Joomla is a content management system that is free to use. It is open source software licensed under General Public Licence (GPL); anyone can use it as they choose. Joomla is a professional and robust system and building websites with Joomla is a choice that an increasing number of people are making the decision to do.

There is a vibrant community that has built up around Joomla. Developers build templates to suit any project. Some are offered for sale, but many are available free. Free Joomla templates are not necessarily inferior in quality. In fact, some of the best templates you will find are free, and that is the great thing about Joomla community; they share freely with each other.

Joomla has a birth date. It is August 17th 2005, though it was not until September 1st that the name Joomla was actually announced. Joomla 1.0.0, the first release of the software, was on September 16th and it was actually Mambo 4.5.2.3 in a re-branded package. However, it went on to win the Packt Publishing Open Source Content Management System Award the following year in 2006, and again in 2007.

Building great websites with Joomla using free Joomla templates is really very easy, even though the software does have a reputation of being difficult to learn. There are plenty of tutorials around to help anyone who wants to discover how to plug into the power of Joomla, and the official Joomla forum has close to one and a half million posts on it. There’s plenty of free information available on just about everything to do with Joomla.

The Joomla content management system works by having the ability to increase the basic power of the software through adding modules that extend its reach. These modules, known as plugins, integrate fully with the basic software. They can add usefulness to a website in the form of a calendar, a forum, a user poll, a blog, and many other features commonly found on today’s increasingly interactive websites.

While making websites with Joomla usually means creating the larger portal type of web site, small personal web sites can easily be built too. Joomla has considerable power and the software is extremely robust. This makes it ideally suitable for the serious professional website, but as already mentioned, any size of website can be built with Joomla.

Although the same basic software makes every Joomla website, it is the template that makes each one look distinctive. There are many, many thousands of Joomla templates available from thousands of websites. While you can purchase a template specially coded, and therefore unique to you, you don’t have to.

A recent search on a major search engine returned almost a million results for the phrase, “free Joomla templates”. Consider that each website in the results is likely to have dozens of templates and you can see that there is one somewhere out there that is ideal for you without costing you a penny.

Making websites with Joomla is not only easy, but low cost too. The software is extremely robust and as good as it gets. Finding a template is not only easy, but hard to avoid. There really is no reason why anyone should not be creating websites with Joomla.
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RocketTheme is one of the well respected template providers for Joomla! In fact, one of their lead designers is a member of the core Joomla! development team. RocketTheme subscribers tend to be enthusiastic users of the site, which says a lot about the user community that has built around the excellent guidance provided on their forums.

Almost all the templates come with bonus components and modules to get the most out of your Joomla sites, and they were first to proved an streamlined installer package (they call it their RocketLauncher) that not only installs Joomla on your site, but installs the template, components and modules along with demo content to get you hooking along with a minimum of fuss.

What’s Included:

What Joomla Version do the templates work on – Joomla 1.x or 1.5 ?

There is still a huge amount of Joomla sites out there using the older Joomla 1.x as there are some great modules still not available for the new Joomla 1.5. RocketTheme know this, so all of their new themes are both 1.x and 1.5 compatible. However if you are using Joomla 1.5 and it’s enhanced features, you get an extra level of usability and features from your RocketTheme theme. If you like some of their older templates and have installed 1.5 then don’t worry, the older themes are being ported to 1.5 with added features.

How many templates are there and how often do they get updated?

Tons. As of May there is 66 and you get access to all of them. RocketTheme release a new theme every month, and each one seems to top the previous. That means if you sign up today for a year, before your membership runs out you will have access to up to 79 professional Joomla templates.

How good are the templates and how much can I edit them?

RocketTheme’s templates, especially the past 12 months, have been some of the most versatile and customisable templates on the market. In fact, they sometimes suffer from being too complex due to the amount of customisations that can be done. They provide you with numerous variety in module styles and module positions, and this allows you to take the basic RocketTheme theme and turn it into something unique for your site. Want to make it even more custom? Then leave a message in the forum and have one of the developers help you out with your custom changes.On top of that all source files are supplied so you can easily customise the theme further to suit your needs.

What other cool bonuses are offered?

One of the selling points is the previously mentioned user forum. Here you have access to not only the theme developers, but hundreds of users who are all willing to help each other out.Also you have access to some specially modified versions of their templates suited to specific uses (video game web sites for example), as well as a collection of free Joomla components.

How much does it cost and are their any restrictions on how I can use the theme?

RocketTheme offers three levels of membership

* 3 months $50US
* 12 months $75US
* Developer 12 months 250

Discounts apply for renewal of memberships.

