Joomla!

Infobox Software
name = Joomla!



caption = Joomla 1.5 screenshot of Administrator
developer = [http://Joomla.org/ The Joomla Core Team]
latest_release_version = 1.5.7
latest_release_date = release date|2008|09|07
operating_system = Cross-platform

genre = Content Management System
license = GPL
website = [http://joomla.org/ joomla.org]

Joomla! is a free open source content management system for publishing content on the World Wide Web and intranets. The system includes features such as page caching to improve performance, RSS feeds, printable versions of pages, news flashes, blogs, polls, website searching, and language internationalization. Joomla is licensed under the GPL, and is the result of a fork of Mambo.

The name Joomla officially ends with an exclamation mark, but this is commonly omitted.

It is written in the PHP programming language and uses the MySQL database by default.

History

Joomla came into being as the result of a fork of Mambo by the development team on August 17, 2005. At that time, the Mambo name was trademarked by Miro International Pty Ltd, who formed a non-profit foundation with the stated purpose to fund the project and protect it from lawsuits. [cite web |date=2006-01-09 |title=Mambo Foundation web site, Goals and objectives |url=http://www.mambo-foundation.org |accessdate=2007-03-14 ] The development team claimed that many of the provisions of the foundation structure went against previous agreements made by the elected Mambo Steering Committee, lacked the necessary consultation with key stake holders and included provisions that violated core open source values. [cite web |date=2007-05-07 |title=Joomla Forum Discussion by Development Team members and Community |url=http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic,73.0.html |accessdate=2007-05-07]

The development team created a web site called OpenSourceMatters to distribute information to users, developers, web designers and the community in general. The project team leader Andrew Eddie, a.k.a. "MasterChief" wrote an open letter to the community [cite web |date=2005-08-17 |author=Andrew Eddie |title=Mambo Open Source Development Team - Letter to the community |url=http://www.opensourcematters.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1&Itemid=1 |publisher=OpenSourceMatters |accessdate=2007-03-14 ] which appeared on the announcements section of the public forum at mamboserver.com.

A thousand people had joined the opensourcematters.org web site within a day, most posting words of encouragement and support and the web site received the slashdot effect as a result. Miro CEO Peter Lamont gave a public response to the development team in an article entitled "The Mambo Open Source Controversy - 20 Questions With Miro". [cite web |date=2005-08-21 |author=Ric Shreves |title=The Mambo Open Source Controversy - 20 Questions With Miro |ORIGINAL url=http://ricshreves.net/content/view/116/47/ |accessdate=2007-03-14 |url=http://forum.joomla.org/index.php?topic=3037.msg23685 |accessdate=2007-07-26] This event created controversy within the free software community about the definition of "open source". Forums at many other open source projects were active with postings for and against the actions of both sides.

In the two weeks following Eddie's announcement, teams were re-organized and the community continued to grow. Eben Moglen and the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) assisted the Joomla core team beginning in August 2005, as indicated by Moglen's blog entry from that date and a related OSM announcement. cite web|url = http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/blog/2005/08/index.html|title = Why I like Open Source Matters (was Why I Like Mambo) |accessdate = 2008-10-08|last = Moglen|first = Eben|authorlink = |year = 2005|month = August] cite web|url = http://www.opensourcematters.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=41&Itemid=1|title = Award-winning Development Team Welcomes New Arrival — Joomla! |accessdate = 2008-10-08|last = Russell |first = Peter |authorlink = |year = 2005] The SFLC continue to provide legal guidance to the Joomla project. cite web|url = http://www.joomla.org/content/view/40/41/|title = Partners|accessdate = 2008-10-08|last = Open Source Matters, Inc|authorlink = |year = undated]

On August 18 2005, Andrew Eddie called for community input on suggested names for the project. The core team indicated that it would make the final decision for the project name based on community input. The name the core team eventually chose was not on the list of suggested names provided by the community.

On September 1, 2005 the new name, "Joomla", was announced, which is the English spelling of the Swahili (Arabic:جملة ,and Urdu: جملہ ) word _sw. "jumla" meaning "all together" or "as a whole" [ [http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=3097 Joomla!Forum • New Name Announced - Joomla!:by brian on Thu Sep 01, 2005 6:43 pm] ] .

