PICnet Blog

After brainstorming with our friend Holly from N-TEN, I’ll be leading the first Ask The Expert session on November 16, 2006. The topic? Joomla!

November 16, 10:00 am Pacific / 1:00 pm Eastern

When I talked with Holly a few weeks ago, she was saying that N-TEN was looking for ways for people to share knowledge with others in the community, outside the confines of the annual NTC. This is a great opportunity to try reaching out to the community with hands-on guidance, something that has been missing (but getting better!) at NTCs.

As the N-TEN site says:

“We know you have questions, and we’ve found a way to make it easier for you to get answers. Once a month we’re bringing an expert online to answer your questions. For one hour at a scheduled time, our expert will be available via online chat to answer your questions and point you to the resources and tools you need.”

So, bring forth your Joomla questions! It doesn’t matter if you’re an accidental techie, a developer, or someone just trying to figure out what the word “Joomla” means. Come one, come all, it’s free!

Update: Johan Janssens, the lead developer of Joomla, might be joining us for the session, per his posting on the Joomla Forums!

Check out the N-TEN blog posting on this.

I was recently checking out the cool Google Trends. I did a simple search to see the difference in the usage of the 4 major players in the CMS world (Joomla!, Mambo, Plone, and Drupal). If you look at the trend graph here you can see the split between Mambo and Joomla!. Drupal and Plone are nowhere close.

Now this doesn’t say that Joomla! is better than any of the others, its just showing that more people search Google for Joomla!. It’s the popular one. But the trend with open source projects is that the more people like the project, the better it is.

When Laura Quinn from Idealware approached me a while ago about an idea for a review of the top open source CMSes for non-profits, I thought to myself, “she’s really going to get herself into a mess.” Instead, Laura’s done a very admiral job of keeping Joomla, Drupal, and Plone in their corners, without too much blood on the mat.

Laura collaborated with Brett Bonfield to create Comparing Open Source CMSes: Joomla, Drupal, and Plone which was released this morning. This is a great read, an even keel and unbiased reporting of their views on the big three. I think we in Joomla can learn a lot from this report, and look forward to your comments and further review.

I think they hit the Joomla difference on the head when they wrote:

Joomla strives for power in simplicity. Its programmers believe that anyone with a bit of technical know-how should have no problem setting up and maintaining a website. They have created a tool that is friendly, comparatively easy to get started with, and prioritizes ease of use.