Content is king, right? This is absolutely true for present-day web sites. Gone are the days when web sites consisted of static pages with few areas of changing content. Web portals and web communities are the order of the day wherein content is updated not just daily but a few times a day! Businesses, big and small, have realized the importance of providing up-to-date information about their products and services on their web sites. All this, however, has led to a new problem - managing and organizing this growth in content.Typically, development and maintenance of web sites needed some basic technical knowledge. If you are going to make your web site really dynamic, you will need to constantly update multiple aspects of your site. You’ll also need to keep track of changes to the content. Even with qualified staff, you may soon find that updates are not happening regularly, there are frequently occurring bottlenecks and the performance and appearance of your site is declining.

The demands of dynamic web sites have led to the development of specialized software called content management systems (CMS), of which Joomla, a free award winning software, is one of the most popular.

Joomla is a very powerful software that allows users to develop and maintain dynamic web sites. While non-technical users can use Joomla to manage various aspects of the site including the content very easily, more technical users can use add-ons to make the site more powerful and actually build large-scale online applications. Joomla is being used to power all kinds of web sites - simple, personal or family sites; small business web sites as well as more complex corporate intranets and extranets; community portals; magazines and newspapers; government applications and so on.

Many web hosting packages now include the Joomla software and it is very easy to install. Initial customization of Joomla may require some help from a technical person and includes setting up the basic template. The template includes the web site design and navigation system. This template contains a few editable areas but the overall look and flow of the site remains consistent throughout the site.

All you need to start using Joomla is familiarity with browsers and some basic word processing skills. Joomla uses a simple browser-based user interface for managing various aspects of the site. Through easy-to-use web based forms, you can update image or text content, create new content sections or pages, manage your employee listings as well as contact information, regularly update your product catalog or even set it up to take sales orders. When you want to change the appearance of the entire site, all you need to do is make changes in one template file to have it reflected throughout the site.

Joomla also makes it very simple to add new powerful features to your web site with just a click of a button. You can choose from any of the hundreds of extensions available - document management which allows you to index the kinds of documents on your web site, track the changes in them and make them easily searchable; image and multimedia galleries; forums and chat software; blogging software; mailing list management; shopping cart and complete e-commerce software and many more.

Joomla is a great tool for managing dynamic web sites but also a great platform for building more powerful, scalable web applications. If you’re building a new web site or overhauling your existing site, check into CMS software. Applications like Joomla make creating and maintaining a web site much easier.

Web content management systems are installed to abridge and simplify the whole process of content creation. It is software or a program that automates the website submission to the search engines to gain much improved business revenue and site traffic, efficiently manages the content with a lot of ease. Some most common examples of content management systems are Joomla, WordPress, Php Web site and phpbb2.Today, on the grounds of its commendable efficiency and simplicity, the popularity of CMS has reached to an acme where a huge number of people are using it. Besides, giving the power of easy content management to the administrator, the system ensures to save a lot of working on every single web page separately. Huge scope of functionality, addition of new dynamic categories and new module, customized to work within the system are some of the other few benefits that act as a catalyst when it comes to considering the option of buying CMS. However, before purchasing any content management system, it is important for the webmaster to understand and gauge all the essential components of the system.

The first and foremost thing to consider is the list of features. In addition to the very imperative WYSWIG editors and some sort of security parameters, your CMS should also have certain built in components:

• Deeply inquire about the granular security model. Figure out if it is role-based and can easily be integrated into your existing security model. Also, it should let right people access the right content and work with the content as per the business requirements.

• Check for all built-in navigation components as they are very useful for having easy and quick creation of horizontal and vertical menu bars, bread crumbs along with category precise menus if required.

• The software must contain all major components required for social media purposes such as blogs, personalized web pages, forums, photo galleries and web messages.

• It must carry tools that are used on companywide purposes like news release manager or a FAQs component.

• Document management is also an imperative component. Mostly, it is incorporated in the web content management system and as otherwise, you may have to deal with an entirely new set of purchase orders, licensing fees and sales agreement.

Some other additional requirements that you must check for are:

• Training and support

• WYSIWG editors

• Easy and quick page template creation along with the feature to create replica of the already existing pages and or templates

• Built-in components for the creation of feature rich user experience with images, calendars, blogs, video and audio.

• Globalization features that facilitate the conversion of entire website content into any other local language.