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5 stars
Version: Joomla 1.5.11
"An amazing piece of software"
Pros: Ease of use & Flexibility. 4000+ extensions allow a joomla site to become just about anything. A large range of companies also sell advanced, ready to go templates.
Cons: Flexibility has a tradeoff with simplicity. If sticking with an off-the-shelf template & basic structure, it's very easy, but to customise a template definitely requires coding skills, and a bit of RTFM to get familiar with basic concepts.
Summary: Joomla hits the sweet spot between ease of use, robustness and flexibility.
For a simple, idiot proof CMS > Wordpress
For a secure, scalable, robust, large scale CMS for techies > Drupal.
For the best mix of the two > Joomla, (by a country mile)
Joomla really isn't hard to learn the basics, but if you start trying to do stuff just by jumping straight into the admin area, you'll be lost. For anyone who bothers to watch a few quick tutorials on youtube, it's very easy to get a basic site up or even one with a fairly complex structure.
For coders, its a great foundation to deploy really complex sites really quickly, by adapting an amazing array of off-the-shelf options (extensions or templates) to achieve just about anything.
For non coders, most templates and extensions are designed for non-techies to use, and you'll still get a dazzling array of options, but don't expect to be able to easily customise a joomla template if you're someone who just "knows a bit of html".
Updated on Oct 11, 2009For those who find it hard to setup, just find a host who offers Fantastico & setup will take you about 2 minutes. (just follow the prompts, nothing complicated).
For those who are are trying to setup their own web server on a windows computer and get Joomla running at home - you're probably entering a world of pain unless you've got a good understanding of joomla's server requirements, apache, php, mysql and a bunch of other things, but doing this is completely pointless unless you're trying to avoid paying hosting fees while you're building the site.
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