On September 7, 2005, the development team called for logo submissions from the community, invited the community to vote on the logo preferred, and announced the community's decision on September 22, 2005. Following the logo selection, brand guidelines, a brand manual, and set of logo resources were published on October 2, 2005 for the community's use. cite web|url = http://www.joomla.org/about-joomla/the-project/logo-usage-and-brand-guide.html|title = Logo Usage and Brand Guide|accessdate = 2008-10-08|last = Open Source Matters, Inc|authorlink = |year = 2008]

Joomla (Joomla 1.0.0) was released on September 16, 2005. It was a re-branded release of Mambo 4.5.2.3 which, itself, was combined with other bug and moderate-level security fixes. Joomla version 1.5 was released on January 22, 2008, a year after having won the Packt Publishing Open Source Content Management System Award in both 2006 and 2007.cite web |date=2006-11-14 |title=2006 Open Source Content Management System Award Winner Announced |publisher=Packt Publishing |url=http://www.packtpub.com/article/open-source-content-management-system-award-winner-announced |accessdate=2007-03-08 ] cite web |date=2007-10-31 |title=Joomla Wins Best PHP Open Source Content Management System |publisher=Packt Publishing |url=http://www.packtpub.com/article/joomla-wins-best-php-open-source-content-management-system |accessdate=2007-10-31 ]

Features

The Joomla package consists of many different components, which allow extensions and integrations to be made easily. An example of such are extensions called "Plugins".cite web | title = Joomla Extensions Directory - Content Management | date = 2007-07-28 | url = http://extensions.joomla.org/component/option,com_mtree/task,listcats/cat_id,1766/Itemid,35/ | accessdate = 2007-07-28] (Previously known as "Mambots".) Plugins are background extensions that extend Joomla with new functionality. The WikiBot, for example, allows the author of Joomla content to use "Wikitags" in Joomla articles which will auto-create dynamic hyperlinks to Wikipedia articles when displayed. cite web|url = http://extensions.joomla.org/component/option,com_mtree/task,viewlink/link_id,2825/Itemid,35/|title = WikiBot2|accessdate = 2008-10-08|last = Messiah|authorlink = |year = 2007|month = August] There are over 3,500 extensions for Joomla available via the Extensions Directory. [cite web |title=Joomla Extensions Directory - FrontPage |url=http://extensions.joomla.org/index.php |accessdate=2008-02-08 ]

In addition to Plugins, more comprehensive extensions are available. "Components" allow webmasters to perform such tasks as build a community by expanding user features, backup a website, translate content and create URLs that are more friendly to search engines. "Modules" perform such tasks as displaying a calendar or allowing custom code like Google AdSense etc., to be inserted within the base Joomla code.

Since it has been around longer, there are more extensions available for Joomla 1.0 than for Joomla 1.5, although native 1.5 extensions are becoming increasingly available. Some of the older 1.0 extensions can be used with version 1.5 if it is set to legacy mode.

Joomla permits administrators to set global configuration parameters that affect every article. Every page conforms to these parameters by default, but a page can have its own setting for each parameter. For example, you can elect to show or hide the article author or simply go with the global "show author" parameter.

Community

Joomla has an official and many unofficial communities. By July 2008, the official Joomla forum had more than 300,000 threads and over 1.3 million posts from more than 200,000 registered members in 40 languages. [cite web |title=Joomla Community Forum |url=http://forum.joomla.org |accessdate=2008-07-10 ] Unofficial sites are published in many languages, often with Joomla extensions that are region specific. Bi-directional text support for the Hebrew and Arabic languages, for example, can be found on 3rd party community portals. Unofficial web developers also build extensions and web templates for commercial sale and offer freelance customization services. Usually a template is distributed as a zip file which can be installed using the Joomla installer.

Criticism

* The latest Joomla does not have built in granular user access control [cite web |date=2007-06-03 |title=Florin|url=http://needforcontent.com/joomla-review] .
* The built in section/category feature is limited by the simple section/category/article hierarchy [cite web |date=2008-02-15 |title=Section/Category Manager|url=http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f=502&t=265684] .

See also

*List of content management systems

Further reading

*cite book
last = Graf
first = Hagen
year = 2006
title = Building Websites with Joomla
publisher = Packt Publishing
isbn = 1904811949
*cite book
last = Graf
first = Hagen
year = 2008
title = Building Websites with Joomla 1.5 stable
publisher = Packt Publishing
isbn = 1847195302
*cite book
last = LeBlanc
first = Joseph
year = 2007
title = Learning Joomla Extension Development: Creating Modules, Components, and Plugins with PHP
publisher = Packt Publishing
isbn = 1847191304
*cite book
last = North
first = Barrie
year = 2007
title = The Joomla Admin Manual: A Step by Step Guide to a Successful Website
publisher = LuLu
isbn = 9780615146751
*cite book
last = North
first = Barrie
year = 2007
title = Joomla A User's Guide: Building a Successful Joomla Powered Website
publisher = Prentice Hall PTR
isbn = 9780136135609
*cite book
last = Rahmel
first = Dan
authorlink=Dan Rahmel
year = 2007
title = Beginning Joomla: From Novice to Professional
publisher = Apress
isbn = 1590598482
*cite book
last = Rahmel
first = Dan
authorlink=Dan Rahmel
year = 2007
title = Professional Joomla
publisher = Wrox
isbn = 978-0-470-13394-1

References

External links

* [http://www.joomla.org Official Joomla website]
* [http://forum.joomla.org Official Joomla Community Forum]
* [http://developer.joomla.org Official Joomla Developer Site]
* [http://extensions.joomla.org Official Joomla Extension Site]
* [http://docs.joomla.org Official Joomla Documentation]