It must be noted that on the basic memberships you are limited as to how many web sites you can concurrently use the templates. As stated in the RocketTheme Terms and Conditions:

Limited usage granted: Your membership grants you the rights to use the RTTC templates on as many concurrent sites as described in the matrix below. For example, a 3 month membership entitles you to use any RocketTheme theme on a maximum of 2 sites. If you renew your membership for 1 year, you are entitled to use the templates on an additional 2 sites, for a maximum of 4 sites. Even after your membership expires, you may continue to use the templates on these 4 sites, so the templates are not time-limited. If you wish to use a theme for a non-profit site, they do not count against your maximum concurrent theme usages.

Now while I do not particularly like the limited license, it is standard fare across most theme clubs.

Final Opinion

RocketTheme is likely my favourite theme club at the moment. They provide toprate templates, with amazing features yet manage to maintain the ability to customise the site for your unique stylings. Many times I have been stuck for inspiration for a web site design and played around with a RocketTheme theme and come up with something striking and individualunique. Although like most theme clubs the limited license is a setback, I believe the expense worth it for access to such a great user and support community. If you do only join one Joomla Template club, it is hard to go past RocketTheme.
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A system that can be used to manage the content of a website is called content management system (CMS). In other words, CMS is a tool to create, edit, and remove details/information in a website. The definitive advantage of the CMS being that you can carry out most of the task without any technical expertise.

The contents managed can be of various types that include web contents, media files, e-documents, online transactions, etc. and they are classified based on the requirements.

Types of CMS

The different types of CMS are as follows,

Browser based CMS:

The most convenient and the cheapest CMS is the browser based CMS. It is easy to access and can be edited from anywhere in the world. Most of the other CMS require software to be installed but whereas this CMS does not require any software and can be simply logged in by using a username, password and the contents can be edited.

Transactional based CMS:

This type of CMS can be employed by E-commerce organization where they need to manage large data of transactions though online.

Digital based CMS:

Information is also stored in digital format, hence the digital equipment needs to be organized and kept in a system that is effective and functions properly. For this purpose, you can use a digital asset management system which will help in organizing all the media files. The digital media may contain audio, video, stills, graphics, and other media related files.

Business Process CMS:

This is a CMS which is related to transaction details such as invoices, sales order, application forms, etc. Further, the system offers the businesses to integrate and expand in the corporate environment and also provides the support to organize the work steps systematically and improve better communication among the users.

Enterprise CMS:

This system offers the users to access, scan, store and manage all information within an enterprise. The system supports all types of functions, it can be web based or E-commerce based or CRM. The enterprise CMS is designed in a way that can integrate with client server and hosted solutions.

Finally, it is very essential that you need to understand the various types of CMS which enable you to decide on the one that best suits your business. If you are not sure about the CMS that works cost effectively and efficiently for your business, contact us and we are happy to offer you the best possible help.

Vijayakumar Palaniappan

Marketing Manager

Samran Technologies
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For those who need to design and create their own web pages, whether for personal use or for business purposes, there are few terms you should become familiar with. A few of those terms are “PHP,” “content management system,” and “Joomla.” The following article is a brief description of these three terms and tools and how you can use them to create, manage, and enhance dynamic web pages.

PHP

PHP originally stood for “personal home page,” as that was what it was designed to help create; however, today, PHP is used to create a variety of different types of web pages. Essentially, PHP is a scripting language that people need to know in order to design and produce dynamic web pages. PHP is free software, and because it is compatible with most web servers and almost every operating system and platform, it is widely used for general web page purposes and can even be embedded into HTML. In using PHP, a web server takes a PHP code as input and creates web page content as output.

Content Management System

A system that utilizes PHP codes is a content management system or CMS. CMS software uses the PHP scripting language to create and manage HTML content as well as other documents and images. And this software not only helps you create web content, but also allows you to control and edit that content.

Essentially, a CMS makes creating and managing web pages simpler and more understandable. In fact, most content management systems are designed so that users that have little or no knowledge of programming languages can create and manage their own web pages. These systems store content in databases and offer a variety of web page templates for the user to choose from.

Joomla

Joomla is a content management system that users around the world use to publish content on the web and internet. Like many other content managing systems, it is written in the PHP programming language and uses a database to store information. Some of the features that the system includes are page caching, RSS feeds, printable versions of pages, news flashes, blogs, polls, website searching, and language internationalization. Joomla extensions and templates are typically distributed as a zip file or other compressed format that must be installed before implementing. With this set of basic functions and the countless other free Joomla extensions available, creating a dynamic web page to improve businesses (or to enhance personal pages) is easy to manage in-house.

