At work we have a website that uses Joomla. The site administrator has left the organisation so the site’s administration is falling to me. I haven’t had much to do with Joomla (or the work website) in the past. I had looked Joomla briefly (along with WordPress, Drupal, Hugo, Grav and Jekyll) last year when considering what sort of engine could best drive the great beast egeiro.net.
As a result, I’ve had to spend time installing/running/checking/modifying/learning Joomla over recent weeks. I’ve loaded it up on several computers locally and accessed it using XAMPP and/or WAMP. These applications run Apache, MySQL and PHP so that web applications can be installed and tested offline.
My verdict on Joomla? Probably very useful for a complex website, but way too much complexity for a simple site/blog. One feature I particularly don’t like is that you really need to choose (and commit to) a template before you progress very far down Joomla Road. The reason? So much configuration and tweaking seems to be template-dependent. For a simple blog such as mine (where content should be the focus) I believe you should be able to switch between templates and have the bulk of the site continue to function normally. The template should act as a container (albeit an attractive and functional one). The fact that Joomla seems so template-dependant suggests, to me, too much complexity and emphasis on form and function rather than content.
I’ll continue to learn/use Joomla for the work site, but it’s bordering on overkill even for what is required there.