Joomla! Templates: CMS Templates Delievered Via the Dynamic, Open-Source Joomla! Platform
Are you in the market for CMS templates? More specifically, perhaps you’ve surfed around and decided Joomla! templates are what you’re looking for. Well, Web Templates Studio - being your portal to the world of website templates - will not disappoint. These Joomla! templates represent some of the most striking, user-friendly designs available on the market. Make use of the free, open-source phenomena that is the Joomla! platform, and see your website management concerns disappear into the virtual past.
With these various Joomla! templates (often referred to as Joomla! themes) you’ll get the best of both worlds: 1.) an interactive platform that is offered free, and 2.) an attractive design that helps to dress your site for success. Once upon a time companies and/or churches and other organizations had to choose between bold and beautiful website design and dynamic website functionality. But, thankfully, those days are long gone. Now you can have a site featuring impressive, interactive functionality, all run through a common-sense administration interface, cloaked in a website template design that will wow your online customers, participants and/or audience.
Perhaps you’ve just finished reading the above introduction and are left wondering: Huh? What exactly is Joomla!? And what are content management systems (CMS), and what is dynamic functionality? And how do Joomla! templates differ from “static” web templates? Fear not. The small article below will help you catch up with the exciting world of Web 2.0- as this revolution in website functionality is sometimes referred to.
When one steps back to look at the evolution of what are sometimes referred to as Web 2.0 websites, or content management system (cms) websites, two distinct paths lead to the land of web application interactivity. Here we’ll trace both.
1.) Interactivity: Blurring the Line Between Author and Audience
In the first generation of websites, there was very little two-way interaction that went on. In other words, a webmaster would take some material, publish it to the Web, and people surfing the Net would read it. There was a clear distinction between publisher/writer and reader/audience. And there’s nothing wrong with this really. In fact, most websites still follow this format because for most companies, churches, organizations, this one-way flow of information works just fine.
However, being what the World Wide Web is, it’s not surprising that people began to yearn for more interactivity in Web applications. Put in laymen’s terms: people wanted to be able to give their own two cents worth after reading or experiencing some online material. And for these folks, email just didn’t cut it. They wanted live, instantaneous interaction that would see their feedback posted-back live, right away. And this is where cms systems worked so well. Not only did they allow people who wanted to publish material (for instance bloggers), a simple and fast way to load to the Web, they also allowed the audience to participate in the enterprise by publishing their own responses to these initial publications.
2.) Content Management Systems: Web Publishing with Little or No Pre-requisite Knowledge Necessary
Beyond the issue of allowing authors and audience to interact, content management systems also came into vogue as a way for churches, organizations, companies - who don’t have an IT department - to still be able to manage and maintain their own website updates, without having to farm the enterprise out to a third party- which of course, can get expensive; especially if regular changes are required. Imagine you have a church website where you need to update activities and events on a weekly basis; or perhaps you need to load new webpages, audio files, and such, every few days. In such a scenario, it can be a virtual nightmare (literally!) to pass this on to a third party webmaster each and every time you need these changes made. Not only is it inconvenient, but the cost can be prohibitive.
Secondly, not only do content management systems allow organizations to eliminate the middle man- so to speak, but they also help large organizations (a company or church with multiple departments for instance) by enabling multiple individuals - logging into a central interface - to make these changes themselves. Now, because what these individuals are interacting with is a “user interface” they really don’t need a prerequisite understanding of HTML and CMS (the code behind the websites you experience) to get the job done. They merely post their material (whether that be written copy, audio files, or photos) to a central interface, and the magic of content management system software does the rest; it converts this all into HTML code that can be read accurately by the browsers that end-users use to surf the Web.
People are still beginning to realize the full potential of free, open-source dynamic platforms such as Joomla!. While the “blogoshpere” may have been the impetus for the concept of a free, open-source content management system, really this was just the beginning. Today, content management systems such as Joomla! represent a universe of sophisticated, flexible, ever-growing, ever-evolving dynamic web-based applications. And with a growing collection of striking website designs offered via cutting-edge Joomla! templates, no longer do website project managers have to choose between design appeal and website functionality. Welcome to the dynamic world of Web 2.0!
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