Made a Joomla Website

[Spit-wad]

I decided to create a new website for the organization I run, the North American DotA Syndicate (DotA is a very popular Warcraft III mod). Link is in my sig (in order to follow forum rules).


I just wanted to show this to you guys to
1. show what's possible with Joomla or WordPress
2. get some feedback on the site


The site is built entirely on Joomla with a ridiculous amount of extensions and an extremely modified template. It was my first time using Joomla, but after an uncountable number of hours I put into this site, I am quite happy with the result.

Our old site was built on Word Press, and after trying Joomla, I don't think I'll ever go back. Although they are extremely similar, Word Press just feels heavier and less attractive.

For those who don't know, Joomla is a content management system (CMS) which allows the site to have a back-end for multiple people to log into to change content via their own web browsers. No coding knowledge is necessary to make a Joomla or WordPress site, however there are a lot of things on mine that I could not have done without modifying HTML, CSS, and PHP.

Please note that the advertisements on my site were my decision to put there, and it is not a standard feature of Joomla or WordPress. (However, I am using a handy little plugin that makes ads from Google Adsense extremely easy to use)

 

[Osiris]

Looks good.

 

[tastegw]

that looks great!

 

[yzmxer608]

Nice! I really like how the interface looks, graphics are cool too.

 

[synergy]

yea, good work! Joomla is very powerful, but I found it too finicky to modify heavily...but I haven't spent a ton of time on it either.

BTW, what are you using to integrate the CMS with your forums? I've found that another annoying part of Joomla (inability to integrate with stuff like WP and forums thus requiring purchasing of third-party software.)

 

[Spit-wad]

I am using Kunena forums, which are commonly used to integrate with Joomla. They used to be called Fireboard, but apparently there was a security problem, so most of the developers started on Kunena, which is almost idential (minus the security flaws).

It recognizes Community Builder, which is the profile system I have setup for the rest of the site, so it uses those user profiles as well - full integration.

 

[CrazeD]

Looks decent.

But I laughed when you said that you prefer Joomla because WordPress seems to heavy. It's quite the opposite really...

 

[Spit-wad]

meh, I could see it both ways. I think the whole user interface of Joomla is just a bit easier... and everything looks nicer.

I also felt like I had more control over it than WP, and that there were more plugins/extensions built for it... that might be a misconception, though.