Website Development with Joomla CMS
Joomla holds about 3% of the CMS market — less than WordPress, but significantly more powerful in access control (ACL), multilingualism out of the box, and architectural flexibility. Popular for corporate portals, government sites, educational platforms.
Joomla Architecture
Joomla uses MVC architecture with separation into components, modules, and plugins. Each site section is a separate component (com_content, com_users, com_contact). Modules are sidebar blocks and widgets. Plugins are event handlers (authentication, search, editors).
Joomla Extensions:
- Components — main functionality with frontend and backend part
- Modules — small blocks for displaying data
- Plugins — system event reactions
- Templates — site appearance
- Packages — set of extensions in one installation
Development Stack
Joomla 5.x
├── PHP 8.2–8.3
├── MySQL 8.0+ / PostgreSQL 16+
├── Template: Cassiopeia (default) or custom
├── Page Builder: Joomla PageBuilder or Astroid
├── Forms: Joomla Contact / RSForms Pro
└── SEF URLs: via Router
Typical Project: Corporate Site
Homepage: custom template with dynamic modules — slider (mod_custom with JavaScript), news block (mod_articles_news), counters (custom module).
Services catalog: com_content with categories, custom View for card display. Or third-party component K2/Zoo for more flexible data structure.
Blog/News: com_content with configured category Layout. Pagination, tag filter.
Multilingual: built-in, no additional plugins — one of Joomla's advantages.
Performance
// configuration.php — key parameters
public $caching = '1'; // enable cache
public $cachetime = 15; // minutes
public $cache_handler = 'file'; // or 'memcached'
public $gzip = '1'; // gzip-compression
public $ftp_enable = '0'; // disable FTP layer
public $debug = '0'; // not in production
public $error_reporting = 'none';
Comparison with WordPress
Joomla is better: multilingual out of the box, built-in ACL with roles and groups, stricter MVC architecture, better for complex access structures.
WordPress is better: plugin ecosystem, familiarity to most developers, more ready-made themes, REST API, headless ecosystem.
Joomla is chosen deliberately — when flexible permission system or complex content hierarchy is needed without additional plugins.
Timeline
Corporate site on Joomla 5 with custom template, 8–12 pages, multilingual and SEO — 3–5 weeks.