FAQ

FAQ: Why Joomla?

1. Why use Joomla to develop my website?

Joomla! is a free open source framework and content publishing system designed for quickly creating highly interactive multi-language Web sites, online communities, media portals, blogs and eCommerce applications.

Joomla! provides an easy-to-use graphical user interface that simplifies the management and publishing of large volumes of content including HTML, documents, and rich media. Joomla! is used by organisations of all sizes for intranets and extranets and is supported by a community of tens of thousands of users. With a fully documented library of developer resources, Joomla! allows the customisation of every aspect of a Web site including presentation, layout, administration, and the rapid integration with third-party applications.

Joomla! now provides more developer power while making the user experience all the more friendly. For those who always wanted increased extensibility, Joomla! 1.5 can make this happen.
A new framework, ground-up refactoring, and a highly-active development team brings the excitement of 'the next generation CMS' to your fingertips. Whether you are a systems architect or an inexperienced user Joomla! can take you to the next level of content delivery. The new Joomla! API has such incredible power and flexibility, you are free to take whatever direction your creative mind can imagine and Joomla! can help you get there so much more easily than ever before.

Here are some interesting facts about Joomla!

Over 210,000 active registered Users on the Official Joomla! community forum and more on the many international community sites.
Over 1,000,000 posts in over 200,000 topics
Over 1,200 posts per day
Growing at 150 new participants each day!
1168 Projects on the JoomlaCode. All for open source addons by third party developers.
Well over 6,000,000 downloads of Joomla! since the migration to JoomlaCode in March 2007.
7650 extensions for Joomla! have been registered on the Joomla! Extension Directory
Joomla.org exceeds 2 TB of traffic per month!

2. What's so great about Joomla!?

If you're new to Web publishing systems, you'll find that Joomla! delivers sophisticated solutions to your online needs. It can deliver a robust enterprise-level Web site, empowered by endless extensibility for your bespoke publishing needs. Moreover, it is often the system of choice for small business or home users who want a professional looking site that's simple to deploy and use.

Joomla! 1.5 is free, it is released under an Open Source license - the GNU/General Public License v 2.0. Joomla! is different from the normal models for content management software. For a start, it's not complicated. Joomla! has been developed for everybody, and anybody can develop it further. It is designed to work (primarily) with other Open Source, free, software such as PHP, MySQL, and Apache.
It is easy to install and administer, and is reliable.

Joomla! doesn't even require the user or administrator of the system to know HTML to operate it once it's up and running. The online editor has an intuitive design, much like Microsoft Word. No code required!

To get the perfect Web site with all the functionality that you require for your particular application may take additional time and effort, but with the Joomla! Community support that is available and the many Third Party Developers actively creating and releasing new Extensions for the 1.5 platform on an almost daily basis, there is likely to be something out there to meet your needs.

3. What other features does Joomla offer out of the box?

Joomla is so much more than just a powerful content management system. Here is a list of features "out of the box," but the true power of Joomla is in its extensibility.

User Management

Joomla has a registration system that allows users to configure personal options. There are nine user groups with various types of permissions on what users are allowed to access, edit, publish and administrate.

Authentication is an important part of user management and Joomla support multiple protocols, including LDAP, OpenID, and even Gmail. This allows users to use their existing account information to streamline the registration process.

Media Manager

The Media Manager is the tool for easily managing media files or folders and you can configure the MIME type settings to handle any type of file. The Media Manager is integrated into the Article Editor tool so you can grab images and other files at any time.

Language Manager

There is international support for many world languages and UTF-8 encoding. If you need your Web site in one language and the administrator panel in another, multiple languages are possible.

Banner Management

It's easy to set up banners on your Web site using the Banner Manager, starting with creating a client profile. Once you add campaigns and as many banners as you need, you can set impression numbers, special URLs, and more.

Contact Management

The Contact Manager helps your users to find the right person and their contact information. It also supports multiple contact forms going to specific individuals as well as groups.

Polls

If you want to find out more about your users, it's easy to create polls with multiple options.

Search

Help navigate users to most popular search items and provide the admin with search statistics.

Web Link Management

Providing link resources for site users is simple and you can sort them into categories, even count every click.

