Joomla

Joomla is a Content Management System (CMS) that can be used to build websites. The things I like about Joomla are:

1. Ability to build a website with no technical knowledge required: The first time I worked on Joomla, I didn't know how to write the programming languages on which Joomla was built, but I was still able to build a website with it using available Joomla templates and extensions.

2. Easy learning curve: I learnt everything I needed to get started with Joomla, and also built my first Joomla website in one day. There are available YouTube tutorials, and plog posts on the internet that can help one to get going with Joomla.

3. Free domain name and hosting: Joomla provides users the option of using Joomla customised domain names for their websites, and also provides them with free hosting. I leveraged Joomla's free domain name and free hosting to build my first Joomla website.

4. Easy to customise: Joomla is very easy to customise. Joomla works with templates and extensions. The templates helps someone to decide how his/her Joomla website will look like, while the extension helps someone to add some functionalities to his/her website.

5. Security: Joomla constantly updates their CMS to provide security patches, and also to keep it from the attack of viruses. This increases the level of confidence with Joomla.

Joomla is an awesome CMS, but that is not without its cons. The cons of Joomla are:

1. Despite the fact that Joomla is easy to learn, it's learning curve is more complex than that of other CMSs like WordPress, Wix, and Weebly.

2. Poor layout: For me, the outlook of a website designed with Joomla seems to be less elegant than that designed with other CMSs like WordPress and Wix.

These are the two cons I can point out with Joomla.

Joomla is a cool tool for beginners but also for intermediate users.
What I liked more was.
- The correct division of the elements available for manipulation (components, modules, templates)
- The UI is good and allows you a friendly usability

Joomla could consider being more flexible when an upgrade is required.
I understand there are some dependencies on the versions of external software like PHP or MySQL, but the support sometimes is not clear and has generated some users to leave Joomla and look for other opportunities.

User management is still on another (higher) level, compared to Wordpress and Drupal, its main opponents nowadays. Updates are quite easy to run, and the support is awesome.

Joomla is failing to compete mainly against Wordpress, which is currently widely used worldwide. Choosing Joomla over Wordpress (or Drupal) in 2023 as your CMS for your project, means that you will probably face some problems finding experienced developers, decent hosting environment, integration issues, etcetera.

It's open source and free! It supported by volunteer community for many years and it's free forever.

Joomla template design could be more beautiful and with more features. In appearance, it has fewer molds than other competitors and should invest more in the appearance and design of the UI.

It's free and open source.
It's fast, lightweight and easy to install.
There is a large community of developers and users ready to help with advice on how to use it.

The interface is unintuitive for beginners
It is lagging behind other similar content management systems
Depending on the issue it can take time to get support from the open-source community
Some common software integrations can be difficult to find