more will be revealed

One of the aspects of my work here in Tampa is to manage and work with a number of different websites.  Most of the sites are blogs running Wordpress, which I’m fairly familiar with.  I have yet to go deep into a Wordpress site by doing alot of custom coding, so most of my dealings with the WP sites is to update the content and make sure they are running the latest version.  Fairly easy stuff.

Three of the sites I work with have custom built backends that have required me to do a bit of learning in order to work with them.  The sites work great for what they’re designed to do, but because they are running fairly custom code, there isn’t a whole lot of flexibility for someone like me, who doesn’t code in ColdFusion.

As such, I’ve been keeping my eye open for an open-source CMS that is extendable, easy to use and manage, run LAMP, and visually easily customized.  The bit of reading I’ve done is pointing me towards Joomla.

For these three sites, Joomla might be perfect.  Two of the sites are E-zines, while the other is an online portal with articles, media, forums, etc.  A number of plugins are available that will give me the kind of functionality that I’m looking for, and upgrades would be a snap.  As an added bonus, there are a large number of Joomla designers who offer these template clubs, where one buys a 6-12 month subscription and then has access to anywhere from 20-60 templates, depending on the club.  And these subscriptions are quite reasonable, say $50-$200, depending on the club and length of the subscription.

I’m already running a test site of Joomla and have found several free templates to toy with.  It’ll take a little bit for me to pick up how to configure and organize a site, but it looks uncomplicated.  I always love learning a new technology, so it should be fun!

Posted on Friday, May 2nd, 2008 at 6:12 pm in coastland, technology | rss feed for comments| Leave a response, or trackback