Joomla 1.5
Joomla, like Drupal, is a very popular open-source (free) Content Management System
(CMS) currently available that can power: community portals, discussion forums,
corporate sites, personal sites, blogs, e-commerce, and more.
Who’s using Joomla:
MTV Networks Quizilla (Social networking) - http://www.quizilla.com
IHOP (Restaurant chain) - http://www.ihop.com
Harvard University (Educational) - http://gsas.harvard.edu
Citibank (Financial institution intranet) - Not publicly accessible
The Green Maven (Eco-resources) - http://www.greenmaven.com
Outdoor Photographer (Magazine) - http://www.outdoorphotographer.com
PlayShakespeare.com (Cultural) - http://www.playshakespeare.com
Senso Interiors (Furniture design) - http://www.sensointeriors.co.za
(and many many more)
Cost:
Just like Drupal, Joomla Hosting Providers charge approximately $5 - $10 / month for the
type of Service required by OMC.
Feature List:
Free / open source – Yes!
Makes distributed content creation as easy and user -friendly as possible –
Yes!
The page editor that comes out of the box isn't very user friendly but I installed
"JCE editor" into Joomla which is much more user friendly. Users can also use
their own web page editors, including MS-WORD, and copy/paste into Joomla
pages
There are various other Joomla editors we can implement and test with as well
Out of the box I couldn’t find a way for non-administrators to author new material
but I installed a component so that authors, editors, and publishers can upload,
edit, and approve pages, without having to login to the administrator panel.
There is a nuance having to do with menu items and new content. The default
menu system in Joomla requires an administrator to configure the links in the
menu which point to content pages. Our goal is to allow individual teams to be
able to add new content for approval and once it is approved it would be available
automatically in the menu system. I believe we can accomplish this but it will
require testing with other menu systems. The worse case is that an administrator
will have to add new menu items for new pages from time to time. I do not expect
this to be a huge problem because once our main skeleton is defined I think
adding new menu items will be limited.
Security features (authorized users, ability to limit which pages a user can
change) – Yes!
There are two major groups of users: Manager/Administrator/Super
Administrator and Author/Editor/Publishers
Structural, navigational, template, and plug-in/module changes should be
made by Manager/Administrator/Super Administrator; adding, changing,
and approving articles should be made by Author, Editors, and Publishers;
o Registered User: Normal visitors who register at the site. Can view Menu
Items that have Access Level of Registered. Cannot edit or submit
articles.
o Author: Can submit new articles for approval in the front end only. A
Publisher or higher must approve. Cannot edit existing articles.
o Editor: Can submit new articles or edit existing articles from the front
end only. A Publisher or higher must approve.
o Publisher: Can submit, edit, or publish articles from the front end only.
o Manager, Administrator and Super Administrator: Can do all of the
above plus can log into the back end admin portal for full control
including changing templates and adding plugins and modules (forms,
calendars, RSS feeds, etc…)
Recommend configuring RSS feeds, which is built in to Joomla so that certain
individuals can get notified when content is changed.
Approval process (new/modified content is not rolled out until it has been
approved by authorized people) – Yes!
Articles remain unpublished until a publisher approves them from
administrator portal or from the front-end component I installed
Data driven content… ability to control content with a database behind the
scenes (e.g. calendar of events etc). – Yes!
Runs on mySQL database; this would not be much of a concern if we
decide to have our Joomla installation hosted; it could become
problematic in the event we decide to house and manage the servers
ourselves which doesn’t seem to make much sense based on the hosting
options available and the price and benefit of having hosting with expert
support.
Ease of system/administrative maintenance – Yes!
Easy to administer via a web browser including easy
search/find/installation of plugins and control of appearance, structure,
and navigation
Provides lots of choices and flexible in terms of the appearance, structure,
and navigation of our web site – Yes!
Appearance and structure are very customizable. Navigation is fairly
customizable assuming you stay within the menu system. There are
several menu systems available for different needs, and each is very
customizeable. There are hundreds of pre-made templates for appearance,
style, colors, menu, and page article locations. We can modify the
templates that we download from with the admin portal although some
understanding of HTML is required in order to make any significant
changes. There is also software such as Artiseer to create our own
templates via a WYSIWYG editor
Lots of plug-ins available to add new features (calendar etc) – Yes!
Extensions.joomla.org - Thousands of free extensions; examples ->
o Calendars (dynamic and shared calendars for each Section and/or
Category)
o Newsletters
o Forms (non financial driven forms), Event Registration, Booking and
Reservation
o Group Email Managers
o Reporting
o Service Desk (internal issue tracking, parishioner suggestion box, other
ticket related needs)
o Project and Task Management
o Social Network Links
Ease of publishing and displaying photos – Yes!
Easy for content makers to add images to their pages
In addition there are various add-in modules here specific to displaying
images: http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/photos-a-images
Automated health management features… e.g. automated alert if web site
goes down, scan for broken links and issue alert for broken links, automatic
scan for unwanted content, etc. – Yes!
There are logging capabilities we can incorporate but we should strongly
consider having an outside monitoring software and/or desktop software
for this type of checking.
Ability to search within our web site – Yes!
There are various search modules available for searching within our site
(http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/search-a-indexing)