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10 Things to Know About Extending and Connecting Joomla

July-10thingstoknow

Integration and connection are critical to providing a seamless experience for users and customers through your website or blog.

That’s why it’s important that a Content Management System (CMS) has compatibility and integration with other platforms and applications, such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM) as well as e-commerce, financial, and payment systems.

Joomla has an extensive extension directory. An extension is a software application that you can use to extend what Joomla does for you. The Joomla! Extensions Directory is filled with options that assist all types of businesses. The choices include plug-ins, modules, and templates

Here are 10 things to know about Joomla, as a comprehensive CMS solution, and its integration and extension offerings:

1. Languages: With a larger audience, many companies want to provide multiple languages on their website. Joomla offers a core language pack or an extension language pack to enable all aspects of the CMS to be internationalized. There are also additional font options to address certain nuances in languages that are not typically found in printed English content. 

2. Payment Gateways: Whether you have one product or service to sell or you plan on developing an extensive e-commerce store, it’s important to integrate a payment gateway to help customers quickly pay for their items. Joomla has a wide range of payment gateway integrations and extensions, including the widely recognized payment systems like Stripe and PayPal.

Beyond that, Joomla delivers numerous payment gateways designed with specific countries in mind as well as payment systems that work locally and globally. Other payment gateways, such as RO Payments, 2CheckOut Integrator, and Authorize.net provide a way to accept all types of payment forms while other options even allow for Bitcoin payments. 

3. Contacts and Forms: Data collection has become such a large part of what companies do in order to stay in contact with their audience and customer base. It’s also a strategy that enables a better understanding of customers’ needs and helps facilitate personalized interactions.

It’s good to have options when it comes to integrating some data collection methods. Not every customer segment may respond to the same type of contact form. Other integrations that can deepen your understanding of customers include polls and surveys that also work with other aspects of your website, such as a database or CRM platform. 

4. Visuals: Adding more visual features to your website and blog offer further ways to increase engagement with visitors and encourage them to stay for a while. You can achieve this through many types of Joomla integrations and extensions. For example, you can easily create a slideshow, gallery, visual rotators, and panorama-style visuals.  

5. Social: To stay connected with customers beyond your blog or website means giving them easy access to other channels. Social integrations become a critical feature to have access to through your CMS. With Joomla, there are many ways to bring those social channels into your website to instantly connect with visitors in other engaging ways.

For example, the obvious integration is to add social media buttons on your website. However, there are many other options to consider. For example, you can integrate a social display like a feed, social buying, social gamification, social sharing from your blog posts or online product catalog, and social comments. 

6. E-Commerce Features: While payment gateways are one component of your e-commerce business, you also need to tap into other integrations to create a memorable customer experience across a diverse spectrum of online product- or service-focused businesses. This includes auction sites, membership and subscription companies, and donation-based organizations. 

7. Marketing: As part of a digital transformation of your marketing strategy, it’s important to be able to bring many elements and tools together to optimize the investment in digital marketing initiatives. Rather than to use standalone digital tools, integrating everything from content marketing to CRM, can yield new insights while minimizing repetitive marketing tasks. Joomla provides integrations and extensions for newsletters, landing pages, mailing and distribution lists, and even AdWords.

8. Mobile: Not all integrations for your website will align with your mobile efforts, which means you will have to consider how you can incorporate mobile extensions. Joomla again helps by providing you with a wide range of tools to create a seamless mobile experience for users. This includes Joomla mobile websites, apps, and QR code capability. 

9. Calendars and Scheduling: As more companies recognize the value of time management as well as seek ways to improve customer experiences. Digital calendars, event scheduling, and appointment apps have become a priority. This type of functionality must integrate within a website and other tools, including payment gateways, e-commerce checkout systems, and databases. Joomla offers integration solutions for event booking and countdown tools, calendar and appointment functionality, timelines, and ticketing. 

10. Content:  Developing compelling and engaging content can be a challenge in itself, so it helps to have integration options that make it easy to plan, create, and share that content. Joomla provides numerous integration options to include a blog on your Joomla website. Other extensions give you control over how you plan and publish content as well as how you receive content from other people. Also, you can explore numerous content customization integrations and tools that provide rights control.

These are just ten of the many areas that Joomla can help you bring more features and functionality into your company or brand’s online presence. In the process, you can reap the rewards of improved service experiences, greater data insights, increased productivity, and more efficient operations. 

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Miguelangel López on Wednesday, 29 July 2020 15:47
Only ten points? ;)

11) Is faster (much more faster) than WP working at the Control Panel. Without long time waitings, with very short and efficient SQL querys, the day-by-day work updating and editing content is a much more efficiente and confortable work than other CMSs

12) Did you say flexible? YES! the incredible and powerful concept of menu-based sections arquitecture is the key to make unique and different sections, responding to a wide variety of needs on professional and corporate websites. Other CMS (like WP) can't vary the aspect, the wireframe or the contents section to section (only "page by page, a teeeeeeeedious building solution).

13) 1 need, 1 template. Do you have some different needs for the same website? Ok, you can install all the templates you need in a same website, into the same joomla installation. Brilliant!!!!!!!!!

Yeah! Joomla rocks.... but Joomla Team maybe re-focus they communication to share the comparative benefits of a very professional platform in comparation with the very poor capabilities of other platforms (speciallly WP, the VHS of the CMSs) trying to reach the advertising, marketing and design freelancers (the some-lazy installers of WP, actually)

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11) Is faster (much more faster) than WP working at the Control Panel. Without long time waitings, with very short and efficient SQL querys, the day-by-day work updating and editing content is a much more efficiente and confortable work than other CMSs 12) Did you say flexible? YES! the incredible and powerful concept of menu-based sections arquitecture is the key to make unique and different sections, responding to a wide variety of needs on professional and corporate websites. Other CMS (like WP) can't vary the aspect, the wireframe or the contents section to section (only "page by page, a teeeeeeeedious building solution). 13) 1 need, 1 template. Do you have some different needs for the same website? Ok, you can install all the templates you need in a same website, into the same joomla installation. Brilliant!!!!!!!!! Yeah! Joomla rocks.... but Joomla Team maybe re-focus they communication to share the comparative benefits of a very professional platform in comparation with the very poor capabilities of other platforms (speciallly WP, the VHS of the CMSs) trying to reach the advertising, marketing and design freelancers (the some-lazy installers of WP, actually)

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