Joomla! CMS

AWR Web Design, LLC offers custom designed web sites using the award-winning Content Management System, Joomla!. Many aspects, including its ease-of-use and extensibility, have made Joomla! the most popular Web site software available. AWR Web Design will professionally install, configure and implement the core Joomla! software as well as any extensions (components, modules and plugins) that are needed to meet your web site needs. Below you will find a description of CMS and the features of the Joomla! software.

What's a content management system (CMS)?

A Content Management System is software that keeps track of every piece of content on your Web site, much like your local public library keeps track of books and stores them. Content can be simple text, photos, music, video, documents, or just about anything you can think of. A major advantage of CMS is that its ease of use allows you to manage your content with little or no web design knowledge. This means that you can update your sites content directly.

Joomla^® 2.5 - Extra Features! Easy Updates!

With the release of Joomla! 2.5, the user community has placed a large emphasis on making the CMS installation and updates management process as simple and straightforward as possible.

This will allow users to more easily and frequently migrate to the latest version of Joomla!, and take advantage of all the security benefits associated with running the newest code. We think Joomla! users around the world will really embrace this new process.

Is Joomla! right for my website?

Joomla! is used all over the world to power Web sites of all shapes and sizes. Some examples include:

• Corporate Web sites or portals
• Corporate intranets and extranets
• Online magazines, newspapers, and publications
• E-commerce and online reservations
• Government applications
• Small business Web sites
• Non-profit and organizational Web sites
• Community-based portals
• School and church Web sites
• Personal or family homepages

AWR Web Design has found that Joomla! is so flexible that it works for any web site from a one page site all the way up to a corporate site with hundreds of pages.  For this reason, we now build all of our sites exclusively with Joomla! CMS.

 

Start Building My Joomla! Site

Joomla is so much more than just a powerful content management system. Here is a list of features "out of the box," but the true power of Joomla is in its extensibility.

User Management

Joomla has a registration system that allows users to configure personal options. There are nine user groups with various types of permissions on what users are allowed to access, edit, publish and administrate.

Authentication is an important part of user management and Joomla support multiple protocols, including LDAP, OpenID, and even Gmail. This allows users to use their existing account information to streamline the registration process.

Media Manager

The Media Manager is the tool for easily managing media files or folders and you can configure the MIME type settings to handle any type of file. The Media Manager is integrated into the Article Editor tool so you can grab images and other files at any time.

Language Manager

There is international support for many world languages and UTF-8 encoding. If you need your Web site in one language and the administrator panel in another, multiple languages are possible.

Banner Management

It's easy to set up banners on your Web site using the Banner Manager, starting with creating a client profile. Once you add campaigns and as many banners as you need, you can set impression numbers, special URLs, and more.

Contact Management

The Contact Manager helps your users to find the right person and their contact information. It also supports multiple contact forms going to specific individuals as well as groups.

Polls

If you want to find out more about your users, it's easy to create polls with multiple options.

Search

Help navigate users to most popular search items and provide the admin with search statistics.

Web Link Management

Providing link resources for site users is simple and you can sort them into categories, even count every click.

Content Management

Joomla's simplified three-tiered system of articles makes organizing your content a snap. You can organize your content any way you want and not necessarily how it will be on your Web site. Your users can rate articles, e-mail them to a friend, or automatically save a PDF (with UTF-8 support for all languages). Administrators can archive content for safekeeping, hiding it from site visitors.

On public Web sites, built-in e-mail cloaking protects email addresses from spambots.

Creating content is simple with the WYSIWYG editor, giving even novice users the ability to combine text, images in an attractive way. Once you've created your articles, there are a number of pre-installed modules to show the most popular articles, latest new items, newsflashes, related articles, and more.

Syndication and Newsfeed Management

With Joomla, it's easy to syndicate your site content, allowing your users to subscribe to new content in their favorite RSS reader. It's equally easy to integrate RSS feeds from other sources and aggregate them all on your site.

Menu Manager

The Menu Manager allows you to create as many menus and menu items as you need. You can structure your menu hierarchy (and nested menu items) completely independent of your content structure. Put one menu in multiple places and in any style you want; use rollovers, dropdown, flyouts and just about any other navigation system you can think of. Also automatic breadcrumbs are generated to help navigate your site users.

Template Management

Templates in Joomla are a powerful way to make your site look exactly the way you want and either use a single template for the entire site or a separate template for each site section. The level of visual control goes a step further with powerful template overrides, allowing you to customize each part of your pages.

AWR Web Design will build you a powerful, custom designed template for your Joomla site.

Integrated Help System

Joomla has a built-in help section to assist users with finding what they need. A glossary explains the terms in plain English, a version checker makes sure you're using the latest version, a system information tool helps you troubleshoot, and, if all else fails, links to a wealth of online resources for additional help and support.

System Features

Speedy page loads are possible with page caching, granular-level module caching, and GZIP page compression.

If your system administrator needs to troubleshoot an issue, debugging mode and error reporting are invaluable.

The FTP Layer allows file operations (like installing Extensions) without having to make all the folders and files writable, making your site administrator's life easier and increasing the security of your site.

Administators quickly and efficiently communicate with users one-on-one through private messaging or all site users via the mass mailing system.

Powerful Extensibility

These are just some of the basic Joomla features and the real power is in the way you customize Joomla. AWR Web Design will use the vast Joomla! Extensions Directory to enhance your Joomla site to suit your needs.