Joomla is one of the more widely used CMS systems online. Though it doesn’t have the same kind of massive following as WordPress, Joomla does offer a number of distinct advantages over WordPress and other content management systems.

Why and how should a small business use Joomla?

==> It’s Free and Open Source

Joomla is completely free. It’s also open sourced. That means that instead of being developed by an in-house team, the software is developed by a community of programmers.

That means the software is constantly being updated. It also means that instead of just having a handful of people looking out for bugs and room for improvement, it’s being done by a worldwide community.

==> Extend, Not Plug In

Where Joomla really shines is its technical superiority. Joomla allows users to extend its capabilities, rather than just plug into its interface.

Take WordPress for example. With WordPress, you can use plug-ins to extend the functionality of WordPress. However, at the end of the day, WordPress is still WordPress – you can’t change the fundamental nature of the operating system.

With Joomla however, you have complete control. You can install an extension that completely reworks how the system operates.

How does this matter to your business?

Let’s say you wanted to install a shopping cart system that allows you to process credit cards, handle customer email addresses and store everything in a database.

WordPress can’t do that. No matter what kind of plug-ins you use, it just doesn’t have that functionality.

Joomla, however, can. Just install the right extensions and it instantly gains all the technical capabilities you need to do that.

==> It’s Powerful, But Still Easy to Use

As you can tell, Joomla is a very technically powerful platform. However, it’s also extremely easy to use, even for the non-techies.

The content management system lets users add pages, edit pages, edit the navigation bar, upload photos and files and do just about everything you’d need to do on a day to day basis through self-explanatory interfaces.

It has a simple control panel that allows you to adjust everything from the design of the site to the commenting system without having to look at any code.

Joomla is powerful, but it’s designed to be used by anyone – programmer or not.

==> Community Support Forums

Finally, Joomla has a highly populated community support forum. If you ever run into trouble with anything on Joomla, just head over to the forums and you’ll have a bunch of dedicated, helpful people ready to help you troubleshoot.

When it comes to a business platform, Joomla gives you both ease of use and the option to extend your capabilities far beyond what it comes with out of the box. If you want to do more than just post content with your website, Joomla might be your go-to CMS.