Joomla! CMS, Content Management System for the web and your websites = supposedly easy, easy to add components, like a store, a gallery, a blog, a newsletter, new themes, make your own theme.

Huh! Not easy at all! It’s very time-consuming, little or no user support from extensions or theme providers, and they want you to give them money for the support or the theme or the extensions.

I only started this because it was supposed to be open source. I’ve have had many visitors, but no feedback or comments or ratings from users, seems my components don’t work. Or signup or other requires too much effort from users.

Everything looks so pretty and organized, especially in the demos, but, try and get it to work for you. OyVay! Many of the extensions, such as components for online stores and newsletters, do not deliver the features they promise.

You have to do a lot of time-consuming searching of each components’ forums to find fixes or directions for problems, and many answers are not there or are lost in the forum maze.

Administrators or the authors of the extensions, do not provide good documentation, or if they do it is almost a maze of instructions, nor do they take enough time or appoint someone who can take the time with enough knowledge to steer users in the right direction.

What they all seem to want is for you, the user, to buy their pro extension, or pay a subscription for real support.

But….Why would a user pay these Joomla component authors for something that doesn’t work, or is so darn difficult to make work?

I have to praise WordPress though. Of all the components I’ve tried it is the easiest to use and add things to. Though I do recommend when you add plug-ins, you try them one at a time in case you run into problems, it makes it easier to find the problem and correct it.

Also I have had little or no spam with my Joomla site, because you can’t get my email or send me one without signing up. Now I have made that easier, but you still have to register with some info to comment or see some articles, or areas of the site.

WordPress is a lot easier to sign in or register. And still has some security.

I haven’t figured out how to sell digital photos yet, but soon, really reasonable prices too. Just want to share them with a little return to start.

Projects I’m trying to get to work right now: ECJC online store (based on OSCommerce) and AcaJoom Newsletter. I removed VirtueMart for now because sign up and permissions to view the rest of the site were so complicated.

I liked WordPress so much I’m putting one on my Author site at Author Blog, but it’s just in the preliminary stage right now.

Well, that’s all the latest on the website right now.

René