What Is Joomla?

December 28, 2007
By: Steve Castaneda
Author's Website: http://www.techforagents.com

Joomla is an open-source (free) content management system that you can use to setup the foundation for a website. In this day and age, having a website for your real estate business is essential and is an excellent opportunity to add a new source to your lead generation efforts.

Using Joomla can help you in a wide variety of ways, though lets learn about the features that are the most relevant to your real estate business.

It’s Affordable
Open-Source software means that it’s free for you to use in your business however you’d like. You can even hire a programmer some day down the road to customize the coding for a particular use you’re interested in.
It’s Flexible
Joomla is a foundational platform; components are developed every day as a solution to a wide variety of needs that users may have. Real estate components are available to professionals such as yourself to help your site function as a real estate website.
It’s Friendly
I’ve tried other contact management systems (CMS), and none are more friendly than Joomla. The documentation efforts of the Joomla team are incredible, and guides are available for installing, using, and customizing Joomla to your hearts content.

Is It Search Engine Friendly?

Out of the box, Joomla isn’t as search engine friendly as I’d like it to be, but as mentioned earlier, Joomla can be built upon to open the door to features you’ll need when you start learning about search engine optimization (SEO).

At the start, you’ll be able to customize the meta tagging and title of your content pages, plus have a basic level of search engine friendly URLs. After a couple of select component installs, you will be able to have more control over the customizable features that a search engine optimization expert will need, and further increase the value that Joomla brings to your business.

General For Now; More To Come

Though I probably have enticed you to try Joomla out, I’ll recommend a few good links and essential reading to get you started. In the coming months, I’ll share my experiences with Joomla and how you can use it in your real estate business to propel your online presence to another level.

Essential Links

Essential Reading

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Lane Bailey

I have been running Joomla on my new site for a few months, and love it. It has been a huge learning experience. It is reasonably straight forward, but there is a curve.

I love the flexibility of some of the premium themes. In fact, hitting a few of the right add-ons made me re-think the way I wanted to present the site. And, the flexibility of the platform means that I can radically alter the presentation without worrying about the content.

Feel free to visit.

Steve Castaneda

After using Joomla for over 3 years now, I was a bit curious about a year ago and attempted an install of Drupal. Unfortunately, I dropped it rather quickly as I found it to not be as user-friendly.

I don't think the end-goal should be to educate people on how to be "techies". I think you're pretty much born with that. Rather, we want to focus on technologies that everyone can adapt, and I think Joomla scores a homerun here.

So in summary, I don't have much experience with it since I abandoned it early as I felt it wasn't nearly as user-friendly as Joomla; but that's just my opinion.

Jay Thompson

Steve - thanks for posting this. I've played around with Joomla some. Just launched a site on Drupal. Any thoughts on Drupal? Advantages / disadvantages over Joomla?