Is Joomla Hard to Learn?

While the absolute majority of our customers already have Joomla websites, some of them don’t even have a website and want us to create a website for them using Joomla, or have a website yet or they are using another CMS and they want us to move them to Joomla. These customers ask for Joomla because they have heard a lot of good things about it: how they can build beautiful websites themselves with no programming experience, and how they can benefit from the myriad of extensions that will add functionality and interactivity to their websites. All these “good things” about Joomla aside, the first question that our customers ask us is: “Is Joomla hard to learn?”

Like any other question, this particular question has multiple answers:

  • If you are only going to update your articles (and not create new ones, in this case the sole purpose behind your Joomla website is to have an online presence), Joomla is somehow easy (you will need to learn how to login, how to locate your articles, how to upload media, how to link to the media from your articles, and how to save your articles).
  • If you are going to add articles and play with the menus, then Joomla becomes of of medium difficulty.
  • If you want to install and publish modules, components, and plugins, then Joomla becomes difficult.
  • If you want to play with the templates, or use complicated components such as VirtueMart and JEvents (among others), then Joomla is really difficult.
  • If you want to customize extensions (components, modules, and plugins) to suit your needs, then you won’t be able to do this by yourself, you will need to get help from a Joomla Expert.

We know that this post makes Joomla look intimidating, but that’s because it’s what it actually is! As programmers with at least 15 years of experience, sometimes it takes a day to identify the source of a problem that one of our clients is experiencing, that’s because Joomla is a very complicated product.

Now the question is, should you choose Joomla? Of course you should, there are many companies out there whose existence revolves around helping you if and when you run into a problem. Gone are the days where small sized companies are at the mercy of a programmer for updating their websites, now with Joomla they can do this themselves, and they can have full control of their websites. Is Joomla Hard? It can be! Can anyone maintain a Joomla website? Definitely!

Again, if you need help, you can always contact us, and we’ll be delighted to help you (and our fees are very reasonable).

7 Responses to “Is Joomla Hard to Learn?”
  1. Pingback by Is Joomla a Good Choice? | itoctopus — August 23, 2011 @ 9:09 am

    […] You (or someone working for your) has some basic computer and Internet skills to maintain the website (creating/updating new articles, installing/uninstalling extensions, updating Joomla, etc…). This is because Joomla can be hard to learn. […]

  2. Pingback by Joomla for Small Business | itoctopus — November 3, 2011 @ 10:11 am

    […] you will be able to add more pages on your website, update old pages, and hide some pages. After, Joomla is not that hard, if you only want to update […]

  3. Pingback by Joomla for Churches | itoctopus — November 28, 2011 @ 8:31 am

    […] teach you how to use your Joomla website: Joomla is not that hard, but the person managing it may need some training. We will help you with […]

  4. Pingback by Joomla for Doctors | itoctopus — December 5, 2011 @ 12:23 pm

    […] very easy to use: Doctors only need to create new content/update old content on their website, and this is not hard at all with Joomla, even if they have no technical experience […]

  5. Pingback by How to Migrate from osCommerce to VirtueMart? | itoctopus — January 9, 2012 @ 5:24 pm

    […] CMs, but it’s also very complicated and thus very hard to use. Joomla, on the other hand, is much easier when compared to osCommerce. Doing something on Joomla takes (in many cases) just a fraction of the […]

  6. Pingback by How Long Does It Take to Learn Joomla? | itoctopus — August 10, 2012 @ 6:12 am

    […] In any case, our immediate answer to their question is a question: “What is the level of your Internet expertise?” By Internet expertise we mean the experience of using the Internet – for example, searching/browsing, filling out forms, transacting online (buying and/or selling items online), understanding that the basic language of the Internet is HTML (which is read by all browsers), etc… We ask this question because the level of Internet expertise will allow us to accurately estimate how much time it’ll take someone to learn Joomla, a CMS of low-to-medium difficulty (depending on how it’s used) that is not that hard to learn. […]

  7. Pingback by Why Joomla Is a Good Choice for Government Websites | itoctopus — September 11, 2012 @ 11:46 pm

    […] is not that hard to learn Joomla as we’ve explained before – which is convenient for government agencies since they don’t like the maintenance of […]

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