Joomla

Fast and easy with no limitations

Comments: There has never been anything I've been asked to create on a Joomla website that I haven't been able to achieve. Nothing has come close to it for speed and ease in creating a prototype site that just needs the client to supply the content.

Pros:

Out of the box you have everything you need to build a website that is fast, accessible and responsive for all devices. Building a multilingual website is super easy as everything you need is included - nothing extra to install and configure.

Cons:

Some people try to make it work like other CMS instead of harnessing the native power of Joomla. This can make it slow and difficult to use.

Joomla - the perfect way to start with your website

Comments: After using Joomla since 15 years I really must say: This is a great way to start your own website! It's easy to install, especially since many webhosts offer an installer to setup the basic installation without any knowledge of databases etc. You can easily customize the basic website with thousands of extensions and themes so it fits your needs perfectly. For all kind of simple websites, this is surely one of the best options and you always find some people to help in one of the many support channels.

Pros:

The easy startup and the easy integration of external software makes it perfectly for starters. Also the clean seperation of backend and frontend makes it easier to understand. Me in person, I use Joomla for more then 10 websites and it's definitly my No. 1 for easy small websites.

Cons:

Joomla serves well for easy websites. However, for large scale, it carries a heavy overload which might make bigger websites (several thousand visitors daily) slow. Also sometimes it's a risk to take third party extensions since you never know how good they're maintained, but that's the risk for all software packages :D

Don't manage yourself unless you're experienced

Comments: Joomla was quite disappointing to us, however, this is likely due to our lack of knowledge surrounding the product. Supporting documentation was limited and didn't help us on a lot of occasions. If you plan to use Joomla, I would highly suggest utilising a third party with experience to manage it for you, as it is very easy to overwhelm yourself and get lost in the software.

Pros:

Joomla's pricing is fairly low, which makes it affordable.

Cons:

It is VERY difficult to use and manage. A lot of the plugins (such as CAPTCHA for contact forms) are difficult to implement and update. It requires a lot of work to manage and trying to navigate the admin tools can be difficult.

A Reliable Content Management System

Pros:

The capabilities of Joomla are excellent. It has been so reliable and easy to implement.

Cons:

Joomla is flawless. I like how effective Joomla has been.

A freely available CMS for everyone

Pros:

It's freely available, with many features available for you to setup and create your own Content Management System. At the end of the day, what you see is what you get, the CMS provides a near perfect reflection and mapping to all the changes you have made to your website.

Cons:

It can be CPU intensive and taking a lot of your computing resources if the files are too large.