Joomla Web Hosting

Joomla Web Hosting - Joomla!

Joomla! is by far the most reliable and powerful CMS (Content Management System) available today, which effectively facilitates building of websites and other powerful online applications. From creating simple websites to more complex corporate applications, Joomla has proved to be a very powerful Open Source Content Management System.

Moreover, it is easy to install and its user friendly features make it very easy to manage as well. Highly reliable; this open source solution is freely available to everyone. Joomla! is effectively used in various applications ranging from simple or personal websites to the more complicated versions.

The software may be used for the following:

• Corporate websites or portals
• Online commerce
• Small business websites
• Non-profit and organizational websites
• Government Applications
• Corporate Intranets and Extranets
• School and Church websites
• Personal or family homepages
• Community based portals
• Magazines and Newspapers and for various functions and purposes.

Every minute detail and other website related aspects can be easily managed by Joomla! Varied functions ranging from added content and/or images, updating catalogs to taking online reservations; Joomla! offers the perfect all inclusive solution.
Technical know-how is not necessarily required and even non-programmers or newbies can easily install, set up and run Joomla! as it is designed in a way that makes the installation process fairly simple and easy to manage and use. Moreover, plenty of help and support is available by the active community comprising of developers and friendly users. Just a basic skill of word processing is required and your Joomla! website can be up and running in no time. A simple, browser based interface allows users to add new press releases or news items, manage staff pages, job listings, product images, and create an unlimited amount of sections or content pages on their sites. In order to get an initial feel of the software, a simple online demo is available for view for potential users. Joomla! is completely free of cost, open and available to all under the GPL license. The most powerful characteristic of Joomla! lies in the application framework that makes it possible for thousands of developers across the globe to create powerful add-ons and extensions. Mentioned below are a few examples of the extensions available:

• Dynamic form builders
• Business or organizational directories
• Document management
• image and multimedia galleries
• E-commerce and shopping cart engines
• Forums and chat software
• Calendars
• Blogging software
• Directory services
• Email newsletters
• Data collection and reporting tools
• Banner advertising systems
• Subscription services and much more.

Since the application framework is so strong, it makes it very convenient for developers to create advanced and sophisticated add-ons that enhance and thereby extend the power of Joomla! making it more diverse specific Using the core framework, developers can easily build:

• Integrated e-commerce systems
• Inventory control systems
• Data reporting tools
• Custom product catalogs
• Complex business directories
• Reservation systems
• Communication tools
• Application bridges and much more.

Joomla! includes features such as page caching to improve performance, RSS feeds, printable versions of pages, news flashes, blogs, polls, website searching, and language internationalization. The Joomla! Package consists of many different parts, which are built to be as modular as possible, allowing extensions and integrations to be made easily. An example of one such extension is called “Plugins”. The WikiBot, for example, allows the author of Joomla! content to use “Wikitags” in Joomla! articles which will auto-create dynamic hyperlinks and there are over 1,800 extensions for Joomla! available via the Extensions Directory. More comprehensive extensions like “components” allows users to enhance their user features, backup a website, and create search engine friendly URLs. “Modules” help in displaying a calendar or even allow custom code to be inserted within the base Joomla! code. The software is extremely simple to use offering immense flexibility, and its elegant, powerful and customizable features remain the software’s forte. Joomla! is licensed under the GPL, and is the result of a fork of Mambo. This free open source content management system is written with PHP, using the MySQL database. The Joomla! 1.0.11 User Manual is also available for download by users to further aid Joomla! users. The user manual will help users to install and configure Joomla! , describe the various types of Users and what their access permissions are and provide detailed instructions for both Front-end and Back-end inputting and site management within the Joomla! user framework of Authors, Editors, Publishers, Managers, Administrators and Super Administrators. For successful installation and functioning of Joomla! 1.0.12; the following minimum requirements need to be met:

• PHP 4.2.x or above.
• MySQL 3.23.x or above.
• Apache 1.13.19 or above.

Users need to ensure that they have MySQL, XML, and Zlib functionality enabled within their PHP installation. In case, users need to install on their home or office computer, there are a number of packages for the various operating systems that will assist in establishing these requirements:

• XAMPP – multi-platform – Apache, MySQL, PHP, installation.
• LAMP – Linux platform – Apache, MySQL, PHP, installation. Most Linux distro’s now

come with a pre-configured LAMP server available for use as a part of the standard installation.

• WAMP – Windows platform – Apache, MySQL, PHP, installation.
• MAMP – Macintosh platform – Apache MySQL, PHP, installation
• JSAS – Joomla! Stand Alone Server – Pre-configured server with Joomla! pre-installed.
• The long way is to install each of the component elements separately and configure them all to work together.

The installation manual available online will guide you through every related installation aspect including configuring MySQL, getting files, browser installation, migrating to Joomla! from Mambo and much more. Joomla! also features VirtueMart as its most popular featured extension. It offers a complete shopping cart solution and can also be used as a catalogue. The software claims to meet every possible requirement of its users for various web applications. Great new features are frequently added with each new release.