JoomlaI’ve got another website for youmla. (Sorry! Sorry! Sorry! The start of the post just wrote itself I couldn’t bring myself to delete it.)

Aaaanyway. Joomla! Yet another LAMP based free software package that’s fairly easy to use and highly extensible. It’s a content management system (CMS) which can really open your eyes to a different way of thinking about how sites are built or maintained.

Where’s Lou is a WordPress blog of course and it’s very plugin oriented, very easy to post content to, and very powerful. But at the end of the day it’s a blog - the paradigm is a stream of posts.

Brenda had a gig the other day, and she asked me to record it since I had the camera with. I’m talking a still camera that does movies in this case so the quality is… Well… It is what it is. So she wanted to post it online.

I’ve also been thinking of helping her set up a site for her music things. She does have her myspace, which also has a big community that includes her friends, but the power it gives you to put your own multimedia online in the way you want to offer it is very limited.

Plus it’s myspace. I mean. Really. That will not do.

I know she’s not a blog type of girl, so instead of WordPress I Googled around for a free cms, installed Joomla at GoDaddy, and was amazed. It starts off with a fairly conservative footprint - which is good because it can go in so many directions you probably won’t want the extra baggage that could have been added.

Just looking at the extension categories on the Joomla site makes your head spin. Three days after a cold start, with prior experience, I’d already added a gig calendar, audio and video player support, the community builder features, and a few other things. You can use it to blog, but the structure of the content is such that blogging is only one of the many ways you can arrange your presentation.

You can check out http://brenda.dejardin.org if you’d like. Please bear in mind that it’s very much a work in progress. Brenda hasn’t had time to work with me to make decisions about the look, layout, and structure so what you’ll find is my messing around.

But do check out the vid at Lee’s Liquor Lounge if you want. There are also some songs with lyrics you’ll find in the music section.

Enjoy!