As a content management system, Joomla offers a variety of great benefits for those looking to create their own web pages. First of all, and perhaps most importantly, Joomla is free. And as new versions and updates of Joomla are released, new features and improvements also become available. Joomla is fast growing and offers limitless possibilities for future applications.

Another major benefit of Joomla is how easy it is to add or modify content. With Joomla, you can add images and other multimedia elements, and you can also organize and manage important data with relative ease.

And as Joomla has gained increasing popularity, it has won many awards for its features and services. Joomla’s popularity offers another often-ignored benefit to users. Because so many users are familiar with Joomla, there is a plethora of forums, web pages, and directories centered on how to use Joomla and to help those who have questions or experiencing problems with the software. And the software is also well supported by developers and service providers. Hence, if you have a question about Joomla, chances are that with very little effort, you can find the answer.

One of the other advantages of Joomla is that it offers a variety of free Joomla extensions. Some extensions are called “plugins” which are background extensions that extend Joomla with new functionality. “Components” are also Joomla extensions that allow users to expand the number of features on their web page, backup their websites, translate content, and create URLs. “Modules” also expand a web pages’ functionality by adding features such as a calendar display or Google AdSense.

In fact, these extensions offer perhaps the biggest benefits of using Joomla. Some of these extensions include dynamic form builders, image and multimedia galleries, e-commerce and shopping cart engines, forums and chat software, calendars, blogging software, email newsletters, data collection and reporting tools, banner advertising systems, subscription services, and more. And there are a host of other free Joomla extensions that can enhance any webpage.

Specifically, there are five Joomla extensions that are arguably the most popular. “Community Builder” allows users to extend profiles, enhance registration workflows, user lists, and much more. “FireBoard Forum” is a forum that is both stylish and powerful and will allow visitors of the web page to engage in discussion and commentary. “Expose Flash Gallery” is an extension that creates slide shows from your own uploaded images. And Joomla’s “Events Calendar” is a classic that informs viewers of important dates and events.

And even though Joomla is simple to use, these many extensions allow a person to create the most complex of corporate websites. In fact, Joomla is used for a variety of applications including corporate websites, small business websites, non-profit and organizational websites, government applications, school and church websites, personal or family homepages, community-based portals, magazines and newspapers, and online commerce. Essentially, if you need to create a webpage for any purpose, Joomla has the reliability and outstanding features to help you create the webpage you need.

Once you understand the basic concepts of PHP and content managing systems, you are ready to start creating your own web page. And with a reliable, free CMS such as Joomla, you will soon be on your way to creating and managing a web page that directly meets all of your needs.
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Having a successful business website requires having successful search engine optimization campaigns. That’s why, when you’re looking to build your company website, it’s a good idea to look for a content management system that will facilitate your company’s SEO efforts. But what exactly are the features of a good, SEO friendly CMS? Here are a few of the things you should look for.
Look for a CMS that allows you to easily edit title and description tags, separate from article titles and descriptions. A good CMS should let you move pages and sections around at will. It should let you easily edit heading tags. It should support analytics and RSS feeds. It should let you easily create your own filename directory structures. It should make creating standard-compliant code simple. It should provide accessible site maps for search engines.

The following CMSs are well known and popular among SEO experts. They contain all if not most of the above features and even give you tips on how to improve your SEO efforts.

Elxis
With its built-in SEO management program, Elxis does a great job of helping you optimize your site for search engine marketing by doing a lot of the basic legwork for you.

Drupal
Drupal comes with its own SEO module, called SEO Checklist. It basically guides you through the process of optimizing your site for search engines and allows everyone in your company who’s working on the site to keep track of the SEO changes made to each page.

Typo3
Typo3 has a ton of search engine optimization features that let you create and organize metadata, tags and SEO friendly URLs.

CMS Made Simple
If you know how to modify htaccess files, CMS Made Simple can prove an incredibly reliable and helpful CMS. Generate good SEO friendly URLs and have meta tags and page titles built in automatically.

MODx
MODx lets you create optimized URLs, provides you with automatic headers and simple page titles, and allows you to adjust meta-content on each individual page.
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Ever since the arrival of Content Management Systems, it has created a lot of buzz in the world of internet. CMS is defined by Wikipedia as “A ‘web content management’ (WCM) system is a CMS designed to simplify the publication of Web content to Web sites, in particular allowing content creators to submit content without requiring technical knowledge of HTML or the uploading of files.” It is an efficient system that can manage the content of the website very easily. In short, it enables a layman with no knowledge of HTML to create, modify, or remove the website content without typing a single code.

