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Joomla 2.5: Promising Changes, Bright Prospects

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PANKAJ
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Sufyan bin Uzayr, Freelance Writer, Graphic Artist, Photographer, www.sufyan.co.nr

Joomla is one of the most popular open source CMSs, that can be used to power different categories of websites, including blogs, intranets, e-commerce sites and so on. Recently, Joomla 2.5 was released, with many new additional features. Before we plunge in to check Joomla's usability for organizations' websites, let's take a look at some of the major goodies version 2.5 brings in.

Snapshot

Price: Free

Key Specs: Open Source CMS that caters to multiple genres of websites

Pros: Free/open source, excellent SEO, multi-database support, enhanced localization

Cons: Below-par support for mobile devices

Website: www.joomla.org

Write: pcquest@cybermedia.co.in with the name of product in subject, for more info.

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What's New?

To begin with, Joomla 2.5 comes with multi-database support, including Microsoft SQL server (until now, Joomla was natively compatible only with MySQL databases). Joomla 2.5 also brings automated script updates, improved search and auto-complete functionality within the Article Editor, among others. Some other new additions to the CMS include the Joomla Platform version 11.3, which now offers added support for third party extensions, and new additions to the j* class, as well as enhanced features for the Offline Mode and CAPTCHA services. And yes, Joomla now comes with better localization both within the CMS and in its core templates. Joomla 2.5 also brings the security factor with it — as many as 240 major vulnerabilities have been fixed.



Implementing Joomla 2.5

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The first thing you'd notice once you login to Joomla 2.5 is the eye-candy element. Even the thumbnails on the main page seem to float as soon as we hover the mouse pointer over them. Doesn't really contribute much to the productivity factor, but it surely looks good than many CMSs out there!



The admin panel contains six menus

Site: Just like Joomla 1.7, this section lets you tweak the site-wide settings. You can make global changes, clear the cache, and edit the logged in user's profile.

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Users: Very clearly, this section deals with user management. You can set up user accounts, groups, define access levels and more.

Menus: This section covers the Menu Manager .

Content: The Article Manager, Category Manager and Media Manager comes under this segment.

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Components: A lot many miscellaneous elements, such as banners, news feed, links, etc. are dumped under Components.

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Extensions: Extensions such as modules, plugins, templates and language packs are clubbed in this menu.

Help: This menu contains links to Help files, documentation and wiki pages.

Joomla happens to be one of the most popular CMSs preferred by organizations. While version 2.5 retains much of the interface-level features of version 1.7, it does add certain new elements at much-needed junctions. Let's take a look at some of the most commonly used areas in the Joomla admin back-end.



Article and Category Management

When you open the Article Manager, the first thing worth noting is that you can now filter sub-categories too (until now, Filtering was limited to Categories only). Also, Code Mirror has replaced TinyMCE as the default editor. Fear not, if you'd prefer the older Editor, you can still use that instead of Code Mirror. Categories can now have more fluid hierarchy.



Modules, Extensions, Templates

Joomla 2.5 shall be supplemented by newer templates, though at the moment, the newly released templates mostly cater to personal blogs and portfolios. While this seems to be a logical move as Joomla aims to recapture some of the lost usage share from WordPress, organizations will perhaps need to wait a little longer before specialized templates and extensions are made available for them. To know more about it including upgrading, read the detailed hands-on at http://tinyurl.com/72sr3pw.

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