Introduction | Guide to Joomla

Introduction

Welcome to the first lesson of this course.
Now, I'm going to assume that you have no experience with Joomla whatsoever.
So we're going to get started with the basics.
In this lesson, you're going to learn what is Joomla, where you can get it, what you can do with it.
Let's begin.

What is Joomla?

Well, let's use two definitions for it.

The simplest definition would be that Joomla is a piece of software that you can install and use to create a website, blog and so on.

The more complex definition would be that Joomla is a CMS or content management system.
It's for managing content. So Joomla gives you a platform that you can use to share content with the world.

And it also gives you all the tools you need to do that efficiently and effortlessly.
So that is Joomla basically.

It's an open source software, and open source means that its source code is freely available.
So anyone in the world can contribute to it to make it better, to improve it, and so on.
As I was saying in the previous lesson, it's also free, so that's a big bonus.
And Joomla has been around for quite a while now.
And during this time, it was constantly updated.
And it's now reached version Joomla 4 point something,

The platform itself was improved a number of times.
So that's a quick look at what is Joomla.

Now where can I get it?

Well, visit joomla.org and download a copy of Joomla from there install it on your own server.

We're going to use joomla.org. We're going to download the standalone version of Joomla and we're going to install it on our own server on our own computer and we're going to work with it directly there.

So what can you create with Joomla?

Well as I was saying in the introduction, from simple blogs, to large, complex websites and anything in between.
Basically, anything that can be created by using a content management system, can be created with Joomla.

So if you need to create a website for, you can do that with Joomla.

Maybe a website for a real estate agency. You can do that with Joomla, a portfolio for a photographer, maybe, you can do that.

An app can do that as well. It might require a little bit more coding.

Depending on the app, but you can totally do it.

So as I was saying, Joomla is very versatile, you can create virtually anything with it.
And that's what makes it so popular and so powerful.

It has this huge community behind it that's constantly working on the code.
That's constantly producing templates and extensions so that this platform is now a powerhouse, an amazing tool that can be used to create virtually anything on the web.

Now, since you are somewhat familiar with what Joomla is all about, let's proceed to installing it.
We'll start in the next lesson where you'll learn how to install Joomla on your local machine and what kind of software you need to make it all work.
See you there.