Joomla 20 reasons to switch from wordpress

Discover the power, features and flexibility of the CMS that can provide an alternative to WordPress

Joomla is one of the most innovative and most storied open source projects around. With origins as far back as 2000, Joomla was at the forefront of many innovations in the PHP/MySQL space that includes WordPress, Drupal, Magento and so many others. It remains the second most popular content management system (CMS), behind only WordPress. Now with the development of Joomla 3, there is even more reason to get to know the service. Joomla 3 is a fascinating evolution, as it was the first CMS to be completely responsive for both visitors and administrators. This is because the Joomla team has adopted the Bootstrap framework and also the LESS preprocessor. The use of Bootstrap and LESS makes Joomla 3 attractive for front-end designers, but it also makes it much easer for developers to create consistent interfaces for their code. Besides, a lot of work has gone into your initial experience with Joomla 3; the installation process is beautifully fast and you’re provided with a variety of sample websites to choose from. While you’ve almost certainly used Joomla at some point, if you haven’t used it in a while, Joomla 3 provides plenty of reasons to give it a fresh look. It really is possible to get a Joomla 3 website up and running in no time at all – but if you still need more encouragement and convincing, we are going to walk you through just some of the reasons to consider making the jump from WordPress.

Find out how to download, upload and install Joomla – you can complete the entire process in just six steps

DOWNLOAD AND INSTALL

1) Download Joomla 3

www.joomla.org/download.html is the place you’ll need to go in order to download the latest release of Joomla 3. This is the recommended version for new sites, although also available on this page is Joomla 2. 5, the older, but still supported, version. Get started by clicking the blue ‘Download Joomla 3. 2’ button.

2) Upload Joomla 3

When you download Joomla you’ll get a file with a name similar to ‘Joomla_3. 2.1-Stable-Full_Package’. Extract this file and check to make sure that you see the same files and folders inside as in the image to the left. Upload these files to your server or localhost. It is worth noting here that you will need a PHP or ISS server.

3) Start the Joomla 3 installation

Visit the location of your uploaded files and you’ll see an installation screen. This is first of three steps in the installation process. If you’re not using English for your site, you can change your language here. Simply enter the name of your site, plus your admin account details. Click Next to move forward with the installation.

4) The Joomla 3 database
You’ll need a MySQL, MySQLi or PostgreSQL database to install Joomla. Enter your database’s host name, username, password and name in here and Joomla will then automatically generate a random table prefix to make life that little bit more difficult for hackers. Click Next in order to move forward in the installation process.

5) Final installation check

The third and final installation screen offers you the choice of different samples. Hover over each sample data set to get an explanation. We’re opting for Blog English for this article. Lower down the page is an overview of your configuration settings. Joomla also checks to make sure that your server is properly set up. If anything needs correcting, it will be marked in red. Now all you have to do is click Install

6) Installation complete

Here you should see a progress bar before reaching a ‘Congratulations!’ screen. For security reasons we need to remove all the installation process we just used, so click the ‘Remove Installation’ folder. Next, click Site to visit the front of your newly installed Joomla site.

15 TOP FEATURES

Joomla has an outstanding set of features. Here we reveal exactly what makes the CMS so special

The basics of using Joomla

Now we’ll demonstrate how to view the visitor and administrator areas of your Joomla site, so you can get going as quickly as possible

1) Your new Joomla site

Because of our choice of Blog English for sample data, the Joomla site is set up just like a blog. You will see that there are four explanatory posts on the homepage, simply click on the title of any post to see the full content. There’s also a sidebar with typical blog features such a list of Recent Posts, a Blog Roll and a list of Most Read Posts.

2) Joomla gone mobile

As we mentioned earlier, Joomla now uses the Bootstrap framework – have a go at shrinking your browser to see how Joomla reacts on smaller screens. You should find that the search box moves under the title, the image shrinks effectively and the sidebar slides neatly under homepage posts.

3) The Joomla admin interface

The admin interface has been completely redesigned for Joomla 3 and is now completely mobile friendly. To access it, add the word /administrator/ to the URL of your site. For example, visit example.com/administrator/. The main toolbar across the top of the screen contains everything you need to manage your site, while the Control Panel you see after first logging in contains useful shortcuts and information based on that main toolbar.

Multilingual websites

Joomla makes it really easy to create multilingual websites, without requiring any add-ons.

You won’t need any complicated add-ons to be able to build multilingual sites with Joomla as during the installation process you have the chance to install other languages in addition to English – in fact, there are over 60 languages for you to choose from, and it’s worth experimenting

Websites can take many different approaches to creating multilingual sites and each approach is better suited to some sites than others. Here’s an overview of how Joomla approaches translation: let’s imagine you have an English and Spanish site. When you write a new article, you can label that article as ‘English’, ‘Spanish’ or ‘All’. If you choose ‘All’, this article will show whether someone is viewing the site in English or Spanish. If you choose ‘English’, you will then have two choices.

