Getting a nice looking website built can be quite a task. I have developed many websites over the years with many different technologies. My original websites were a combination of perl cgi and html. Over the last few years, I have done alot with PHP and databases to produce more dynamic websites. I developed my own content management system in php that could run with Mysql, Postgres, or Oracle. However, the look and feel of this interface was not that complete. As a single developer, it is sometimes difficult to get a polished finish on a web application when the scope of the overall system is quite large. About two years ago, I developed a ecommerce site that sold shell jewelry. I chose to use an existing store front called osCommerce. It was great for what I needed. However, I was not happy with the lack of templating. To change the look of the system required alot of hacking to the code.
About 6 months ago, I came across a complete content management system called Mambo. This was a great looking system that had all the bells and whistles of a commercial web application. There was a plugin component called mambo-phpshop that allowed me to add ecommerce to a site driven by mambo. Mambo itself was great because you could re-skin the system with the addition of a few images, a single php file, and a single css file. The ecommerce plugin had some great reporting options that the osCommerce system did not provide. Best of all, the mambo system was built with customizations in mind. I would be able to develop large websites in half the time. Soon after my adoption of Mambo, the core development team split off and formed Joomla. I have started using Joomla as I like the team developing it. Joomla is a great product that can get you up and running a professional looking website for a very low cost. If you know a thing or two about websites, you could put up your own site using Joomla for less than 20 USD per year. Joomla has many benefits over other systems. First, many of the affordable web hosting companies provide php and mysql support. Mysql allows you to take a text dump of the entire database, and this allows you to easily backup or move your site if you desire. Second, Joomla is open source and free so there is a large community that can provide support. Third, there are many free plugins that have been developed all sorts of website needs. Simply put, Joomla is a great choice as a website platform. As of this writting, Joomla 1.1 is in active development. Joomla 1.1 has some major changes with the goal of making 3rd party plugin development easier. Visit the site today www.joomla.org. There is a forum off of that site that has lots of community involvement.
Ok, so here is an update to where I am at with Joomla in 2008. I stopped using it as the code became a moving target shortly after I wrote about it in 2006. The plugin development process required too many files for just a simple plugin. I ended up using dotproject for the web application as it is a straight forward to use and modify. I moved away from MVC. As for my own site, I found wordpress to be a nice package for blogging. I just recently noticed that moveable type was open sourced. I might someday move to that as perl is my language of choice.