Open source CMS is popular for several reasons with the web development companies as well as the clients. Some of the reasons are as follows:

- Better control over the creation, publishing of the content as well as uploading images and files.

- The clients can have a dynamic blog style of content display right from the change in the fonts to read more links.

- To have an integrated web administration control of the website.

- The owner can make the website content highly interactive as the visitors can add content easily too with CMS.

- The owner of the website can have public as well as private sections of web content that can be accessed by a registered user.

There are several kinds of Content Management Systems available these days such as WordPress content development, Joomla content development, Drupal and many more. However, not all CMS have the same features and therefore, it is essential to make the right choice for your website. Web-based publishing, format management, revision control, indexing, search, and retrieval are some of the features that are commonly found in all the content management systems.

The two main aspects to consider while choosing a CMS for an organization are:

1. The size of the organization definitely is the first and foremost factor to take into consideration. If the company is very large and has several international offices then it becomes quite difficult.

2. The different electronic data forms used by the company are the second point of concern. The content management can become difficult if the there is too much use of text documents, graphics, videos, audio and diagrams and so on for communicating the message.

Hence, a large company needs to assess the needs and also the Content Management System they choose to manage website content.
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Joomla has emerged as a popular content management system used to create websites from the beginning. Its user manual focuses more on the functionality instead of end user’s perspective. This open source software was developed in 2005 and has been adding to its flourishing list of users with every passing day.

Developers across the world have been able to develop Joomla templates as per project-centric requirements. Most of them absolutely free of cost while others are put on sale. Some of the free Joomla templates have high quality and they can be shared with other Joomla community members with great ease.

Making a website with Joomla… a fun exercise!

It’s a low-cost affair to create a website with Joomla. Its vast range of free templates has made creating a website so easy. Creation of a website with Joomla entails some basic steps as enumerated below:

Step 1: Make a clear sitemap and compartmentalize the same into Home, Categories and Articles (or web pages in Joomla context); home being the top level and categories being the middle level.

Step 2: Now you can generate sections in Joomla with the help of Section Manger in Content. Under each section, create a category and tag it correctly under the apt section. You can tag the categories with the help of Category Manager in the Content section.

Step 3: Create the web pages of your website in the form of articles with the help of Content -Article Manager. Joomla is such a robust CMS that its content editor enables you to create content for the web pages of your website even without the code knowledge.

Step 4: Build a menu for your link with the help of Menu option so that netizens can click on the same to gain access to your articles.

Step 5: Now enable the menu, a step commonly missed by many and perhaps one of the primary reasons why menu does not appear. We need to instruct Joomla about the placement of menu and hence you need to go to Module manager and find out the exact location of menu name so that you can enable it properly.

Step 6: Customize the layout and supplement it with additional extensions.

Currently, there are many hosting companies that offer reliable and affordable Joomla hosting to netizens on the World Wide Web such as LimeDomains, BlueHost, HostGator etc.

Get started with your Joomla website today!
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 Content management system, is the most important computer application for the handling of a project. It is more like a computer administration system, which is used for work management. The content management system is used for the stocking, versioning, controlling and the publishing of documents that are industry specific. Under these documents come various sales guides, operational manuals, news articles, technical manuals etc.

There are different types of content management systems like the web CMS, Enterprise CMS, Component CMS, mobile CMS, Document management system and many more. It is imperative that you choose the content management system that is appropriate to your industry requirements.

Form the general and operational point of view when you opt for a content management system then look for a vendor that is reliable and with whom you can have a long-term relationship. Check for the background of the company from whom you are going to subscribe the content management system. In case you are looking for a system for managing a single project then mention your accurate functional requirements and ask for technical support during the beginning of the project.

It is essential that you understand the pros and cons of each type of the content management systems.

Commercial CMS: This has the widest features among all the types of CMS. Its main benefit is the quick provision of consistent solution. However, unless your have a first hand experience with the functioning of this system it would be difficult to assess the evaluation and quality.

Homegrown: This is supported by, single web development companies for, their own projects. The major advantage is that the system can be hacked and customized according to the individual requirements however on the other hand you would be dependent on a single vendor.

High-end CMS: There are limited vendors for this type, but the main feature is that they deliver high quality enterprise solutions.

Open Source: With this the software is available free of cost to anyone, the advantage is that you can escape the license fee and on the same hand you can customize your product. The looming point is that some of the features might not have a high quality commercial security and stability.

When selecting the content-management system for your project mull over, the licensing costs, the application platform availability and the total cost of the system. Having a content management system to organize your work is a true blessing that can be of great help to increase the incorporation and the mechanization of the process.
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