In the last 2 decades Internet has become a new media for giving information to customers. And a website has become a necessity for all corporates to convey minimum information about their company. Before contacting a company about their products and services, clients would like to visit their website. Thus website became an entry point to get an overview about the company and its offerrings. Most companies put information about their products, services and their contact information on their website. Some companies even go little extra to put their client information and the news about their products which has been published in the media.

Most of the times the information about their clients, news, products, services, their address, phone numbers vary. And the moment they change it is always good if they can change it on the spot without contacting a Web Manager or Web Programmer. Since the times have changed and clients are frequently accessing the website for information site needs to be up to date. For example if the company phone number changed, the information should be updated immediately on the web.

A website is collection of documents written in HTML Lanaguage. Any application which understands the HTML language can show / display the documents. And all browsers are nothing but applications which understand HTML Language. Browsers are just applications which read the HTML pages and show them the way it is to be shown.

A website which contains information in pure HTML pages is called a static website. It is typically called static because if you want to change the content / information on the website, you have to change the HTML document / page or write a new page. It is like a new paper which is delivered to you in the morning. Once a news paper is printed, its contents cannot be changed and a new news paper has to be printed. Similarly when a Static website needs to be changed, a web master familiar with HTML should edit the content. Thus if a company has a static website and it has to be changed on a regular basis, they need to have a webmaster who is familiar with HTML, ftp and other technical words. Or they need to have an agency running the show whenever they want to change the content on the website.

In Dynamic Website the content is generated whenever the site is loaded on to the browser. Dynamic websites empower their owners to change and manage content on their own without having any knowledge of HTML. Dynamic websites are designed and developed by Content Management Systems(CMS). CMS provides a easy to use administrative log in to create, edit and modify the content. The Administrator can also give permission other people to edit the content. The content editors and administrators need not be techy with any programming language skills or HTML skills. If they have word processing skills and know how to use a browser they can change the content dynamically.

You can go away from the good olden days of creating a website and not touching it. Today web has become one of the most important medium for businesses and your website should keep changing with changing strategies of your business. The Dynamism of your company should be reflected in the dynamic content of their website. CMS helps you to change your website dynamically to reflect changing strategies and business ideas. And today lot of business and online transactions are happenning on the web. And your business should take up changing of the content at a frequency that is higher than the good old days. Sometimes it could be on a day to day basis. A Dynamic Website build through CMS makes it a reality.

Due to the monitory constraints, Small and Medium Businesses typically offer their products / services in an incremental way spread over a period of time. And as they add their new services and products, they also need to keep updating their web site accordingly. Most of the times when a company is being started or just started, a single person or a few people do most of the work involved in running the business. So an administrative assistant or a receptionist can be the key person for creating, editing and updating your website, if you work with a dynamic website.

Creating a static website for a small company is cheap and affordable. However creating a dynamic website with traditional technologies is quite expensive and need a technical person to manage it. Open Source Content Management Systems provide an excellent opportunity for SMBs to create dynamic websites at lower costs. And they also facilitate incrementally adding new features and facilities to the web sites. There are many open source CMS solutions which SMBs can experiment with. Some of them are Joomla, Plone, Drupal which are based on Linux, Apache, MySQL? and PHP. DotNetNuke? provides a good ASP based Content Management System working on window platform.

Joomla is the leading open source Content Management System (CMS) that helps in building websites and web applications. Depending on the convenience users can comfortably change a simple website built on Joomla into a comprehensive online portal. The flexibility comes from the add on modules provided which can be easily installed as and when required. Joomla also comes with a user friendly administrative system that allows a layman to alter the content and the layout as and when required. Managing the website based on Joomla just needs an acquintance with a browser and any office application like Microsoft Office or Open Source StarOffice?.

Joomla has many uses and some of the actively experimented uses are

• Corporate Websites
• eCommerce Websites
• Corporate Intranets and Extranets
• Community-based Portals

Joomla is very easy to install and even a non programmer can make it up and running without major help. Once Joomla based website or web application is up and running, it is much more easier for the end user to manage it. Non-technical end users can easily add or edit content, change images and manage critical data. The skills the end user needs to have are basic word processing and comfort with one of the browsers like Internet Explorer or FairFox?.

Using a simple browser based administrative interface any end user can easily

• add / modify content
• add / modify news releases and events
• add unlimited content and user pages

The Joomla CMS framework has beed designed for extensibility. The framework has been supported by huge community of developers who designed and developed independent modules to add new features. So most of the features needed by any web application are available as add on modules. Few of the powerful-addons and extensions available from the open source community are

• Dynamic Form Builders
• Document Management
• Image and Multimedia galleries
• E-Commerce and Shopping cart engines
• Forums and Chat Software
• Calenders and Event Management Software
• Blogging
• User Registration and Management
• E-Mail and Newsletter Services
• Banner advertising systems
• and many more..

Joomla is free, open source and available under GPL licence. Joomla has a growing active community of more than 40000 users and developers. If an organisation or an end user gets a web application developed using a Joomla Framework, it gives the added advantage of not tieing your application to any proprietary closed application / organisation. If you are currently using a third party service provider to developed Joomla based website or web application, you dont need to stick to them for ever. If the third party is not good in providing Joomla application development services, you can choose others from the Joomla community.

For futher information people can see www.joomla.org.

So next time you have time, look at Joomla and how you can develop and maintain your own website without any major technical skills.