There have been services and systems designed to make it easier to create and maintain a website for almost as long as there has been an Internet to put them on. This is a system that has evolved over the years and will continue to evolve, too. Without a doubt, there is no shortage of software packages that you can use to make website creation easier – so why choose Joomla?

To answer that question, it is worth looking at what the other sites provide, and how Joomla stacks up when compared to them. Perhaps the most notable reason for using Joomla is the fact that, as a newer service than the others, it has come from a position of seeing how the other sites work and improving upon what is already available. Early efforts like Microsoft Frontpage – packaged with some versions of Windows – and Adobe Dreamweaver, certainly made website creation easier for the novice. They were, however, still aimed at people with a more than basic understanding of web design.

Joomla has benefited from the increase in popularity of “widgets”. This means that you can add to your Joomla package as and when you want by downloading a widget – or, to translate the jargon, a secondary service – that is aimed at making a specific element of the maintenance easier. If, for example, you want to add more features to your site, it often fell to you to either write the code for it, or find it elsewhere. Now, widgets exist for a vast range of maintenance aspects. There are as many as three and a half thousand add-ons that can be used to make Joomla more effective.

As Joomla is open source software, it is also free of charge, and so for the most part are its add-ons. Instead of spending what can amount to hundreds of pounds on dedicated software, using open-source software is the most sensible option for anyone who is using the software to build and maintain a site without absolute knowledge of how to design websites. Not only that, but the number of Joomla users has led to a strong online community which ensures that, even if you don’t know how to correct a problem, someone else will have faced it before and be able to enlighten you.

Perhaps the major advantage of Joomla is the versatility of the software – both the primary Joomla package and any add-ons you may download allow you to create anything from a basic blog site to a macro-site packed with different features, and to add and take away as you see fit without damaging the integral usability of the site. You can make changes when you want and see how those changes will affect the look and the quality of your site, allowing you to get it right without having to spend all day honing one niggling factor. As your site becomes more established you can turn it into almost anything you want to, and without needing to gain a diploma in software engineering.