Content Management

Joomla's simplified three-tiered system of articles makes organizing your content a snap. You can organize your content any way you want and not necessarily how it will be on your Web site. Your users can rate articles, e-mail them to a friend, or automatically save a PDF (with UTF-8 support for all languages). Administrators can archive content for safekeeping, hiding it from site visitors.

On public Web sites, built-in e-mail cloaking protects email addresses from spambots.

Creating content is simple with the WYSIWYG editor, giving even novice users the ability to combine text, images in an attractive way. Once you've created your articles, there are a number of pre-installed modules to show the most popular articles, latest new items, newsflashes, related articles, and more.

Syndication and Newsfeed Management

With Joomla, it's easy to syndicate your site content, allowing your users to subscribe to new content in their favorite RSS reader. It's equally easy to integrate RSS feeds from other sources and aggregate them all on your site.

Menu Manager

The Menu Manager allows you to create as many menus and menu items as you need. You can structure your menu hierarchy (and nested menu items) completely independent of your content structure. Put one menu in multiple places and in any style you want; use rollovers, dropdown, flyouts and just about any other navigation system you can think of. Also automatic breadcrumbs are generated to help navigate your site users.

Template Management

Templates in Joomla are a powerful way to make your site look exactly the way you want and either use a single template for the entire site or a separate template for each site section. The level of visual control goes a step further with powerful template overrides, allowing you to customize each part of your pages.

Integrated Help System

Joomla has a built-in help section to assist users with finding what they need. A glossary explains the terms in plain English, a version checker makes sure you're using the latest version, a system information tool helps you troubleshoot, and, if all else fails, links to a wealth of online resources for additional help and support.

System Features

Speedy page loads are possible with page caching, granular-level module caching, and GZIP page compression. If your system administrator needs to troubleshoot an issue, debugging mode and error reporting are invaluable.

The FTP Layer allows file operations (like installing Extensions) without having to make all the folders and files writable, making your site administrator's life easier and increasing the security of your site. Administrators quickly and efficiently communicate with users one-on-one through private messaging or all site users via the mass mailing system.

Web Services

With Web services, you can use Remote Procedure Calls (via HTTP and XML). You can also integrate XML-RPC services with the Blogger and Joomla APIs.

Powerful Extensibility

These are just some of the basic Joomla features and the real power is in the way you customize Joomla. Visit the Joomla Extensions Directory to see thousands of ways to enhance Joomla to suit your needs.

4. What is the difference between a static and dynamic website?

Comparison Point	Static Website	Dynamic Website
Change content	Only a website designer with the right skills and applications can update the website.	Anyone with basic computing skills and a web enabled browser can manage the site.
Time	You have to wait until your web designer is ready willing and able to make your changes.	You can make changes 24/7 365 days a year - for free!
Site wide changes	These can be very costly on depending on how the site was built. Changing something like the menu usually means downloading the entire site, changing every page, checking it all then uploading the whole site again.	Site wide changes can be done easily on a dynamic site since on a good CMS like Joomla the whole site is based on one 'template'. Changing a menu item can literally take just seconds and is done purely in the admin are on the web.
Remote changes	What if you are away from the office and need to urgently change something on your site? You'll have to hope your web designer is available.	You can make changes yourself from anywhere with internet access!
Add functionality	If you need extra functionality for example an online shop it's a tricky long drawn out process to add one to a static site and sometimes not possible depending on your hosting.	If you are using a popular CMS like Joomla adding a shop can be done anytime without much hassle and it will all be within your websites current styling. With Joomla there are over 4500 extensions already made which you can easily add to your website.
Expansion	So you need new areas on your websites with a few new pages? Oh dear it's going to take a bit of time for sure!	Adding new pages is easy, you can do it yourself or your web designer can do it for you in small amount of time.
Cost	Cheap to start with depending on the size of the site.	The initial setup cost can sometimes be more although as time goes on dynamic sites are actually faster to setup from the beginning and therefore cheaper.
Security	Static website can be more secure since they have far less code - less potential breaking points. Although the benefits of hacking a static site are minimal since a static site is usually very small in terms of content.	All little less secure than a static site due to being very popular. With a little extra effort though this can be easily overcome for most scenarios.

