Depending on Your needs, Joomla can be anything from Excellent to just plain Awful. At its Core Joomla has been designed to be extremely adaptable to fill just about any WebSite Owner’s needs.
Joomla is Great for.
- Sites with multiple editors, writers, and varied security permissions
- Community websites (excludes forum sites)
- Business’ that only want to maintain 1 website for public, and internal usage
- Large sites (Joomla scales resource/performance wise very well)
Joomla is NOT for the following.
- Anything Associated with $1.99 per month Web Hosting.**The exception being Siteground.
- Forums — Other web platforms will do this better.
- E-commerce— Use a Dedicated E-commerce platfrom. PLEASE.
- Embeded web server platforms — Yes, I have seen this done.
Joomla has been used for each of the above examples, and more. Just because it will work, does not mean its the best option though. This built in diversity is the very reason its not right for everyone.
For instance this versatility comes at a speed cost, Joomla has gotten much faster through the years, but it is still slower than WordPress, and Drupal, Out-of-the-Box
Joomla is also carries a larger resource “Footprint”, than say WordPress. I have managed servers for more than 10 years, Out-of-the-Box Joomla has always required more memory than WordPress, or Drupal. As every sysadmin knows more memory usage means more CPU cycles. Hence the reason Joomla Usually offers a poor user experience on cheap $1.99 web hosting plans.
Enough about Joomla’s faults, Lets See why You SHOULD use it.
- Content Management: If You have massive amounts of static information that You need to publish Joomla will be Your Best Friend. Think Knowledge Base, Magazines, newspapers, and the list goes on.
- Permission system For users: Joomla excels at this, You can lock down a User to a specific set of actions, with ease, or restrict public Users to only a portion of Your site. This is awesome when You do not want to maintain 2 company websites; 1 internal for employees, and 1 external for the public. You can instead require that employees login to see non-public website features, such as an Exchange server login applet, or maybe directions to the company picnic at the bosses house.
- Ease of Use: I put this here with hesitation. You really need a tech savy person to instal Joomla. However once You have taken the time to learn Your way around Joomla, Your website will almost seem to build itself.
- Extensions: Joomla currently has more than 8,500+ extensions. This makes it very easy to get Joomla to do exactly what You want it to do without having to hire someone.
- Community: Joomla has An Excellent User Community. From Community Support to get You started with Joomla, all the way to getting help to write Your own Joomla Extension. Did I mention that most of the 8,500+ extensions are free community added extensions?
So Should You use Joomla for Your website? Yes, install it and give it a try. It is after all free, so if you don’t like it remove it and try something else.