Sunday, September 6, 2009

Joomla Templates And Plug Ins For Webdesign

By David Bungay

There is a lot of buzz on the internet about Joomla. People are talking about Joomla templates, Joomla modules, plugins etc. As a non technical person you could be a bit confused about all this. In this article, our attempt is to simplify and explain what Joomla is.

All of us are familiar with what a template is. Templates basically are the formats that change the appearance of your website. Templates have a front end, which is what the visitor sees. There is a back end, where you go to add content, upload pictures, add widgets etc. This is the back-end or the administrative site of your template. Visitors can not see this end. Visitors only visit the front end of the template.

A Joomla template is an open faced content management system or CMS. This has many features that can actually help you to design the lay out of your website. It is becoming more and more popular due to the fact that it is easy to use. All the items or components are available for download. You chose the ones you want and incorporate them into your website.

Given the popularity of the Joomla program, you can be sure that it is here to stay for a long time and you will not have a problem if you need any kind of help or support for your software and plugins.

When you decide to download and install Joomla you need to ensure that that you first download the core software components and maximize these. This is the initial step. Once these have been installed properly and are working optimally, only then must you install templates and other Joomla extras. If the core software is not working optimally before you install your template and plugins, the website may hang and give you other problems. So you need to follow this step strictly.

The best part about Joomla is the plethora of choices you have, both free and paid. If you surf the internet, you will get links to literally hundreds of Joomla templates. You can research them out and pick the one that suits your website. Many of them are free.

Another thing is that Joomla is an open faced content management system. This means that you have the freedom to keep adding on to it. There are so many Joomla plugins available these days. These can improve the looks and functionality of your website. There are plugins to embed Adsense into your website or even multi-ad plugins that highlight your keywords that can then (if the cursor is brought on them) display links and ads. Another excellent Joomla plug in is one that allows the user to protect the comment section and forms from bots and spam. This can be a relief since it will disallow multiple submissions from spam bots spamming your site.

You have many such features in Joomla. If you have a website and you want to improve its design, try Joomla.

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