You can create a translated version of this article and label it as Spanish. Then all you have to do is click a button to link the two articles together. Or, the other option is choosing not to translate the article. This is ideal for sites that don’t have exactly the same content available in all languages.
Overall, we’ve had great success with Joomla multilingual sites. They’re increasingly quick to set up, easy to understand and simple to manage.

Rapid application development framework

Joomla has a new rapid application development (RAD) framework built on top of the core code

Joomla has a new rapid application development (RAD) framework built on top of Joomla’s core code. This is incredibly solid work that has been used by a group of extension developers for their own work, before its inclusion in the Joomla core.

There are several major advantages to using this framework rather than interfacing more directly with Joomla. First of all, the RAD framework builds on the Joomla platform instead of simply replacing it, so it’s going to be easy to work with if you have ever written Joomla extensions before. This also means that you can start being productive from the very first day you use it.

Second, when writing extensions for Joomla, the RAD framework will require up to 50 percent less code. Most of the extensions built with the framework use less than half the files and code that they did previously. On top of that, with an added framework, it’s much easier to maintain both backwards and forwards compatibility for your code.

Finally, the framework adds several important features that would be hard to include in the Joomla codebase itself. The RAD framework relies heavily on DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) principles. It uses both Bootstrap and jQuery and it provides web services, integrated JSON support and is very close to being RESTful

Install from Web

The Install from Web feature is Joomla’s version of the App Store – lots of features are just a click away

The Install from Web feature is perhaps the most popular new feature in Joomla in recent years. Essentially, the feature is similar to Apple’s App Store and Google Play, but for Joomla extensions instead.

Inside the administrator area of your Joomla site, you can browse for and install any available Joomla extension. There are around 8,000 extensions available, and Install from Web allows you to see descriptions, screenshots, reviews and ratings for all of them. You’ll find dozens of photo galleries, shopping carts, calendars and extra features available for quick installation.

For many years Joomla has cultivated a directory that was called the Joomla Extensions Directory (JED). Every extension that was worth using was included here. It is regularly scanned for problem extensions and the Joomla security team removes any software that has reported, but unpatched, security holes. Joomla Extensions Directory has been leveraged to provide the basis of this Install from Web feature.

In short, if you decide to use Install from Web you know that you’ll be getting software that’s easy to install, has been tested by hundreds of users and has no known security flaws.

Versioning

Keep on top of all your changes and updates with the invaluable version control feature

Do you work with clumsy people? Are you sometimes clumsy yourself? If you answered ‘Yes’ to either question, then one key Joomla feature is particularly perfect for you.

Versions is a security feature for your content that allows you to keep a copy of your Joomla articles every time you save a change. The Versions button appears in the toolbar at the top of the articles screen. Click the Versions button and you'll be able to browse and compare all of the saved versions. Every time you save your article, a new version will be accessible via this pop-up window.

This Versions feature is especially easy to browse because of its great visuals. Joomla has a clear colour scheme for changes: text that has been removed is marked in red and text that has been added will be marked in green.

Additionally, Joomla doesn't just store all of your content, but also the settings for your articles. For example, if you change the author or publication date of an article, Joomla will remember the previous setting and allow you to roll back should you need to.

If you have a large site and are worried about the size of your database with tens of thousands of revisions, Joomla allows you to set a maximum number of versions to be stored.

Design overrides

Almost all of the Joomla core layouts can be overridden with a single click

Overrides are an essential feature for most content management systems (CMSs) as many have a default look and feel that good designers want to have the option to change. However, because CMSs need to be updated regularly, you can’t hack the core files or you’ll lose your changes with every update.

Enter overrides, which allow you a safe space to apply your changes without any risk of deletion. This makes a powerful and easy override system a very valuable tool for designers.

With some CMSs, it can be really hard to understand what files can be overriden, where you need to place the new override files and what naming system you need to use. With Joomla it’s all very easy. Joomla does all the work of finding, locating and naming the override files.

Inside Joomla’s Template Manager, click the Create Overrides tab and you’ll be able to see every possible file that can be overriden. Once you’ve chosen the file to override, click on it and Joomla will automatically create the new override file in the correct location. The whole Joomla core can be overridden and, because Joomla has supported overrides for many years, nearly all extensions allow you to override their layouts.

Mobile-friendly

Joomla is the first CMS to be completely responsive for both visitors and administrators

If you’re reading this magazine, you don’t need us to give you the hard sell regarding the benefits of creating a mobile-friendly website. Thankfully, Joomla 3 makes mobile-friendly easy by being completely responsive by default. It was the first CMS to be completely responsive for both visitors and administrators.

