Joomla! is used for multipurpose web sites ranging from personal blogs to enterprise portals. It has almost every functionality needed for building a customized web site that suits both an individual's needs, as well as enterprise's needs. Although Joomla! can be used as a blog, WordPress, or other popular blog engines, are usually used for personal blogs or blog style web sites. Here are some examples where Joomla! can be used and is also most suitable for:
- Corporate intranets, web sites, or portals: Joomla! has excellent content management functionalities, which can enhance building corporate web site or portals, and help update and manage a site's content. Joomla!'s WYSIWYG editing screen allows even non-technical persons to add, edit, and update web contents at anytime, from anywhere, by just using a web browser.
- Non-profit and organizational web sites: Joomla! can be a great tool for a non-profit organization's web site, as it gives freedom to customize the CMS and build it as they need. As Joomla! is open source and free, it also helps the non-profit organizations to minimize investment in building and maintaining web sites.
- Small business web sites: Small businesses need web sites to advertise their presence to their customers. However, they usually need to do so with minimum investment in technology adoption. Free and open source Joomla! can help them jumpstart building their web site, without investing in highly priced commercial content management systems, or developing their own CMS.
- Government, school, college, and charity web sites: Joomla! can be the best choice for government organizations, schools, colleges, and charity organizations as it is open source, and they have freedom to adopt it to their context. It also saves money for buying CMS.
- Personal web sites or family homepages: In addition to company portals or online commerce, Joomla! can also be used as a simple personal blog or home page. Its blogging functionality enables it to be a primary choice for blogging software. Similarly, you can use it as a common web site for your whole family.
- Community-based portals: Many community web sites are built on Joomla!. Joomla! has some excellent components, such as Community Builder, for building and managing a community web site. Users can register and express their views in a Joomla! community portal by blogging, posting to forums, exchanging personal messages, instant messaging, and even by building their own homepages.
- Magazines and newspapers: Joomla! can be used for building web sites for daily newspapers and magazines. There are some components which help Joomla! turn into a newspaper or magazine site. Its design flexibility allows Joomla! to be used for such sites.
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Online commerce: Joomla! can also be used as an online commerce site. There are many components which enable Joomla! to serve as an online shop, and implement other e-commerce functionalities. This book discusses details of implementing e-commerce functionalities in Joomla!. The following screenshot shows an online shop for selling books:
- Multimedia Gallery: Joomla! can build stunning photo galleries, multimedia sharing, and podcasting sites. Several Joomla! components allow you to build a photo gallery, implement podcasting, and make your site like the YouTube video sharing site.
In fact, the possibilities for using Joomla! have no limit. You can use it for almost any purpose with some design modification and programming some code. There are already a range of components available for extending Joomla!'s functionalities, which can be used to build:
- Document management systems
- Image and multimedia galleries
- Business directories
- E-commerce and shopping carts
- Forums and chat software
- Calendar and event management software
- Banner advertising, data collection, and reporting tools
- Personal blogging and newsletter system
There are many other possibilities, like integrating some other open source applications to it, and thus, enhances its functionalities.
Note
You can learn more about extending Joomla! and adding its functionalities by reading the following books published by Packt:
- Building Websites with Joomla! 1.5 by Hagen Graf
- Learning Joomla! 1.5 Extension Development: Creating Modules, Components, and Plugins with PHP by Joseph L. LeBlanc
- Joomla! Template Design: Create your own professional-quality templates with this fast, friendly guide by Tessa Blakeley Silver