The question "Why you should use Joomla" in general has been asked countless times since the beginning of Joomla. The answers from all these years share some common grounds still but since Joomla moves forward, so do the reasons why anyone should choose Joomla to build their website.
I am going to take a slightly different approach to answering this question. My goal is to first convince myself, a web developer who has used quite a lot of the available CMS out there, and then convince you. After all, I am my most strict judge.
The benefits of Joomla
You'll notice in my points below that I am comparing Joomla to its competition. I agree that comparing has its subjective aspects and it can vary from use case to use case. This is why I'm going to try and focus on the most broad aspects of Joomla which can be agreed upon as clear advantages.
1. Powerful Admin Interface
The Admin Interface of Joomla can be compared to a cockpit of an Airbus 737 if you put it next to its competition. Joomla offers the most complete out-of-the-box package of functionalities hands down. On top of that, it has been designed to help you manage large amounts of data as effortlessly as possible.
2. Flexible Content Everywhere
Combine the 3 facts below:
- The ability to create module positions in a template anywhere.
- The ability to assign a module to exactly which menu items it should be displayed, or not.
- All of the above right out-of-the-box.
If this is not a dynamite of flexibility then I don't know what is. Fine control at its best.
3. Pinnacle Security
The Security Team behind Joomla is famous for its potential. It has proven again and again that in Joomla, Security holds a very high priority and won't hesitate to issue immediate security releases the minute a vulnerability has been discovered.
Needless to say that Joomla doesn't have a giant target on its back like Wordpress and therefore the attack vector can be relatively smaller but in my eyes that's a huge advantage as well.
4. Multilingual ready
That's right, Joomla is immediately able to serve content in multiple languages without having the need of extensions and added complexity. Everything is ready and baked into the core.
5. Sensibly Extensible
Joomla also has a great amount of extensibility as any other great CMS has. The distinct advantage though is that Joomla "guides" the developer to use a certain design pattern which in and of itself is a pillar of a good and solid working order.
Don't get me wrong though, the developer still is able to enjoy a great deal of freedom but is reminded at every corner which is the correct way to do things rather than ending up with a bunch of spaghetti code as easily as he could with the competition.
6. Fine User Management and Permissions
Everything is fine, well and equal to every other CMS if you are one or two people authoring your content. Joomla shines when the team starts to grow and you have to fine tune which team member -- or even sub-team -- is able to access / edit which content or extension and whether it should be from the frontend or the backend.
The permissions for each extension or native component gives you granular control immediately and quite intuitively. Again, no extensions needed! That's also available out-of-the-box!
Summing Up
If you are experienced with another CMS and some of those points seem subjective to you, that's fine and quite understandable. This is an opinionated article after all but with a good deal of background knowledge as well, enough to feel that Joomla really is the best all-around CMS out there.
