V-Flyer

Bit of a long shot but this place is full of people that know about these things.
Just wondering if anyone has much experience of using Joomla and what they think of it?
I'm thinking of using it for two work related projects and just gathering views/ experiences using it.
Cheers,

Jonathan

I've used it on a project, its very powerful and good. If your not used to CMS systems it can take a bit of getting your head around, but other then that it is a good tool. And lots of extensions etc available.

Mat

I've had a lot of experience with Joomla of late, as I've been converting my 'other' site (Broadway Baby) to it.

On the pro side, it does give you a pretty comprehensive foundation as a CMS, and saves re-inventing the wheel for many common functions. As Matt says, there are also a lot of extensions for it, so development can be pretty rapid even when you want to build something unique or obscure.

Where it is a royal pain is getting your head around the way it wants you to work, and doing anything off the pre-determined plug-ins (and eventually you will, because the default situation is unlikely to fit all sizes). For a procedural programmer like me, getting to grips with the MVC design pattern that Joomla uses can be a struggle at first, and making even simple modifications to the code can be challenging (especially as you'll want to do it in a way that isn't broken come the next upgrade.)

You should also bear in mind that the benefits of the many hundreds of plug-ins and components come at the cost of compatibility between these functions, and as a fair chunk of them are freebies, you're unlikely to get industrial-level support from the developers when you run into an issue that only happens with a certain cocktail of extensions.

It is worth sticking with though; but expect to get your hands dirty in the code as a vanilla Joomla site can be very uninspiring (and there are probably better, smaller, options for such a simple site anyway).

Pete

Thanks Mat and Pete. I'm not technical at all, pretty much just getting stuck in and seeing what I can come up with. It seems fairly intuitive. Previously used Jadu Galaxies - it's got to be better than that! If it's OK I'll contact you again - it's others experiences that are really helpful.
Thanks again, Jonathan