|
I’ve been developing websites for several years already and I can still remember those fledgling days developing static websites.
My first attempt at integrating back end programming was using active server pages (ASP), a Microsoft technology. I got into ASP basically because it was the technology used by my boss then, and I was merely his assistant.
I was hesitant at first because I applied for the job as technical support for dial up internet services and I was thinking programming was too complicated for me. He convinced me that ASP was very easy – there were only seven or eight intrinsic objects to be familiar with.
He did convince to sign up to work with him on a special project –and to my horror, there were more complications than meets the eyes. Indeed, there were few intrinsic objects in ASP, but how could I not have considered the logic part of the whole job?
Anyway, to this day, I still do programming, and not to mention an improved one at that. In fact, I just recently moved to doing PHP/MySQL.
But the thing now is that I have more projects at hand. Since, I also do charity projects – free websites for non-profits organization, I need to have a fast way of making, publishing and maintaining several websites.
Good thing I came across Joomla, a powerful open source content management system (CMS). Joomla enables one to have very powerful – and I mean it to the very technical sense of the word - PHP back end project. And what’s more, it even manages database using the equally powerful, not to mention top of the line and free MySQL! And all those can be done without programming! In non-technical terms, it simply means one has mostly to point and click (sounds like instamatic camera).
The good thing with Joomla is that after I had laid out all pages, I just assigned a non-technical person to do the updates. The news in particular, which needs to be frequently updates, can be handled by the secretary. All the secretary has to do is login and use the Joomla control panel to put the articles, then click the publish button and voila! – an update in an instant!
Joomla even include features for bloggin and polling – how cool is that? Any programmer knows how difficult it can get to have blogging and polling features not to mention maintaining all the account holders of the website that is stored in the database. Other really neat features are RSS feeds and language internationalization. Joomla even has a panel for search engine optimization!
Joomla can be downloaded from their website, www.joomla.org. And as for technical support, there literally is no problem because joomla is being developed by a collaboration of programmers around the world. This is really the beauty of non-commercial open source community. Creativity flows freely. And oh, the accept donations for side maintenance and other cost but there is really no pressure.
Enjoy and make this tech world a better place!