What is Graphic Design?

From AIGA Career Guide

Graphic Design

Suppose you want to announce or sell something, amuse or persuade someone, explain a complicated system or demonstrate a process. In other words, you have a message you want to communicate. How do you “send” it? You could tell people one by one or broadcast by radio or loudspeaker. That’s verbal communication. But if you use any visual medium at all - if you make a poster; type a letter; create a business logo, a magazine ad, or an album cover; even make a computer printout - you are using a form of visual communication called graphic design.

Graphic designers work with drawn, painted, photographed, or computer-generated images (pictures), but they also design the letterforms that make up various typefaces found in movie credits and TV ads; in books, magazines, and menus; and even on computer screens. Designers create, choose, and organize these elements - typography, images, and the so-called “white space” around them - to communicate a message. Graphic design is a part of your daily life. From humble things like gum wrappers to huge things like billboards to the T-shirt you’re wearing, graphic design informs, persuades, organizes, stimulates, locates, identifies, attracts attention and provides pleasure.

Graphic design is a creative process that combines art and technology to communicate ideas. The designer works with a variety of communication tools in order to convey a message from a client to a particular audience. The main tools are image and typography.

Image-based design

Designers develop images to represent the ideas their clients want to communicate. Images can be incredibly powerful and compelling tools of communication, conveying not only information but also moods and emotions. People respond to images instinctively based on their personalities, associations, and previous experience. For example, you know that a chili pepper is hot, and this knowledge in combination with the image creates a visual pun.

In the case of image-based design, the images must carry the entire message; there are few if any words to help. These images may be photographic, painted, drawn, or graphically rendered in many different ways. Image-based design is employed when the designer determines that, in a particular case, a picture is indeed worth a thousand words.

Type-based design

In some cases, designers rely on words to convey a message, but they use words differently from the ways writers do. To designers, what the words look like is as important as their meaning. The visual forms, whether typography (communication designed by means of the printed word) or handmade lettering, perform many communication functions. They can arrest your attention on a poster, identify the product name on a package or a truck, and present running text as the typography in a book does. Designers are experts at presenting information in a visual form in print or on film, packaging, or signs.

When you look at an “ordinary” printed page of running text, what is involved in designing such a seemingly simple page? Think about what you would do if you were asked to redesign the page. Would you change the typeface or type size? Would you divide the text into two narrower columns? What about the margins and the spacing between the paragraphs and lines? Would you indent the paragraphs or begin them with decorative lettering? What other kinds of treatment might you give the page number? Would you change the boldface terms, perhaps using italic or underlining? What other changes might you consider, and how would they affect the way the reader reacts to the content? Designers evaluate the message and the audience for type-based design in order to make these kinds of decisions.

Image and type

Designers often combine images and typography to communicate a client’s message to an audience. They explore the creative possibilities presented by words (typography) and images (photography, illustration, and fine art). It is up to the designer not only to find or create appropriate letterforms and images but also to establish the best balance between them.

Designers are the link between the client and the audience. On the one hand, a client is often too close to the message to understand various ways in which it can be presented. The audience, on the other hand, is often too broad to have any direct impact on how a communication is presented. What’s more, it is usually difficult to make the audience a part of the creative process. Unlike client and audience, graphic designers learn how to construct a message and how to present it successfully. They work with the client to understand the content and the purpose of the message. They often collaborate with market researchers and other specialists to understand the nature of the audience. Once a design concept is chosen, the designers work with illustrators and photographers as well as with typesetters and printers or other production specialists to create the final design product.

Symbols, logos and logotypes

Symbols and logos are special, highly condensed information forms or identifiers. Symbols are abstract representation of a particular idea or identity. The CBS “eye” and the active “television” are symbolic forms, which we learn to recognize as representing a particular concept or company. Logotypes are corporate identifications based on a special typographical word treatment. Some identifiers are hybrid, or combinations of symbol and logotype. In order to create these identifiers, the designer must have a clear vision of the corporation or idea to be represented and of the audience to which the message is directed.

Graphic Design: A Career Guide and Education Directory
Edited by Sharon Helmer Poggenpohl
Copyright 1993
The American Institute of Graphic Arts