Case Studies

Web Site: http://www.yourwedding.com.au
Q: Briefly describe your organization.
A: We are traditional print publishers, publishing our own titles of wedding and parenting magazines plus contract publishing for clients. A small company of five aimed at niche markets.

Q: Briefly describe the goals of your Web presence.
A: To complement our printed titles plus ensure we have fresh content between publication dates.

Q: Briefly describe the status of your Web presence prior to using Joomla.
A: We had a good basic HTML website that was OK for the time and was well used, but we realized the Web was changing, and we needed to provide a better and more modern presence.

Q: Why did you use Joomla to create your site?
A: To take advantage of Content Management System (CMS) to keep track of a rapidly growing website and avoid trying to link about 1000 static HTML web pages. A friend recommended it, and I remember recoiling in horror when he showed me the backend etc. and thinking there was no way I had room left in my brain for another software learning curve.

Q: How has Joomla changed how your organization uses your website? Has it charged your Web goals?
A: We update the site(s) more regularly; we are now more confident with using and updating and improving our site as it is just simpler to do it from the backend in real time. We don’t dread updates like we used to.

Website: http://longwoodfl.org/
TQ: Briefly describe your organization.
A: The City of Longwood is a municipality in Florida with 14,000 residents and 150 employees.

Q: Briefly describe the status of your Web presence prior to using Joomla.
A: We had an outdated site that was difficult to update and poorly designed.

Q: What parts of Joomla do you struggle with the most? Which features do you like the most?
A: The most difficult part in the beginning was figuring out the program structure, but after a few months of working with it, things became quite clear. By fat the best feature of Joomla is the ease of updating pages once the site has been built.
After the initial training for myself and staff, several departments worked together to initial a plan to build content for the site. This process was very dynamic in that each department could work simultaneously on their particular pages, and I could do final editing and layout once they were finished.

Q: How has Joomla changed how your organization uses your website? Has it changed your Web goals?
A: Joomla has enabled several people within the organization to maintain their own pages. It has also provided a much more comprehensive way for the City to share documents, photos, and other materials with the public. It has not changed our Web goals, but it has certainly enhanced them.
 

Website : http://ropl.org/
Q: Briefly describe your organization.
A: Royal Oak Public Library (www.ropl.org) is a public library in metro Detroit serving 60,000 residents. We have about 112,500 books and audio-visual materials in our collection. We provide 36 computers for public use. We receive about 1200 hits to our website every day.

Q: Briefly describe the goals of your web presence.
A: Our goal for our web presence is to convey current and updated information about programs and events at our library, book reviews and recommendations, a portal for research databases and a seamless transition to our collection catalog.

Q: Briefly describe the status of your web presence prior to using Joomla.
A: prior to using Joomla, our website was comprised of basic HTML and tables and nearly every page had a different look and feel to it. This included the layout, color scheme, and font attributes. One person was designated to add content.

Q: Why did you use Joomla to create your site?
A: We decided to use Joomla because we were fascinated with the flexibility, usability, third-party extensions, and ability to have all our staff members add content when they want.

Q: How (if it has) has Joomla made it easier to reach your web presence goals?
A: Our web goals have been met by having flexible content be displayed on our website without much management. Our programs and events are displayed and removed automatically, we can keep track of the usage of our research databases and some visitors to the website have left comments on content which opens up communication between them and our staff.


Website : http://www.telx.com
Q: Briefly describe the goals of your Web presence.
A: To provide industry-related news and trends within our industry as well as company information.

Q: How has Joomla changed how your organization uses your website? Has it changed your Web goals?
A: We no longer need a dedicated individual to handle site updates. Now each department is in charge of updating their own content.

Q: Why did you use Joomla to create your site?
A: I explored a number of CMS systems and had used Xoops for some time. The decision to move to Mambo (and then Joomla) was for a variety of reasons:
• I wanted to be able to be anywhere at anytime and have the ability to update the site.
• I wanted to allow users to contribute news and interact with the site more.
• I wanted an easy templating system for site design.
• Features such as RSS feeds for the site were of importance.
• Its modular approach meant that I could easily add new features and functionality with little difficulty over time.
• StaticXT was a component that allowed an easy way to use existing HTML files until such time that I brought content into the database, so migration was quick at first and then built upon later.
• Compared to other open source systems, Mambo/Joomla was easy to understand and (despite the Mambo-Joomla split that eventuated) had a large community that wasn’t being affected by individual user’s politics.


Website : http://www.nzmac.com/
Q: How has Joomla changed how you organization use your website? Has it changed your Web goals?
A: It has just made life so much easier, made control and organizing the site so much simpler, whilst allowing new functionality to be added in and tested much more quickly.
I may not be the tidiest of people, but I insist that my website are tidy and
exceptionally well structured. It has meant that developing content for Joomla has been so much quicker than traditional web creation.
This means I can respond to news stories, users’ requests, and site use in a
much more immediate and dynamic way, and it has allowed the site to reach out to the web community far better, through the advanced functionality and through a web presence that is far more functional and professional than I was providing previously.

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Website : http://everythingtreo.com
Q: Briefly describe the status of your Web presence prior to using Joomla.
A: The Site used static HTML, and each page needed to be hand-coded. The site was relatively small due to the time-consuming process of updating the architecture and pages. Our forums acted as a completely separate entity from our main site and lacked cohesiveness.


Q: Why did you use Joomla to create your site?
A: In order for the site to experience growth, we needed a CMS. As the site had started to grow, it had become increasingly difficult to manage. One of the requirements in selecting a CMS was to find a system that allowed for rapid deployment of dynamic pages and content.
Our primary reason for selecting Joomla was the capability to integrate membership database with our vBulletin forums. Although we had discussion forums, there had been an obvious disconnect between the main site and the forums. By integrating membership from our forums to our Joomla site, we were able to create a seamless and user experience.
Another key factor in the decision had been the SEO capabilities inherent in the Joomla architecture. There were also a number of available extensions and patches that allowed for the further optimization of the sites for search engines.
After researching other solutions, it was clear that Joomla offered the best in class when it came to content management, membership integration, and SEO capabilities.



Summary
Several common themes emerge about Joomla from these case studies and seem to be the hallmarks of what Joomla can offer to an organization:

• Most sites were previously in separate pages of HTML. Keeping them all coherent was difficult. The common template of Joomla has allowed a common graphical design site-wide that is on autopilot. The organization can focus much more on content.
• All of the sites added third-party extensions to a lesser or greater extent to achieve the functionality they needed. Almost all of them took advantage of a commercial component.
• The effectiveness in adding new content to the site was greatly enhanced. Organizations were able to make updates in real time, and many found they were able to greatly expand their base of people contributing to the content of the site.
• Taking advantage of some core Joomla features and third-party functionality, many of these sites have a rich interactive user experience. Being able to allow site visitors to participate in creating content is the next threshold in the development of the Web.
Clearly, Joomla has helped these organizations create a Web presence that was previously only possible for big companies and/or big budgets. Open source software such as Joomla, along with a wide availability of commercial and GPL extensions, extends this opportunity to everybody, big and small, alike.


 

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