Joomla is an open source content management system which can be downloaded and used completely free of charge. You can use it to build any type of website that you might desire from a personal website through organization website to a fully functional and secure commercial website. There are a huge number of Joomla extensions which are available to extend the functionality of your website to allow it to do whatever you could ever want it to do.
However, like everything else in the world, Joomla is not perfect. It does have some downsides. However, by having a look at the potential downsides of Joomla now, you will be able to see that its problems are far outweighed by its advantages.
First, Joomla plug-in extensions make an awful lot of things possible, but the more Joomla extension you have, the slower your Joomla website will load. Be very careful that you are not adding functionalities for the sake of them and that they are truly needed by the people who will be using your Joomla website and it will probably work just fine.
Like with all other extensions, there may be incompatibilities between your Joomla plug-ins. For instance, certain library plug-ins may clash with other similar functions that are already installed within your Joomla website. The thing to do is do your homework before you install a Joomla plug-in. Read forums on Joomla. There are a lot of them. Has anyone else had a problem with this particular Joomla extension? If they have, think twice about using it yourself or see if the problem was overcome with a patch which you may need to get.
Another downside of Joomla is that you are totally reliant on the work of other people. This can be frustrating when you need a fix for a problem and the developer is reluctant to help. However, this problem is not unique to Joomla and goes along with the territory of all open source content management systems.
Some people have expressed the concern of the security of Joomla. However, if you are careful to only install tried and tested extensions that do not come from a third party whom you are unsure whether you should trust, Joomla is a pretty secure system.
Joomla is a complex system, small problems are bound to arise from time to time. This can be through rogue plug-ins or file permission errors. Like with all content management systems, it takes a little while to get your head around it in order to make the most of it. But that can be said of anything to do with website building.
In short, there are problems with Joomla, potentially, but they are no different to the problems associated with any other open source content management system. There are ways to overcome the problems and the downsides of Joomla are far outweighed by its advantages. Go into Joomla with your eyes open, being realistic about what you need your website to do and being prepared to learn and you wonít go far wrong with Joomla.
