Joomla is an impressive content management system that can be used for a solo effort website, or for websites with an active community of contributers.

Please note, version 1.5.6 is a very important security update as it fixes a flaw that could lead to the administrator password being reset. It is strongly recommended to install the patch to all Joomla 1.5 installations. Updates are available here.

Joomla works best on webhosts running Linux, although Windows-based hosts will work without problems. It requires a database to work, so be sure to check with budget hosting plans as they do not always include this.

Installation is simple. Upload the files to the webhost (an ftp program such as Filezilla makes this even simpler) and then open the installation wizard in an internet browser.

There are only a few questions to answer and then the website is ready to go.

It is possible to set the permissions for the different users, so a user may be able to write an article but not publish it to leave control of the site in the hands of the owner.

There is no need for anyone to learn HTML as Joomla comes with an editor that looks like a word processor.

The community is also very active in creating extensions for Joomla to add extra features such as shopping carts or search engine friendly links.