The Center for Strengths-Based Strategies (CSBS) is a consulting business for social/helping professions. From their web site: “Our goal is to increase a Strengths approach across all of the helping professions for work with individuals and families.”I was asked to build a basic web site for the company which they could maintain themselves.

We (Ideal Solutions, LLC – who I was contracted with at the time) installed the Joomla content management system, and customized an open source template. A client rep attended a Joomla training to administer the site, but it became clear that the needs of the company were fairly basic and required a minimal investment of ramp-up time and money.

I compensated for Joomla’s complexity with good information architecture by placing content requiring regular editing so that it could be revised done by logging into the front end. This eliminated the need for anybody at the company to “learn Joomla”. Instead, they logged in and click edit.I remained available to this client for more invasive site changes as needed. This was a great learning experience, and one of the reasons I since elected to move into building WordPress-based sites for myself and for smaller clients.

Joomla is a big and powerful tool that can do just about anything any CMS requires. Unfortunately this can also be a stumbling block for non-developers and companies who have a need for a web presence but not a ton of resources to invest in and properly use a CMS of this big.