The Joomla frontend uses the Bootstrap framework to make responsive design easier. The developers are aware that a lot of people love Bootstrap and, even if you’re not a full-time designer, Bootstrap puts a lot of power at your fingertips. However, you can also skip Bootstrap if you prefer to design with another framework, such as Zurb Foundation for example.

The Joomla administrator area also uses Bootstrap so you can edit your site on the move. Perhaps best of all, the mobile version of the Joomla administrator area isn’t dumbed down – anything you can do on the desktop can be done on your phone or tablet.

However, some important areas are simplified. For example, Joomla relies on the new mobile features in the TinyMCE editor to provide a simple content editing experience. On your desktop, you’ll see 50 to 60 formatting buttons, whereas on your phone, you’ll just see five or six.

Access control

Make use of Joomla’s powerful and flexible access control system

If you’re going to use software in an enterprise environment, you need some kind of access control. If you’re going to have customers accessing their orders on your site, you need some kind of access control. If you’re going to use software for a membership site, you need some kind of access control. Finally, if you have more than one or two people running your site… you know where this is going.

WordPress is brilliant software, but by default it provides really quite limited access control and it can also be difficult to customise. Out of the box, Joomla has a powerful and flexible access control system that works in two ways, using groups and access levels.

Groups are the more flexible system. People can be placed into multiple groups depending on their roles. For example, one user might be placed into the ‘Forum moderator’ and ‘Content editor’ groups. Another user might be in the ‘Site administrator’ and ‘Technical support’ groups.

Access levels are more broad – essentially, they are groups of groups. For example, you might create an access level called ‘Registered users’ and include all users in all groups who have an account. Or, you might create an access level called ‘Staff ’ and include all users in all groups who work for you.

Security and two-factor authentication

To help keep your site safe from hacking, Joomla now has a strong passwords feature and requires a two-step sign in

Over the last few months, Joomla has really focused heavily on improving security. One of the most useful additions was two-factor authentication. Joomla now ships with the integration to Google Authenticator and YubiKey.

Once the two-factor authentication feature is turned on, it can be applied to any user account. Each user can go to their account, click the two-factor authentication tab and get set up. When you use Google Authenticator for your Joomla sites, when you try to log in from a new location, you’ll need to verify your identity. If you don’t want to tie your accounts to Google, you can the Yubikey USB drive.

Joomla has also launched a strong passwords feature as hackers have been able to break older forms of password encryption. As a result, Joomla enhanced the encryption of all its password hashing and storage using BCrypt.

Joomla is also raising the bar on PHP version usage. Many people are still using Joomla, WordPress and other platforms on old, unsafe versions of PHP. As a result, Joomla has just set its minimum required version of PHP to 5. 3.10.

Flexible core searching

Be sure you make use of Smart Search, which is the most powerful default search feature available in a major CMS

A lot of CMSs ship with rudimentary core searching features, so many larger sites must rely on external search platforms such as Apache Solr. Joomla ships with Smart Search, which allows you to index all the content on your site and perform fast, targeted searches. After running the first indexation, Joomla will then index your content automatically. There’s no need to run a cron job or spend time maintaining the search index, as with some other search tools. You can also drill down through your content based on authors, categories, languages, type of content and much more.

Smart Search also offers a variety of ways to weight your search results, so you can put more emphasis on titles, body text, meta data, URLs and matching text. It is also possible to create your own custom content maps to create pre-defined search options – so you could let people search for all content created in 2013, or find all the content that was published on your blog in Spanish. It really is an amazingly powerful tool.

LESS

Joomla ships with excellent support for the LESS preprocessor that makes your CSS much more efficient

CSS preprocessors are really popular, and one of the most commonly used is LESS. LESS isn’t designed to replace CSS but it does give you lots of extra functionality such as variables, mixins, operations and functions. LESS basically allows you to streamline exactly how you create and manage CSS files.

Imagine being able to define a colour once and then use it in multiple places. Imagine being able to create rounded corners without needing to remember the styles for all the different browsers. Imagine being able to create gradients in CSS by telling it the colours you want to use.

LESS is a relatively new preprocessor, being only about four years old. It has its roots in the Ruby programming language but is now used more widely and is now based on JavaScript.

It’s often compared to SASS, which you can use SASS in your Joomla projects. You don’t have to use either LESS or SASS, it’s just Joomla has gone with LESS as a default.

All of Joomla’s Bootstrap CSS files are already complied with LESS. Joomla also has a feature in the admin area, which allows you to easily compile your own CSS files.

Bootstrap

Joomla provides Bootstrap, the most popular CSS framework, as the default option

One of the most common problems with CMSs is that so many designers and developers have their own unique styles.

