I've seen Joomla on my control panel for ages now and have never bothered to look at what it was. I stayed away from content management systems and have always just programmed my own stuff - but I was surprised by what Joomla can do. It seems a pretty powerful application. Does anyone use Joomla for their site, I would be curious to hear your experience with it.

i tried joomla. its pretty good. but it depend on what kind of site you have. if you always update then i suggest you use it. but if its static never mind. it will just waste your time.

I have websites that are mostly static. However, even a static website has to change looks from time to time. Doing it manually is a very tedious process. With a CMS things are much easier.

Also, Joomla was great for me. I use it with OpenSef (formerly xaneon), so I got to keep the filenames on my site. This was great from an SEO and usability point of view.

I haven't used content management systems in over 3 years, however I ran a quick demo of Joomla and I'm very impressed.

Does anyone know how hard it is to integrate a basic html web design into it? Does it require alot of coding to transform a website into Joomla.

I am yet to try it, but I have seen so many site using it and most have very proffesional looks with it.

its not too hard but not easy thou. you need to customize its template to create your own design. you can study the template creation tutorial here http://dev.joomla.org/content/view/1136/79/

I've worked with joomla several times. thats really a great product to help customers manage their sites with minimum knowledge.

Regards
Ali

Joomla is great. It is not to difficult to use and if you get stuck you can ask for help. There are many resources on the web to get the help you need.

CMS's have really progressed. It's amazing what they can do (and do fairly securely). Couple that with the ability to do your own programming, and you have quite a powerful combination. Joomla is a great example.

Joomla is a nice and useful CMS but honestly, i have alway been skeptical about these scripts. Nearly an year ago, they were my favorites. They made my life easier when it came to managing content. But downside was that too many vulnerabilities and security issues require you to be on your heels. Keep following their site and updating, some thing i find tedious. I mean installed a CMS to make my life easy, but now i was occupied in updating CMS or applying patches. It was important and not ignorable. But untill i used Joomla, i loved it. Just that you need to understand how the system works and once you are aware, its smooth ride thereon.

Joomla is little different from other systems. If you are new to Joomla, i'll suggest having a dummy or test site for it first, follow help files, test settings and also try to acquaint yourself with the logic it uses. Joomla forum has good threads trying to help newbies about how exactly Joomla works. Let us know whats your experience been.