1 of 6: Introduction to Joomla

Wait, did I mention CMS? Well, not any CMS would do. What you need is Joomla! It’s a revolutionary open-source system that is just as cool to work with as it sounds. If you have a web page that needs some working on all the time, Joomla! is your best friend. Download it and forget about coding, programming, designing. Sit back and let Joomla! do all the hard work. Be it updating your design template or setting up a forum on your website, you can do it all through a browser-based interface. Joomla! is easy to set up and operate. It also provides demo for various extensions helping you understand software better. InternetTIPS.com is Joomla-powered and so you can get a good idea of what's possible when the right choices are made.

How it all began

Joomla! is a one-of-its-kind freely available, open source Content Management System that launched its first version of Content Management System on September 16, 2005. The idea was conceived during the Mambo Project, commissioned by Miro Corporation, Australia. The team of core developers quit the project owing to ‘ethical’ differences in August, 2005. They went on to create Joomla!, a word that means ‘all together’. At the risk of sounding clichéd, the rest was history. Today, Joomla! is a pet project for thousands of developers and community members. Not to mention the thousands of end-users across the world.

Joomla! uses PHP language, MySQL database and is licensed under GPL.

Joomla! Versions

Joomla! follows a three-tier pattern in releasing its versions. It releases its versions in three categories - Major, Minor and Maintenance, each of which consist of three numbers.

Major – it is symbolized as x.1.1 where an upward movement in the major number (here x) refers to drastic change in the version compared to the previous major version. The change may be in terms of rework or rewriting of the code base.

Minor – it is symbolized by 1.x.1 where ‘x’ is the minor number. An increment upon that number shows considerable change in architecture and functionality, giving rise to a new version. It may have some similarity with the previous modifications in Minor

Maintenance – 1.1.x symbolizes Maintenance. Any increment in the maintenance number ‘x’ means addition of new features and/or improvements from the previous ones.

With 1.0.0 being the first version, the latest versions of Joomla! are Joomla! 1.0.13 and 1.5 RC 1. Joomla! 1.0.0 was the modified version of Mambo 4.5.2.3.However, at the time of writing, Joomla v1.5 is also almost ready as a stable release.

Some of the areas where Joomla! can be useful include – personal home pages, corporate websites, e-commerce, Intranets and Extranets, portals, newspapers and magazines, organizational websites, Government applications, and many more.

How has the market received it?

Joomla! was formed with the support of 1000 members who joined the core development team to form Joomla!. Today it is as large as more than 90,000 members in its community. Its global core team is located across 11 countries. The product itself has evolved and now supports 40 languages. End users, content writers, translators, developers, designers, systems administrators etc form the part of the Joomla! community.

Various working groups are also operational to take care of the growth and development of Joomla!, which was previously handled by the core team. These groups have a group leader who serves as a communication link between the group and/or community members and the core team. They are assigned tasks and responsibilities pertaining to a specific area of Joomla! Content Management System. These working groups deal with different aspects like Design and Accessibility, Development, Documentation, Quality and Testing, Site and Infrastructure and Translation to enhance Joomla!

The Foundation Working Group looks after marketing and media, legal issues, events, funds, OSM etc.

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