This post is actually for to my friends who are new to web design and who are interested to have  career in web designing.

They have always asked me about Joomla and things about designing websites. I guess its an opportunity for me to share to them what I do and what I use to make my job easier.

Joomla is one of the many open-source Content Management Systems (CMS) available online to develop and manage dynamic websites.

Since this post is for people who are new to web design, here are quick definitions of 2 of the terms that newbies are most likely to misinterpret when starting with web designing.

Dynamic web design:

   Graphic designers are often confused with what static and dynamic mean. For some, they thought that adding flash animation or moving banners to the site is enough to make it dynamic. Being "Dynamic" in web design terms means having additional functionalities that enable web visitors to interact with the website and perform actions that makes their experience easier and better. Dynamic websites have special programs that handle some user commands and actually responds to it (i.e. search function, contact forms, online inquiries).

Static web design:

Static websites are simple websites that doesnt have additional functionalities. These sites only provide plain information and doesnt provide additional features for the user to better interact with the website. Adding flash animation or gifs to a website doesnt necessarily make it dynamic.

Content management systems CMS:

A CMS is a software used to develop a dynamic website. CMS provide ways for web designers to easily build websites and add dynamic features easily even without knowledge in programming. CMS have admin page where all contents and features can be managed. This is very helpful for clients since they can update the site themselves, without having to hire a designer to publish contents on the site.

Joomla is one of the best CMS, and its free! It has a huge support from developers around the world and has a huge directory of extensions that can be added to a website.

Click here for more of Joomla.

Why use a CMS:

Most designers are not into programming. We spend most of our time designing and pay less attention to studying and exploring programming, though through programming that we'll be able to achive more dynamism in a website. Using a CMS enables us to have a website with better user-experience without much worry in programming.

CMS is a powerful tool to manage contents easily. Publish edit and delete contents are just a few clicks.

CMS are extensible. Adding new functionalities in your site is just a matter of installing plugins.

I have been using Joomla for most of my web projects since 2007. It makes my job as a web designer a lot easier while providing valuable features for the my projects.

Thats it for now. Il try to post more info and basic Joomla tutorials after this. :-)