Joomla is still best content management system
Recently, my client raised an question regarding content management system i.e. is Joomla still the best content management system? I was little distracted by the thought of "Best" and therefore didn't answer either yes or no.
It is always very tough to decide which framework or technology stack is right for the client's work and I know claiming one framework to be the best is not going to very easy.
Because the best is very vague term and we need to define our criteria before claiming the best. I discussed different points regarding his website features and then surely said, Yes Joomla is still the best content management system for you.
Content type and length
Your content type and it's length may affect the page processing speed and then it may create negative impact on you. I don't say other CMS frameworks are not good, however they may support some content types in best way than Joomla. I found creating different kinds of contents are very easy in the Joomla frameworks as compared to many others. And many related features come out of the box through core system. I don't find such elaborate features in other frameworks.
You may suggest that you can support the features by adding plugins and other libraries. Yes true and I agree. Yet, they come with their own set of configuration and problems.
Extension flexibility
Best of Joomla is providing support for easy extensions. You can extend other frameworks as well. However as a developer and working through last 10 years, I found Joomla has very mature extension system for supporting almost all kinds of features. And creating and managing the extension is very easy from developer points of view. I don't complain about the harder extension system, yet I prefer to save client and my time while creating custom extensions.
Website management
I do believe the owner wants to have very easy hacks for managing the medium to complex website and that's where Joomla shines. The Joomla administrator site is no different than front end site and therefore allows developer to create same level of extensions for admin.
So far I have created many admin dashboard without finding any difficulty. Though the same is true for other frameworks as well, but it's easiness is quite impressive.
After reviewing the client's website features I found the website
- Needs complex admin dashboard for identifying current website status.
- Needs to support four types of different contents.
- Needs to manage 30000 concurrent users at the same time. And they may be using the complex content based features.
- Needs to extend content feature to advance features set.
At last, before choosing the Joomla framework I created three sub websites for the client so that he could feel and understand more about the different frameworks. It helps us to choose right framework for the website.
The winner was Joomla.