Joomla

Update: A recording of January's show can now be found on the CMS-Connected site. Also, a continued video discussion on Joomla! can be found here at CMS Report.

I just spent much of my morning looking at all the great content management related stories CMS Report covered this past year. Below are the top ten stories of 2012 that we posted here at CMSReport.com. The stories in this list are ranked based on the rate they were viewed since they were first appeared online. 

This week, the Joomla! community took a huge step forward toward mobile devices and usability with the release of the latest version of their content management system, Joomla 3.0. The Joomla CMS can now display content on mobile devices as clearly and distinctly as it does on a personal computer or Mac. This innovation makes Joomla the first major CMS that includes the Twitter Bootstrap framework that enables it to be 100 percent mobile-friendly by default. So it is no surprise that the Joomla! project is highlighting Joomla 3 as a CMS that's mobile ready and user friendly.

"Joomla 2.5 is the recommended version for most existing sites and will remain so for another year."

"For most people, we recommend that you update from Joomla 2.5 only when Joomla 3.5 is released around September next year."

- Steve Burge, The Joomla! Community Portal, Joomla 2.5 is the Recommended Version for Most Sites, September 21, 2012

Finding the right content management system (CMS) for a website takes a little research and effort on the part of the webmaster. Understanding what a CMS is, how it works, and what features are needed for each website will help the webmaster choose not only the best CMS but also the web hosting service that offers and supports that  CMS.

Presented below is a benchmark comparison test between the latest Joomla 2.5.4 Emper (stable) and the upcoming Elxis 4.0 Nautilus (pre-alpha). The tests were performed with the Apache's ab tool on my local development computer which runs Windows. The numbers shown might seem low, this is because the tests were run on a Windows operating system. On a Linux live server they would be higher but the comparison results would be the same. A quick conclusion (we will go in more details later) is that Elxis is, at least, 4 times faster than Joomla!

The Joomla! Project recently released a new version of their popular open source CMS, version 2.5.5. Shortly after this release was made available some significant bugs were noted and the Joomla team quickly responded with Joomla 2.5.6 to fix the known issues. Site administrators are now encouraged to update their Joomla site with Joomla 2.5.6 and not Joomla 2.5.5.

Some of the new features introduced in Joomla 2.5.5 and now available in Joomla 2.5.6 include:

A website content management system (CMS) is software used to effectively manage the content of your website. A CMS helps website administrator to ‘upload’, ‘edit’ and ‘add’ content without any knowledge of web programming. Content management systems offers a range of benefits to website administrator and due to this they are highly popular among web community.

There are many CMSs on the market but you need to select the one based on your needs. If you are going to use a CMS for the first time, we recommend you choose a user-friendly CMS that does not add any kind of complexity on your part.

What follows is a list of what I believe to be the seven best web content management systems for novices:

WordPress

If you are a small business or a blogger, WordPress is an ideal choice for you. WordPress CMS software is developed by hundreds of community members and it includes a number of themes and plug-ins for appealing and effective website design.

Joomla

Joomla CMS is widely used in web applications as well as website development. Due to its user-friendliness and flexibility, it is amongst the most popular CMS on the market today. Joomla CMS is open source software thus available for free download to all.

Drupal

Drupal is open source website CMS software and It is used to create a wide verities of sites from a small scale personal blogging websites to large-scale community websites.

As we discussed a few weeks ago, the release of Joomla 2.5 on this day was expected.  Surpringly, knowing the release date seemed to make the wait longer. Without a doubt, Joomla.org will be a busy place the next few days. Joomla's marketing people tell me that Joomla! has been downloaded more than 28 million times and powers more than 1.6 million. Those are pretty significant numbers and this new version of Joomla! is expected to help continue the popularity of this open source CMS.

As I discussed in my previous articles, Joomla! for the first time includes multi-database functionality, beginning with Microsoft SQL. If you read the article, you also know that Joomla 2.5 also includes more than a dozen new features. You'll can also check out those features by going to https://www.joomla.org/core-features.html . But before you hop over to another site, you can find some additional details about Joomla 2.5 right now in this exclusive press release that we've acquired from sources secretly embedded in the Joomla! community.

The release of Joomla 2.5, a popular open source content management system, is expected to occur within the next few weeks. This release gives Joomla! fans a reason to celebrate and those new to the CMS a chance to consider Joomla! for thier next project. Like clockwork, the Joomla community is preparing the way by educating the masses on the new features and enhancements included in this version. I'm not an expert on the Joomla! development process, but I'm going to do my best here in summarizing the information that I've gathered so far on Joomla 2.5.