Joomla - should I love it or hate it?

yeppers ! Joomla rocks

 

You may consider using drupal intead of Joomla but anyway you have to spend sometime over it and learn it. Wordpress is way too easy . The common mistake is that everyone uses joomla and personally i can see if a site uses joomla or not so consider to loose some time wih the interface so you will not obtain a "Joomla like" website...

 

In my opinion, WordPress is far superior......

 

I love joomla. There are alot of extensions that can solve your problem and enhance your website.

 

It works like a charm once you get used to it.

 

I agree with most that Joomla can be complicated at times.

Thought I would give you a link, though.

http://google.com/trends?q=joomla,wordpress,drupal&ctab=0&hl=en


Between Joomla, Wordpress, and Drupal, Joomla is the most popular CMS of the three.

 

I use Joomla 1.5 with sh404SEF plugin for SEO. It was kinda a bitch to set up because I had no prior experience with website development and CMS. However, now that I am somewhat familiar with it I like it because it is easy to find cool and useful extensions. Adding Google Analytics to the site was a complete non-event and only took about two mintues to install and configure because someone had made a nice plugin for it. Haven't tried Wordpress though, maybe it's better.

 

Hey, I feel your pain. I love Joomla... but feel your pain.

Remember, anything beyond banging out simple HTML files does have a learning curve. When it comes to what CMS is "best", I always ask, "best for what?". There is no one magic CMS for every situation. For some things, WordPress is probably better (as in easier to set up, learn, etc.). On the other hand, if your site will be member based with a lot of social networking and other related activities, that's Joomla or Drupal's core functionality, and IMHO either one is better suited to that kind of site than WordPress.

Again, no value judgment here, just saying that there is no such thing as "one-size-fits-all" and that every CMS or blog software does indeed have a learning curve.

 

I've been using it long enough that it is "intutive for me" ... I had forgotten that I had a learning curve. Let's just say, IMO, it's been worth it. I love it.

 

One great thing about Joomla is the number of extensions that are available. Since I haven't used any other CMS, is there anything out there that even comes close?

 

It is said that Joomla is user friendly and easy to use...and I do agree. But not if you are a beginner, it took me a whole week to get the hang of it and successfully set a site up looking the way I like. What you need to do is read up on a few tutorials. After you know the ins and out of it, you will realize that it has a lot of potential over wordpress and static websites.

It took a lot out of me to learn Joomla since I'm so used to coding everything manually, but overall, I'm quite impress with the turnout.

 

I was an old hand code web guy. I always used a text editor. Well, I needed to build a site for my wife, one that she could update and add to. But she has no html experience at all. So, I installed Joomla. Trying to build a site with it at first was really frustrating to me, because it seemed learning and using the cms was harder than hand coding for certain things. But, I got the hang of it and I must say, I have thought to do things with it... and because of using it that I had not though to do before. Plus my wife can update her site with the built in editor, no problems. Now I need to dissect the sef addons to make it work with virtuemart, and to take care of duplicate url's. I think, I could better set categories and sections up now, seeing how this works in practice and what can be done with it. I think it's worthwhile. I would build a test site first, and make your mistakes there, only building your real site after you really understand the cms.

 

I don't love Joomla...

I try it once, but I think it needs a little bit knowing PHP and SQL if you want edit design and other, but if I went to learn PHP and SQL, I will create my own CMS sistem...

and a CMS on Joomla... it's a little bit confused... i create a new page and insert link to it in navigation bar, but i don't know how to edit this new page ( add pictures, links, google adsense etc. ), so it requires PHP and SQL knowledge...

so, i started to learn PHP and SQL and i started creating my own CMS...

 

Wordpress is good for some, joomla for others and drupal for others. It all depends on what kind of site you want to have. Joomla does have a bit of a steep learning curve but it is very very powerful tool and can be overkill. I have several sites that use joomla and sef urls are not a problem. Many nice plugins. I use Drupal for a couple sites which I feel is better suited for community based sites.

 

I love the abilities of joomla, yet I find myself struggling with optimizing the load times. In 1.0, the load times aren't as bad as 1.5. But it seems that for joomla it is a lot more work setting up than wordpress. I'm now playing with wordpress as a substitute for smaller sites. If wordpress had options for more menus and page organization, then we'd be set.

 

I find it very easy to use once you get used to it. Especially for dynamic content and changing layouts in seconds. As far as SEO is concerned, fill in the metadata blocks on each of your articles and they should be by the search engines.

Yes it's frustrating to learn but once you get the hang of it, I really like it!

 

I believe that Joomla is good when you get the hang of it, but now i started to creating my own CMS sistems for my sites...