cmurray.org

Several weeks ago I wrote about my discontent with the open-source CMS Joomla. Well, I take it all back … most of it anyway.

I was bemoaning a lack of substantive corporate intranet, while also figuring communication methods for the online team. Rather than blasting lengthly email updates throughout the organization, I wanted to send summaries with links to more content, newsletters if you will. But where to store that linked content?

So with renewed determination I returned to my Joomla install. And to my surprise, within only a couple hours I had a full-blown intranet site (shown in the capture above), complete with news sections for the various teams, corporate blog, linked forums using SMF, aggregated news feeds, and a corporate phone and email list. Once I had a better idea of how content is managed and displayed within the tool, the administration was fairly straight-forward. There also are available many modules and add-ons, such as a file explorer for uploading files to the server, and a polling module (that actually limits you from voting more than once). In addtion, the administrator has lots of control over who can contribute and to which sections. There even is a support desk ticketing system, but I’d like to make some code modifications to that. I am very excited to roll this puppy out!

I believe also that this tool is the closest thing to filling that CMS gap discussed in other posts by myself and David Churbuck and others. I can easily see a company using this tool as a publishing platform where a WordPress may not be enough and a Vignette or Interwoven is out of reach. Joomla is a serious contender.

I am a staunch advocate of the corporate intranet: it fosters greater communication, encourages participation, promotes pride among employees, and is a mechanism with which to build a corporate culture. Now, using our new newsletter delivery system, we can send weekly and monthy updates that drive the company to the intranet.

Factoid: The name Joomla! is a phonetic spelling for the Swahili word “Jumla”, which means “all together” or “as a whole”.