What are Components?

A component is a specialized mini-application that runs in Joomla. You could argue that “Content” is the component at the center of Joomla, one that is able to present content items in the form of a blog or a table. Regardless, there are several components that are part of the core of
Joomla. There are many hundreds more available for free and commercially from 3rd party providers.

What can Content Management System do?

In no particular order, some of the features with the base installation include:

• Simple creation/revision of content using a text editor from main website or hidden admin site
• User registration and ability to restrict viewing of pages based on user level
• Controlling editing and publishing of content based on various admin user levels
• Polls
• Simple contact forms
• Public site statistics
• Private detailed site traffic stats
• Dynamic home page that can show content from anywhere in site
• Random “newsflashes” that can be shown anywhere
• Random “images” that can be shown anywhere
• Content hierarchy split into sections and categories
• Simple static pages for smaller sites
• Built in site search functionality
• Ability for users to submit content
• Ability for users to submit links
• Customizable presentation of content, in tables or narrative (called a blog)
• Automatically shows author, creation and revision dates
• Email a friend, PDF and print format capability
• RSS (and others) syndication
• Ability to show latest news/content
• Ability to show most read news/content
• Ability to show content related to current page
• Simple content rating system
• Show newsfeeds from other sites
• Hides emails listed from spam robots

As you can see, there are a tremendous amount of features. To have a web designer create all of these for a static site would cost tens of thousands of dollars. It doesn’t stop there however. Joomla has a massive community of over 30,000 developers world-wide and they have
contributed over 1,500 extensions for Joomla, most of which are free. Some of the more popular types include:

• Forums
• Shopping Carts
• Email Newsletters
• Calendars
• Document Managers

What is a CMS?

A content management based website is very sophisticated. It can have newsfeeds, forums, and on-line stores, and is easily edited. Most content management systems are expensive, anywhere from $50,000 to $300,000. Joomla is an open source content management system that anyone can download for free. This makes it ideal for small businesses, non-profits, and individuals to build their website using it. Don't let the price tag fool you; Joomla is powerful and robust, and more and more big companies are choosing to have open source software solutions. This
universal appeal has made Joomla hugely popular as a CMS.