.

Because it has some of the world’s greatest techno-minds behind it, developing, creating, re-creating, fine-tuning and polishing it (technically, that is J) to keep it the best.

If you have gone through this article, you should now be confident that adopting Joomla as your website design platform of choice would probably be one of the best decisions of your business, web design and Internet life.

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