I’ve been using the Joomla! Content Management System since before it was even called Joomla! back in the day when it was Mambo. It was the first and what ended up being the only Content Management System that I’ve used. So, it should go without saying that I was happy with it as a CMS solution. What I didn’t realize was that the Developer team had some high hopes and wild aspirations for a new release they call Joomla 1.5.  The beta for this release has been around for months now while it was developed and bug-tested but I never used it because I usually need it for client websites and wanted the stability of a more mature release.  So last week when I saw that it was finally released as a stable package I couldn’t wait to install and try it out.

I have to admit that I was amazed at how much it changed (all for the better trust me). I can totally tell that the whole thing was rewritten for ease of use and manageability, I’ve already coded 2 websites with the new version and it was a snap to get up and running. All the pages easily validate to XHTML standards. It’s a wonder to me why they’re calling it 1.5, with the wealth of changes and updates I would have called it at least 2.0. Gone are the days of two WYSIWYG editors per article, gone are the separate classifications of articles and static pages and best of all, gone are the days of needing endless add-ons and modifications to make it work the way you think it should. Two such modifications that come to mind, first is the Search Engine Friendly URLs, it’s completely built in now and better than any add-ons I’ve seen for the 1.0.x release. Second are the WYSIWYG editors I used to have to add, with the improved media manager there’s really no need for it anymore.

All in all I’d have to say that this has been a huge success for the Joomla! team, it’s an amazing achievement made even better. Joomla is definitely one of the best open source  free applications I’ve had the pleasure of using.  Go check it out if you haven’t already!