Your core files will be created by one group of developers. Your site’s theme will come from another designer. Your site’s shopping cart may come from another group using a completely different framework. Your photo gallery’s developer will have another approach to CSS entirely. By the time you have added in all of your site’s desired features, you may find yourself wrestling with at least half a dozen different frameworks and approaches, which is not ideal.

Joomla has tried something different. Bootstrap is the most widely used CSS framework in the world. It’s also the most starred project on GitHub and has a huge user base. As a result, Joomla decided to make Bootstrap part of the core. It’s not essential to use Bootstrap (you can disable it if you wish), but it is highly recommended.

This has a variety of benefits. Once you add CSS to your site, there’s a good chance it will work everywhere, from your shopping cart to your photo gallery. There are also fewer conflicts between different frameworks and, the user interfaces for most third-party features are far better and more consistent than they had been previously.

Front-end editing

Finding and editing your site from the frontend is made as easy as possible with Joomla

When normal people are working on a CMS site, it can often be quite difficult for them to understand exactly what it is that they need to edit – that block on the right-hand side... is it a plug-in? A widget? A module?

It can also be hard for users to accurately preview their content before publishing, finding that it looks great when they write the article in the administrator, but it looks a mess when they publish it.
We mentioned before that Joomla has many of the strongest features that can be found in WordPress. Well, when it comes to front-end site management, it starts to more closely resemble Drupal. In both Joomla and Drupal, you can hover over almost any item on a page and see an Edit button. Whether it’s an article, a block or a menu, your users are only ever one click away from being able to edit anything they need to.

Joomla has fully featured frontend article editing. When you’re editing content you’ll see the full WYSIWYG toolbar and it’ll be directly inside the content area, with no pop-ups or admin features. So, you’ll be able to see what the content will look like when you publish it.

Multiple categorisation options

Joomla has a content categorisation system that is very similar to WordPress

If you’ve used WordPress, you’ll feel very much at home with Joomla’s categorisation system. In almost every way, the two systems are identical, with Joomla using both categories and tags to organise content.

As with WordPress. Categories are the main organisational structure for content. where you can create and organise the categories as well as arrange them into a multi-level hierarchy. The categories you use are often responsible for defining the URL structure for the site.

Tags are more free-form. As with WordPress, they’re used to create a looser association between content. Tags are able to join multiple types of content. For example, you could link content articles, RSS feeds, contact pages and much more with the same tag.

Both categories and tags can be used for front-end presentation. You can easily create a menu link to show your visitors all the content that has a category, a tag or multiple tags attached.

If you combine Tags and Categories with the Smart Search feature we mentioned earlier, you can really get creative with the ways in which you present content. Want to show all the content on your blog that was written in French and tagged with ‘Paris’? You can do that with the Joomla core. It is a brilliant option to have on hand.

User-friendly and accessible admin

The Joomla admin area has been refreshed with Bootstrap

The Joomla admin area has evolved slowly over the last eight years. It is still recognisable from the original version 1, but there have been several iterations over the years to make it radically overhauled.

The new Joomla admin is completely responsive, thanks to Bootstrap. The content management system now has a visually striking colour scheme, with the most important action buttons being much more clearly marked in strong greens, reds and blues, signifying a clear visual hierarchy of importance.

The use of Bootstrap has also led to a visual consistency with thirdparty extensions. If you’ve ever used a busy WordPress site, you know how messy things can become with the visual clutter. The Joomla admin now largely presents a consistent, clean and intuitive experience.

Joomla is also a leading CMS in presenting an accessible experience. There’s a default admin template called Hathor, which is accessible using the WCAG 2.0 AA guidelines. More governments, educational institutions, and even companies are requiring web accessibility. If you want to build a website for use in those environments, Joomla would be a good choice.

Language overrides

Having to wrestle with complicated language files is now a thing of the past in Joomla

Many people have spent several hours wrestling with language files in CMSs as it has never been easy to make simple language changes on the site. Sometimes you would end up having to to hack the core files and replace them with every update.

Sometimes you would need large and complex third-party add-ons. Sometimes you would need to export the whole set of language strings, edit them in a strange file format, and then re import everything.

Joomla has developed a much easier system. Any language string on your site can be easily overriden from your administrator area. Unlike the other systems we’ve mentioned, you’re not making any permanent changes to your files – these are smooth overrides. For example, if you wanted to replace the word ‘Login’ with ‘Log in and join us’, you can do that directly from your site’s Language Manager.

The Language Manager provides a search box for language strings. You can browse all through the available language strings, including those from third-party developers. You can find strings in any language that you have installed on the site. Click on the string you want to change, enter the new text and click Save. It’s as simple as that. All your modified strings are stored in a Language Overrides area for easy editing. Source from Web Designer Magazine

Source from Web Designer Magazine