Joomla? What Is It?

im seeing alot about Joomla around the forums, so i figured i would check it out in the cpanel and see what all the hype was about. After looking through all the information in the cpanel as well as checking out all the links given in there for more information, im still left wondering, what the heck is it? im adding alot of different features to my site, so if it is something worth adding, id like to check it out, only...i want to know what it is first :-\

Joomla is an open source CMS, something similar to PHP-Nuke and all the others. It acts as a basic template for a site, with you just filling in the content. There are also extra mods, add-ins and plugins to add extra features or functions to the site, and more themes to download.

This is not really something you would add to a site, but the foundations for an entire website. As you already have a site and are adding features, I would advise you to avoid a CMS, as you don't really need one, unless you are willing to go for a complete redesign.

If you want more information about what Joomla is and does then visit https://www.joomla.org/, or just put the phrase "Powered by Joomla!" into a search engine, and a list of sites running Joomla will appear, so you can see what it is used for. If you are interested then there is a live demo version you can play around with here.

ok, thank you very much. i had seen alot about it around and thought it was something to add onto a site, i didnt realize it was a whole site base. my site is already pretty well formed, so i think ill be avoiding it thanks alot

As mentioned above, Joomla is an open source content management system. It is similar to Mambo (http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/) in that Joomla is a fork of Mambo, and shares similar features. I have seen professionally made sites in both Mambo and Joomla, and I can say that although they aren't nearly as sharp as Microsoft's site, they are still pretty nice.

As our fellow members have already told a lot about CMS and by now you must have got what is joomla if you sitll dont know what a CMS(joomla etc) is ,in simple words it can be expredssed as a set of scripts and codes like php(core) and javascript,html etc working togeather for you to make a website joomla contains 2 ends ,The front end and the back end(front end is which visitor of your site see while the backend is where you have options to edit your site's content layout etc which can be accessed only by you) Any change made on backend is reflected on the front end.if you wanna make a powerful and interactive website joomla is one of the best options for you (also have a look on mambo,drupal and others).If you dont wanna deal with the scripts you can use the Friendly user interface of joomla and dont make chnage to any of scripts manually on the directly while if you know scripting you can make changes directly on the scripts on the directory while using the backend(the user interface) which make open source CMS very powerful.If your cpanel have option of "FANTISCO" you can easily setup it , while you can also directly upload it to the server.Specifically joomla hve core features like:Login for multiple user(till your server can hold it)Have default template - you can install new template or edit default temlpate or any temlpate installed , From the User interface backend you cna only edit limited layout of the temlpate while you can directly change source code of template to change its layout (which brings in most of scripting part)apart from it you have tools to manage your menus, banners, ads , article ,user premessions , Styling etc from the backend(user interface)Apart from default features you can install more modules , plugins, components to your joomla . You can get them at extensions.joomla.org.Joomla has a lot of scope if you want to know more bout it or have any queries feel free to ask me.

Well Joomla in a few words is I would say the easiest way to create a website, totally user friendly, thousand of templates (free and paid), you just install it and start uploading your content, without knowing any programing, just basic computer knowledge. I have created some pages in Joomla for the clients who like to "do it all" so you just charge more and teach them how to manage their website so "they won't bother you anymore" I don't think that ever happens hahaha . But anyways it's worth to try it and learn how to use I think is a really powerful tool and have lots of support.

Isnt drupal a better alternative to Joomla?, im currently considering which option to learn, from what ive gathered Joomla is easy to learn, but if you stick in with drupal you'll be happier for it (more powerfull). Does anyone have experience with both of these?

this is only my opinion. Joomla requires you to have good sql server. It does lots of sql queries. It really has lots of powerful tools and extensions, but i don't need them so i chose wordpress which is much lighter. I used drupal once, it much lighter than joomla, but it's maybe a little bit hard for a beginner to understand it.

I'm not really a beginner to web design but that's cool, does Joomla have extensions for paypal functionality such as "Drupal Ecommerce" does? Does Drupal/Joomla have a good reputation for enabling an individual to create/maintain secure eCommerce sites?

For e-commerce, is this what you're talking about?
http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

For the 2nd question, sorry, but I don't have the answer. Try google it, maybe you'll find the answer at joomla forums.

I'm not really a beginner to web design but that's cool, does Joomla have extensions for paypal functionality such as "Drupal Ecommerce" does?
Does Drupal/Joomla have a good reputation for enabling an individual to create/maintain secure eCommerce sites?

Cheers m8, obviously a lot research is in order get a fuller understanding. The link you provided was exactly the info i needed. I'll seriously consider using Joomla due to its popularity, i might write up a post about the topic if it hasn't been discussed already, after i've read up a bit more of course.

wordpress also has a similar plugin.. read the plugin page :
https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-e-commerce/

Actually just checked that link out, at quick glance looks good. Its features are listed at /cgi-sys/defaultwebpage.cgi. Although i couldn't spot anything i didn't like, its new software and doesn't have a large user base yet (but looks easy stuff which is alluring).

I checked out an eCommerce CMS called "Magento" definitely seems like one of the better ones if not the best. Its "community edition" is offered under the OSL 3.0 license similar to the GNU license. I gotta admit, i'm impressed from what I've seen so far. Check out this link - https://magento.com/products/overview.

Towards the bottom it details the different feature sets between the "community edition" and the "enterprise edition". Some reasonably high profile companies use Magento (probably the enterprise edition i would assume). As always you don't get any support for the free edition, but the forums seem very active and there is a book for it so....