Joomla CMS for Magazine Website Content Management

Joomla CMS for Magazine Website Content Management

Joomla can function as an excellent magazine CMS – content management system. As a leading open source magazine website publishing software tool, it’s often one of the first magazine CMS tools used when starting a new publication website.   Joomla is also a top pick for magazine publishers with smaller digital media staff capabilities that do not have an automated or integrated publishing workflow.

Magazine Web Content Administration
A key advantage of the CMS is the ability to easily train the magazine publisher’s staff.  All content is entered via an administrative portal with separate website theme.

The magazine publisher or web content manager oversees several key publishing aspects from the website administration login:

Content – Content is organized by parent “Sections” and child “Categories” for all key elements of the magazine publisher’s web based taxonomy.

Menus – Menus control the magazine’s main navigation and sub navigation.   The subscriber or reader guest will access all content based on the layout and organization of the menu structure to categories, pages, or website functionality components.

Components – Beyond the core Joomla CMS software are the “Extensions” that have been developed by the open source community. Extensions are add-ons that typically perform feature extension to the core CMS publishing platform.   A shopping cart or calendar system would be examples of the types of software tools that can easily be added to the core CMS.

Modules – Modules are regions which can be set to appear across all types of similar pages based on where a visitor has navigated in the website.   Modules can hold zones for magazine advertising, and many other features or feeds that augment the core content view.

Magazine Website Design
Magazine web design for open source software CMS based products typically involves a templating structure.  The advantage for magazine publishers is that their publication website can grow quickly since new articles and content are dynamically assigned website theme or style elements automatically.

Magazine Website Features
While magazine web features can be added (typically as component add-ons) to a Joomla based publication website, the flexibility and uniformity of these items is a weakness for Joomla.

Upgrades and Maintenance
Inline updates occur on an ongoing basis. Joomla is now in a 1.5 series, making major advancements from prior 1.0 version architecture.   Any software solutions vendor will advise the importance of making sure that the proper updates and security issues are properly managed.

Upgrade Path for Magazines
As with any CMS for a magazine, there are upgrade options to more powerful publishing platforms.  The very fact that the publisher has already created a database drive website means that data may be migrated to another CMS. Magazine publishers that have greater needs for custom website functionality and features will often look at Drupal CMS as an upgrade path from Joomla.

Project Site: Joomla.org
Written in PHP with MySQL Database
Deployment for Magazine Web Design: Under 30 days
Deployment for Magazine Configuration: Under 30 days
Release: Joomla 1.5.19 Wojmamni ama batani – security release

We have several active clients that have utilized Joomla for over 3 years for their magazine websites.  Magazine publishers should expect to have a magazine website re-design performed annually based on competitive titles.  Magazine social media elements have also been motivating factors for new magazine designs performed in the past year.  Light website configuration is required during the ongoing publication web re-designs.