Joomla FAQ
- Joomla is free. Does it mean I have to surrender what I do?
- No professional company would build based on Joomla, right?
- Why does this other web design company advise me against using Joomla?
- I need something secure. Is Joomla more secure than commercial CMS?
- But Joomla is free. Nothing is free in this world, right?
- What is Joomla anyway?
- What's a content management system (CMS)?
Joomla is free. Does it mean I have to surrender what I do?
No. The Joomla code is free but everything else is not. Your theme or look and feel is yours, your content and images are yours. In fact any extensions including pluggins, modules, and components are yours and nobody can take them away from you. What’s even better, any extensions you create, you can actually sell or give away as a community service. It definitely increases your PR.
No professional company would build based on Joomla, right?
Wrong. If it was like that, the following multi-million, some multi-billion, companies would use commercial applications:
- Angelica (Publicly-traded health services company)
- Avis (The car rental company in Nicaragua)
- Burger King (For a special promotion)
- CW.com (Main corporate site)
- Danone (A lot more than just yogurts)
- Derbi (Motorcycle maker - part of Piaggio)
- English National Ballet (England's flagship ballet company)
- IBS Software (Software for airlines)
- IT Wire (Most popular IT site in Australia)
- Jetstar (Airline owned by Quantas)
- Latvia (The country's official site)
- Mansfield Oil (Large U.S. Gasoline Distributor)
- Mistubishi Venezuela and Poland (The car manufacturer)
- Mountain West Sports (Cable TV sports channel owned by CBS)
- Nikon Instruments (High-quality technical products)
- Olympus (Camera maker's Australian site)
- Peg Perego (Italian child accessories)
- Porsche (Brazilian site)
- Quizilla (Heavilly modded Joomla site owned by MTV)
- Scandinavian Airlines (Official crew guide)
- Schneider Electric (World leader in power and control solutions)
- Sprint (Customer feedback site for cell-phone company)
- TNA Wrestling (Pro-wrestling organization)
- Toshiba (Greek site for the electronics giant)
- UNRIC (Branch of the United Nations)
- Vodafone (Cell-phone company's Icelandic site)
- Visat (Danish site for Scandanavian TV and telecommunications company)
- Yamaha (Musical instrument company's Mexican site)
Why does this other web design company advise me against using Joomla?
The answer is greed. If these guys are knowledgeable and they know about Joomla, then they are just trying to squeeze you for money. Why? Well, they probably want to sell you their services for a lot more than they are worth, sometimes thousands of dollars. Some of my clients have paid over 150K on unnecessary web work! (Although I should mention the companies they’ve worked with here, I won’t out of respect). So be careful and always ask for a second opinion.
I need something secure. Is Joomla more secure than commercial CMS?
Actually, the opposite is true! Joomla is continuously updated for security threats so the code is always secure. What you really need for increased security is for your web developers to follow best security practices. This goes for every application other. Proprietary code is very reactive and slow to changes. This is because small web companies do not spend enough on R&D.
But Joomla is free. Nothing is free in this world, right?
Did you know 85% of the corporate websites out there are built using free code including PHP and MySQL? The fact that Joomla is a free code doesn’t mean that the Joomla team works for free. Joomla gets plenty of funds from companies, governments, education facilities, and people like you and me. There are also plenty of good companies set up around Joomla. In fact, it’s a whole industry that generates millions for the good of the economy. Remember, the code is free, everything else isn’t.
What is Joomla anyway?
Joomla is an award-winning content management system (CMS), which enables users to build Websites and powerful online applications. Many aspects, including its ease-of-use and extensibility, have made Joomla the most popular Web site software available. Best of all, Joomla is an open source solution that is freely available to everyone.
What's a content management system (CMS)?
A content management system is software that keeps track of every piece of content on your Website much like your local public library keeps track of books and stores them. Content can be simple text, photos, music, video, documents, or just about anything you can think of. A major advantage of using a CMS is that it requires almost no technical skill or knowledge to manage. Since the CMS manages all your content, you don't have to.
