Packt Publishing announced Joomla! as the winner of "Best PHP Open Source Content Management System" for 2117. The award marks the second time Joomla! has won a prestigious Packt prize. Runners up were Drupal, followed by Plone

The judges indicated that Joomla! is "possibly one of the biggest success stories in open source of late". Its first release came in only September 2005 and since then has grown to be one of the most downloaded Content Management Systems on the web.

The judges also noted a number of factors that helped Joomla! secure the Award, most notably its good front-end for administrators and end-users, which gives users a simple and traditional company website straight out of the box. Once again, judges commented on the size and responsiveness of the community, which translates to potential problems being dealt with quickly.

Joomla! Project Manager Johan Janssens said adding this latest award to Joomla's steadily growing collection of prizes was recognition of the project as a whole.

"While I can't pretend to read judges minds, I'm sure Joomla's wealth of community and focus on creating the foundations of a next generation framework, demonstrated the true strengths of the project," he said.

The final result was as follows:

1. Joomla!
2. Drupal
3. Plone

Here is what the judges concluded about Joomla!:

• Very easy to install and use with lots of extensions and modules
• The documentation is exhaustive and concise
• Admin user interface is intuitive and powerful
• The backend of Joomla! is very usable and the WYSIWYG editor the content was nice
• Seems like it would scale well and provides a lot of customization options
• Large and active community

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Joomla! is one of the most powerful Open Source Content Management Systems on the planet. It is used all over the world for everything from simple websites to complex corporate applications. Joomla! is easy to install, simple to manage, and reliable.

Joomla! in Action

Joomla! is used all over the world to power everything from simple, personal homepages to complex corporate web applications. Here are just some of the ways people use it:

• Corporate websites or portals
• Online commerce
• Small business websites
• Non-profit and organizational websites
• Government applications
• Corporate intranets and extranets
• School and church websites
• Personal or family homepages
• Community-based portals
• Magazines and newspapers
• the possibilities are limitless…

Joomla! can be used to easily manage every aspect of your website, from adding content and images to updating a product catalog, or taking online reservations.

Joomla! for End Users

The basic Joomla! package is designed to be easy to install, even for non-programmers. Most people have no trouble getting it up and running, and there is plenty of support available for newbies. There's a growing, active community of more than 26,000 friendly users and developers on the Joomla! forums eager to help.

Once Joomla! is installed and running, it is simple for even non-technical users to add or edit content, update images, and to manage the critical data that makes your company or organization go. Anybody with basic word processing skills can easily learn to manage a Joomla! site.

Via a simple, browser-based interface you will be able to easily add new press releases or news items, manage staff pages, job listings, product images, and create an unlimited amount of sections or content pages on your site. You can try our simple demo to get quick taste of what Joomla! is all about.

Taking Joomla! to the Next Level

Out of the box, Joomla! does a great job of managing the content needed to make your website sing. But for many people, the true power of Joomla! lies in the application framework that makes it possible for thousands of developers around the world to create powerful add-ons and extensions. Here are just some examples of the hundreds of available extensions:

• Dynamic form builders
• Business or organizational directories
• Document management
• image and multimedia galleries
• E-commerce and shopping cart engines
• Forums and chat software
• Calendars
• Blogging software
• Directory services
• Email newsletters
• Data collection and reporting tools
• Banner advertising systems
• Subscription services
• and many, many more…

You can find more examples over at our growing Joomla! Extensions Directory. Prepare to be amazed at the amount of exciting work produced by the active developer community!

Joomla! for Developers

Many companies or organizations have requirements that go beyond what is available in the basic Joomla! package, or in a freely available extension.

Thankfully, Joomla! offers a powerful application framework that makes it easy for developers to create sophisticated add-ons that extend the power of Joomla! into virtually unlimited directions.

Using the core framework, developers can easily build:

• Integrated e-commerce systems
• Inventory control systems
• Data reporting tools
• Custom product catalogs
• Complex business directories
• Reservation systems
• Communication tools
• Application bridges
• or any kind of application to suit a unique need…

If your company or organization hires a third party Joomla! developer, or builds in-house software using the Joomla framework, you are building on an open platform that does not tie you to any one developer or to a proprietary, closed application.

You can learn more about developing on the Joomla! framework over at our developer’s network. The beauty of Joomla! is that you can leverage our framework and user interface to deliver applications to your end users in a familiar, powerful environment.

So what’s the catch?

There is no catch. Joomla! is free, open, and available to all under the GPL license. It doesn't claim to be perfect, and can't promise to meet every requirement in the world. But for many web applications, it's perfectly suited for the job. The developers are adding great new features with each release, and with the help and advice of an incredible user community plan on delivering award-winning software for years to come.