I was talking with a couple of friends who work in the design field yesterday and we started discussing the current trends in HTML/CSS, web design, and more. Soon into the conversation they both began lauding high praise on Joomla, something I had heard about in the past but was still largely ignorant about.
The way they spoke about it began to worry me. Basically, they made it sound like an application that practically anyone could use to build a professional looking website, including someone with almost no knowledge of web development and scripting. They also said it was highly interoperable with all of the most frequently used plug-ins on the web: RSS, blogs, wikis, and more. Plus, it’s highly optimized for search engines! In order to use it, all you to have is a familiarity with the old drag-and-drop system for laying out stuff in a Word document.
The more they described Joomla the more I began to grow worried, and for obvious reasons: could I be learning all of this scripting at Ai for nothing? If anyone can have the power to build an extremely functional, professional looking site, what of my future job opportunities as a web designer?
Since that conversation I have done more reading about it, and am I’m still not totally convinced that this isn’t something to be alarmed about. Joomla is an open-source (free!) application that is defined as a Content Management System (CMS). These types of applications allow users to manage high amounts of information in an organized, straightforward fashion, and to make updating that information very easy. You’ve already had exposure to a CMS-based system with WordPress, an application that gives you templates and easy interfaces to add content, and then poof, you have a website.
The Joomla website compares itself to a “librarian” that tracks every bit of content on your website. It seems like it makes building web pages as simple as moving stuff around in a Word document. From the examples on their site, the websites produced by Joomla don’t look like amateur stuff either.
But the picture remains murky. I gather that CMS systems are really good for sites that need constant updating, but that’s not very reassuring: how many sites these days remain very static anyways? I got a couple of article that listed other pro/cons of using programs like Joomla (and there are lots, though it seems like it is currently the most popular) but the disadvantages were never thoroughly explained.
The most obvious negative I could think of was that using standardized templates would restrict your ability to create original web site designs, but I’m pretty sure that you have the ability to add your own templates into Joomla and it will take it from there. I’m still not convinced you actually need a great amount of expertise to even build these original templates within Joomla itself. So what then – should I save the several K I’m dropping on scripting and programming classes and just learn Joomla or another CMS option instead?
I’m definitely taking this to Wayne, and if any of you know the answer than please comment. I’ve attached articles for reference, the first one from About.com gives me the chills.
