What is a CMS?

A Content Management System (CMS) is a web based authoring system that makes it possible for ANYONE to update their web site with rich content: (articles, newsletters, calendar events, sound, images, etc.) from their own personal computer without having to get help from a webmaster or web designer. There are many content management systems available. Some are very expensive and some are free (Open source).

Good content management systems like: Joomla! and Plone have many levels of access via a standard login screen. You may have registered users, authors, editors, managers, administrators, etc. All with different access rights and who are allowed to do specific tasks within your system.

A CMS is an excellent way to keep your site dynamic and up to date which is very good for web marketing and high search engine results.

What is Joomla?

Joomla is quite possibly the best CMS available today. Best of all, Joomla is 100% open source! To date: There are over one million Joomla! based websites all over the globe!!! The Joomla! developer community is huge and spans many countries and many languages! Joomla! can be easily customized through a very large library of plug in modular components. Using Joomla! you can do much more than provide simple Content Management. (see below)

Click Here to try out a FREE ON-LINE DEMO!

Log in using the following:

username: demo
password: demo

Joomla comes with various generic templates, out of the box which helps you get up and running quickly. One of the first tasks you need to do is to choose one of these basic templates as your starting point, and then customize it to make your site unique for your needs and the needs of your customers, members, etc.
Global ICT Systems can design a professional personalized template just for you.

Joomla's extensibility through plug-in modules is what makes it so powerful. Many modules and components are available and can be quickly added or removed to customize your site just the way you need it to be.

Every Joomla web page can be edited online using a built in web content editor that works very much like an inline word processor like Microsoft Word.

Certain server requirements are needed to run Joomla! and our servers fully support Mambo/Joomla and other content management systems such as Plone. (more about Plone and Zope in another article to be announced)

Here are some of Joomla!'s extensible capabilities:

• Document management
• Create many different categorized sections of documents & articles
• Create common document templates that match the style of your organization and make your content author's job a lot easier.
• Powerful user management and community building components
• Many excellent on line tutorials, and courses. Many are FREE!
• Built in support system
• Powerful automated search engine optimization component
• Online photo albums
• Online MP3 music library
• Online library of flash movies
• Online video clip library
• Real estate sales system
• Link exchange
• Shopping carts
• Software repository
• A built in RSS syndicate feeding system for any published documents or pages on your site.
• Newsletter publishing
• Forums
• And Much More!

As you can see from above there are plug-in components that can do almost anything, or at least get you at least 75% there and since its all open source, with a little extra coding you can make your particular project do what you want in no time!

Here are a few Joomla! based web sites we have created for clients:

• American Thread Cleaners & Tailors
• The United Nations Correspondents Association (UNCA)
• The Sound Healing Network